A field experiment was conducted to determine the effects of long-term applications of fertilizers and manure (1982 to 2003) and short-term irrigation level (2002 and 2003) on accumulation of nitrate nitrogen (NO₃-N) in soil at Zhangye Oasis, China. The treatments included manure (M) and no manure (M₀) as main plots; check (Ck), nitrogen (N), nitrogen + phosphorus (NP), and nitrogen + phosphorus + potassium (NPK) as subplots; and two amounts of irrigation (I₁ and I₂) as subsubplots. The application of N alone resulted in large NO₃-N accumulation in soil, accounting for 6% of the applied N, and the lowest crop N recovery. Application of manure resulted in increased NO₃-N in the soil profile compared to treatment with no manure, and the MN treatment resulted in the greatest amount of NO₃-N in soil. Nitrogen applied with P and/or K reduced the amount of NO₃-N in soil in both manure and no-manure treatments compared with N only. The unaccounted N was greatest (60%) in the N-alone treatment and lowest (30%) in the NPK treatment. When manure plus fertilizer were applied together, the unaccounted N ranged from 35%–42%. Based on results from only 2 years, greater amounts of irrigation (I₂) caused greater leaching of NO₃-N in the soil profile compared with I₁, especially in treatments receiving manure. The implications of these findings are that these high amounts of accumulated NO₃-N in surface and subsoil layers can be a potential threat to surface water, underground water, and air quality in the long run. This accumulated N in the soil profile can be used as a source of available N for future crops and should be recycled by using proper crop, soil, fertilizer, and water-management strategies/practices. The findings also suggest the need for further research to make an effective and efficient use of this accumulated NO₃-N in the soil profile in order to save cost of N fertilizer application to future crops.

The Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative is considered as closely aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and could have a huge global impact. Its sustainable development issues have attracted worldwide attention. However, both the existing research and data accumulation on this aspect are seriously insufficient. Starting from the logic of the ultimate goal of sustainable development (namely within the ecological limitations, maximizing human well-being with minimum ecological consumption and minimizing the planetary pressures with maximum resource utilization efficiency), we have constructed a comprehensive evaluation method on sustainable development, namely the Consumption-Pressure-Output-Efficiency method in our previous study. Based on it, we provide a database with five datasets, which includes four core datasets (ecological consumption, planetary pressures, human well-being outputs and ecological well-being output efficiency) and a related dataset (biocapacity, ecological surplus/deficit, population), covering 61 B&R countries, B&R regional average and global average from 1990 to 2018. It can be used for further comprehensive research on sustainable development under planetary pressures and others of B&R.