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IntroductionOolong tea, celebrated for its significance in Chinese tea culture, was the subject of investigation in this study.MethodsFive varieties of Minnan oolong tea were sampled, each cultivated under two distinct management approaches: conventional management and natural growth methods. The study aimed to discern variations in sensory attributes, encompassing appearance and liquor color, alongside the analysis of chemical composition.Results and discussionThe results indicated that oolong tea cultivated through conventional manual management generally exhibited qualities in terms of shape and foliage appearance, in contrast to those grown naturally. However, naturally grown oolong tea tended to exhibit more favorable aroma and taste profiles compared to conventionally managed counterparts. Furthermore, the content of water extract, amino acids, polyphenols, caffeine, and other pivotal chemical constituents were typically higher in naturally grown tea varieties compared to conventionally managed ones. Conversely, catechin content was found to be more abundant in traditionally managed bushes than in those grown naturally. These findings emphasize the significance of implementing appropriate natural growth management practices to enhance the quality of Minnan oolong tea and maintain ecological sustainability.

Agricultural heritage systems are receiving increasing attention due to their multifunctional role, their capability to provide ecosystem services, and for representing sustainable development models for rural areas. At the international level, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations launched in 2002 the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) Program to identify and safeguard traditional agro-silvo-pastoral systems that are the result of the adaptation of rural communities to the surrounding environments. Following this approach, similar national programs have been developed, among which the Italian National Register of Historical Rural Landscapes and the China Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (China-NIAHS) initiative stand out. This research compares the China-NIAHS initiative and the Italian Register of Historical Rural Landscapes, highlighting similarities and differences and identifying strengths and weaknesses, to contribute to the development of proper tools for the conservation and valorization of agricultural heritage systems. Both initiatives were established in 2012 and share similar aims and inscription criteria, including historical and current significance, knowledge system and social structure, economic and productive framework, and causes of vulnerability. The main differences are related to the delimitation of the boundaries of the proposed sites and to the inscription process; in addition, while for the Italian National Register spatial analyses of land-use changes and landscape structure are mandatory according to a precise methodology, for the China-NIAHS no specific landscape analyses are required. The main critical issues are the lack of public participation and the lack of a monitoring plan after the inscription. The absence of monitoring is also the main vulnerability of the FAO GIAHS Programme. This research can offer important information for different stakeholders at the international, national, and local levels dealing with agricultural heritage conservation and valorization. In particular, it highlights the need of developing a multidisciplinary monitoring system with a standard methodology based on different indicators that can contribute to maximizing the impact of these initiatives. This research also provides useful information for the countries that are interested in developing a national initiative for agricultural heritage systems’ identification and valorization/conservation or for countries that intend to improve their national programs.

The high fertilizer application in tea planting and the large energy consumption in tea processing have raised concerns about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of tea production. China is the world's largest tea production country, but its tea production is dominated by smallholder farmers. Therefore, when it comes to GHG emission reduction in tea production, specific measures need to be developed for the smallholder mode. The purpose of this study is to reveal the characteristics and influencing factors of GHG emissions of smallholder tea plantations, as well as to develop GHG emission reduction measures suitable for the smallholder mode. Here, we focus on Fenghuang Dancong tea and two types of smallholder tea plantations, the high-altitude tea plantation (HTP11 HTP: the high-altitude tea plantation; MLP: the mid-low-altitude tea plantation; CF: carbon footprint; GHG: greenhouse gas; CO2-eq: CO2 emission equivalent; LCA: life cycle assessment.) and the mid-low-altitude tea plantation (MLP), in Fenghuang Town, Chaozhou City, China. The carbon footprint (CF) method is employed, which is a widely used method for estimating GHG emissions and expressed in CO2 emission equivalent (CO2-eq). The assessment on the CF of the Fenghuang Dancong tea production and a comparative analysis between the HTP and the MLP have been made. Results show that (1) at the tea planting stage, fertilizer input is the main contributor to the CFplanting; electricity input is the primary component of the CFprocessing at the tea processing stage; (2) considering the two stages of tea planting and processing, the CFtea of the MLP is more than twice that of the HTP; (3) the production and management measures adopted by tea farmers have a significant impact on the CFtea, which are mainly driven by economic interests. In view of these findings, we emphasize the importance of balancing GHG emission reduction with economic benefits and propose GHG emission reduction measures such as formulating subsidy policies for organic fertilizers, promoting green and organic product certification, improving the energy input structure and strengthening scientific guidance. We submit that this study will not only help local managers formulate efficient GHG emission reduction measures, but also provide references for other studies on GHG emissions of tea production in the smallholder mode.

In recent years, most rural areas in China have faced the prominent livelihood transformation of smallholder farmers. It may directly or indirectly affect the regional environment. Thus, this paper constructed a conceptual framework and chose the first Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) site in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau as the case for evaluating the impact of smallholder farmers’ livelihood transformation on the agricultural system. From 2016 to 2019, the main direction of livelihood transformation of smallholder farmers in the case area is the non-agricultural livelihood transformation. And the average proportion of agricultural income in households has continued to decline. With the non-agricultural livelihood transformation, smallholder farmers’ land use and energy use behaviour has changed. As a result, the elements in farmland and the relationship between farmland, woodland, and grassland have shown weakening trends in the structure of the case agricultural system. In addition, the ecological and sociocultural functions of the case agricultural system have declined. Still, the productive function has remained almost at a stable level and has even increased slightly.

Traditional agricultural industries in protected areas (PAs) provide opportunities for both nature conservation and the wellbeing of local residents. However, knowledge about the synergies between nature conservation and traditional agricultural industries is still limited. This research takes the traditional tea industry in Wuyishan National Park as a case to identify and examine the synergistic mechanism between forest conservation and industrial development, why traditional agricultural industries are necessary to the regional economy, and how they secure local livelihoods as well as achieve conservation goals. We conducted literature research and semi-structured interviews with Wuyishan National Park Authority, local government administrations, enterprises and small-scale farmers. The results were obtained through a two-stage mixed method of grounded theory and system dynamics. The findings revealed that: (1) Traditional agricultural industries in PAs were resilient and adaptable in the face of external changes, in which traditional culture and ecological awareness played an important role. (2) Small-scale agri-industries were vulnerable to external shocks, but they also have advantages in terms of moderate agglomeration and standardization, risk perception and response, and market-based diversification of production. (3) The synergetic process of traditional agricultural industries and conservation is mainstreaming biodiversity by cooperation among the government, the park agency, and local people. Thus, we suggested that the local government should work together with the PA management agencies to re-evaluate the existence of traditional agricultural industries for their necessity in the regional economy and the feasibility of improving local livelihoods.

The protection and management of important agricultural heritage systems (IAHS) are essential to the sustainable economic and social development of heritage sites. Using the time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) model, this paper analyzes the influence of the identification of IAHS on economic growth and compares the difference between Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) and China’s Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (China-NIAHS). The results show that the identification of IAHS can significantly promote the economic growth of heritage sites, and the identification of GIAHS has a stronger role. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the economic driving effect of IAHS identification on heritage sites is affected by geographical location and poverty. The economic driving effect is stronger in Western China and in relatively poor areas. In addition, the influencing mechanism of regional economic growth after IAHS identification is discussed. The results show that IAHS identification can promote the development of the grain processing industry and the improvement of infrastructure construction, so as to increase the added value of secondary industries at heritage sites. Moreover, the level of heritage recognition leads to different policy tendencies. Among these, GIAHS identification significantly promotes investment growth, while China-NIAHS identification significantly promotes the population agglomeration of heritage sites.

Global greening and its relationship with climate change remain the hot topics in recent years, and are of critical importance for understanding the interactions between the terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycle and the climate system. China, especially north China, has contributed a lot to global greening during the past few decades. As a water-limited ecosystem, human activities, not precipitation amount, were thought as the main contributor to the greening of north China. Considering the importance of precipitation event characteristics (PEC) in the altered precipitation regimes, we integrated long-term normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and meteorological datasets to reveal the role of precipitation regimes, especially PECs, on vegetation growth across temperate grasslands in north China. Accompanied with a significantly decreased growing season precipitation (GSP), NDVI increased significantly in the largest area of the temperate grasslands during 1982–2015, i.e., greening. We found that 28.44% of the area was explained by PECs, including more heavy or extreme precipitation events, alleviated extreme drought, and fewer light events, while only 0.92% of the area was associated with GSP. NDVI did not always increase over the 30 years and there was a decrease during 1996–2005. Taking afforestation projects in desertified lands into account, we found that precipitation, mainly PECs, explained more the increase and decline of NDVI during 1982–1995 and 1996–2005, respectively, while an equivalent explanatory power of precipitation and afforestation projects to the increase in NDVI after 2005. Our study indicates a possible higher productivity under future precipitation regime scenario (e.g., fewer but larger precipitation events) or intensive afforestation activity, implying more carbon sequestration or livestock production of temperate steppe in the future.

Abstract China has a deep traditional culture and a long history, and is rich in traditional settlements (designated as “Famous Historic-Cultural Villages/Towns”, “Chinese Traditional Villages” by Chinese Government). To help people develop these traditional settlements to achieve the great goal of Chinese National Rejuvenation, Chinese scholar put forward the Cultural Landscape Genes of Traditional Settlements (CLGTS) in 2003. Since then, CLGTS theory has been employed to solve the issues of Chinese traditional settlements, such as the identification and regionalization of cultural landscape genes in traditional settlements, and the understanding of architectural features. Although CLGTS theory has made great strides in many application fields, there is still a lack of scientific findings in exploring the symbol mechanism from a perspective of semiotics. To explore this, we firstly examined the core features of CLGTS through a dialectical perspective. We analyzed two features of CLGTS in depth. First, CLGTS is the dialectical combination of macro settlement image and micro cultural factors of traditional settlements, material appearance and inherent traditional cultural implications, overall features and local self-renewal mechanisms, qualitative and quantitative methods, superiority of cultural factors and rich cultural connotation. Second, CLGTS is famous for its nonlinearity, self-organization, and self-iteration due to various spatial shapes and complex structures. Based on the above, we first proposed the concept of Symbolization Method of CLGTS (SM-CLGTS). Then, we further explored the key features, classification methods, and corresponding representation methods of CLGTS symbols. Finally, by using Visual C#.net program language, we developed a prototype system of the Traditional Landscape Genetic Symbol Database (TLGSD) to create and centrally manage CLGTS symbols. Test results show that TLGSD can meet the needs of constructing a CLGTS symbol database for a given region. This study is of great significance to explore and contribute to visualizing the CLGTS symbols.

Although numerous studies have explored the role of government, conservation managers and local residents in the governance of protected areas, little attention has been paid to the role of tourists. Based on a field survey and a network-based content analysis of tourists’ perceptions and expectations of Wuyishan National Park, this research sought to promote the governance of national parks by strengthening the tourists’ influence. The results showed that: (1) tourists had a changing, but still narrow understanding of the national park’s functions, (2) tourists’ expectations of tourism and recreational functions are growing more diversified, and (3) lack of information restrained them from making an effective contribution to conservation. The results suggest that tourists can be effective in conservation governance with the aid of better publicity and closer interactions with other stakeholders. This study has theoretical and managerial implications for understanding the role of tourists in the governance of national parks.

Management evaluation is increasingly required for national parks worldwide as it is an essential mechanism for improving management levels and achieving management objectives. The management capacity evaluation (MCE), an integral component of management evaluation, emphasizes the suitability of management measures. It helps identify the deficiencies in existing management measures and form feedback to improve them, thus increasing the overall management level of national parks. However, the existing MCE methods from international programs suffer from limited adaptability and are difficult to promote in other countries. In this research, we apply the best practice-based (BPB) method to the Three-River-Sources National Park (TNP), the first national park in China, to reveal the changes in its management capacity during the pilot period. The BPB method is new compared with other MCE methods, but is more adaptable to the current situation of China’s national parks. Results show that TNP’s comprehensive management capacity and the five aspects of management capacities improved effectively, which means the management measures adopted during the pilot phase were generally appropriate and practicable. Some management capacities, such as management organization, legal system construction, management planning, and natural resources confirmation and registration performed well or improved significantly during the pilot period, providing beneficial lessons for other national parks in China. Some management capacities, such as the ecological compensation scheme, monitoring and early warning system, and management team, are still deficient and should be prioritized for future improvement. The effectiveness and operability of the BPB method are validated in this research, as it provides a rapid and accurate diagnosis of TNP’s management capacities and useful feedback for improving them. We submit that the BPB method not only contributes to the theoretical improvement of MCE methods, but also shows wider adaptability to different protected area types and countries.

Zhagana Agriculture-Forest-Animal Husbandry Composite System (ZCS) is the first Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems site in the Tibetan Plateau. Similar to many traditional agricultural regions, with the development of tourism and leisure agriculture, the peasant households in ZCS have gradually changed their livelihood strategies and livelihood activities in the past 10 years, resulting in the disappearance of some traditional farming methods and agricultural landscapes with a long history. By taking livelihood assets as the entry point and livelihood strategies as the core, this paper analyzed the basic situation of households’ livelihood and the transition mechanism of different livelihood strategies in order to offer suggestions for the dynamic conservation and sustainable development of Agricultural Heritage Systems (AHS). (1) The livelihood strategies of peasant households in ZCS can be divided into two major categories: specialized strategies and diversified strategies. (2) According to the empirical calculation of the livelihood asset accounting framework of AHS, the average livelihood asset value of peasant households in ZCS is 2.040, showing that the situation of peasant households’ livelihood is inadequate. (3) The transition of peasant households’ livelihood strategies from traditional strategy to specialized or diversified livelihood strategies is mainly influenced by natural assets, human assets, cultural assets, social assets and informational assets. In order to meet the growing material and spiritual needs of peasant households and achieve the sustainable development of ZCS simultaneously, it is suggested that the agriculture-forestry-animal husbandry-tourism composite strategies shall be taken as the development direction of peasant households’ livelihood strategies.

At present, the establishment of a natural protected area system with national parks as the main subject has attracted widespread attention from all corners of Chinese society. Eco-compensation mechanism is an important institutional guarantee for the construction of China’s system for natural protected areas. However, the current research over eco-compensation policies for China’s national parks and relevant practices are far from systematic and lacking of top-level design. Based on the current research and practices of eco-compensation to national parks (NPEC) at home and abroad, this paper has considered China’s requirements for the pilot areas in the national park system, proposed a theoretical framework on the basis of clarifying the connotation of eco-compensation, and thus formulated four key techniques. The techniques include identifying compensation subjects, formulating compensation methods, determining compensation standards, and expanding financing channels, with a view to providing a top-level design for the establishment of an NPEC mechanism in China.

Since Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (IAHS) were launched by the FAO to protect the sustainable traditional agricultural systems around the world, their conservation has become a new difficult issue under the context of urbanization. Farmers in IAHS sites giving up small-scale traditional farming due to their low economic benefit and high labor intensity are considered as the main cause hindering effective conservation of these heritages. This study takes the Kuancheng traditional chestnut cultivation system (KTCCS) in northern China as a case to assess its economic and socio-cultural sustainability. Based on questionnaires and interviews, this study found that: the traditional ecological farming methods were still used by local farming households to plant chestnut trees; and most farmers support IAHS conservation. KTCCS performs economic and socio-cultural sustainability. For a household, the labor productivity of chestnut cultivation was 1.33 times that of their non-farm jobs because of the low labor input of chestnut cultivation. Farmers widely consider they live in a harmonious social environment but are lower than other households in economic status. Most farmers still lack an understanding of indigenous traditional knowledge and cultures. In the future, secondary and tertiary industries should be developed to provide farmers with employment opportunities in their hometowns for protecting KTCCS.

How we scientifically measure residents’ perception of tourism developments and earn their understanding and support have an important impact on the scientific management and sustainable utilization of tourist attractions. This study analyzes the mediating role of perceived justice and community identity between residents’ perceptions of tourism’s impact and their support for tourism development by integrating the theories of social exchange theory (SET) and ‘cognition–affection–conation’ (CAC) relationship theory. We surveyed 334 interviewees in the Xinghua Duotian Agrosystem (XHDA), a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) site in Jiangsu Province, China. The findings of our study are as follows: (1) Residents’ perceptions had both a direct and indirect influence over behavioral intentions. Specifically, benefit perception of tourism had a significant positive influence, while cost perception had a significant negative influence on residents’ support for tourism development. (2) Perceived justice and community identity played an intermediary role in the relationship between tourism impact perception and support for tourism development. (3) The mediating role of emotions had strong effects on their behavioral intentions via its psychological transmission chain of perceptions. The results suggest that community-based tourism (CBT) may be an effective tool for local residents to diversify their livelihoods in the GIAHS site, and the mediating role of perceived justice and community identity should be taken seriously for the development of CBT in GIAHS sites.

This research examines perceptions of ecosystem services (ES) and social well-being in the Wuyishan National Park, China. This study analyses the importance of and linkages between them based on the impact of new designation of protected areas on this social-ecological system. Realisation of rural well-being is critical to park-people relations in populated protected areas, and effective resolution is needed to achieve positive conservation outcomes. We conducted 372 structured interviews with community members with different livelihood strategies. Key findings from the research include: (1) the importance of provisioning (e.g., tea, rice, timber) and cultural ES (e.g., local culture, eco-tourism) is related to both current livelihood necessity and future development pursuit. (2) The perceived material well-being is higher than spiritual well-being, and high social well-being is closely related to high-income groups and those that think highly of cultural services, i.e., those engaged in non-agricultural activities (e.g., tourism) and tea cultivation. (3) Cultural values are better preserved in tea and rice cultivation and tourism, but in general, they are not incorporated to improve social well-being. The results suggest that Protected area (PA) management of local communities must seek cultural valorisation for differentiated livelihood strategies for rural people’s sustainable livelihood and stability of the social-ecological system.

As a long-term mechanism for eco-compensation, the ‘Hematopoiesis-Compensation Policy’ (HCP) such as industrial transformation can effectively improve the operability and efficiency of compensation policy. However, compared with the ‘Transfusion-compensation Policy’ (TCP) such as the cash subsidy, can HCP quickly achieve the goal of eco-compensation? Does HCP require more total investment in compensation funds? This paper takes the Shennongjia National Park System Pilot Zone (SNJNP) as the research area and takes the eco-compensation policy to encourage farmers to return farmland to forest as the research object. We set three different compensation modes of TCP and HCP, and study the compensation scenarios in the next 20 years. The results show that HCP can achieve the purpose of compensation faster than TCP. Although the annual payment of HCP is relatively higher at the beginning, both the annual expenditure and the cumulative expenditure will decrease significantly. Therefore, later annual expenditure and cumulative total expenditure of HCP will be lower than TCP.