Assessing ecosystem health is helpful to determine reasonable eco-environmental restoration and resource management strategies. Based on a pressure-state-response (PSR) framework, a set of comprehensive indicators including natural, social and economic aspects was proposed and applied for assessing the ecosystem health of Yuanzhou County, Loess Plateau, Ningxia Province, China. The basic data used to calculate the values of the assessment indicators include Landsat TM image and socio-economic data, and remote sensing (RS) and the geographic information system (GIS) were used to process image data. The results showed that the ecosystem health conditions of most townships in Yuanzhou County were at the moderately healthy level, three townships were at the healthy level, and only two townships were at the unhelathy level; the areas (percentage) at the unhealthy, moderately healthy and healthy levels were 443.91 km² (12.66%), 2438.75 km² (69.54%) and 624.50 km² (17.81%), respectively. The results could provide useful information for local residents and the government to take measures to improve the health conditions of their township ecosystem.

Evaluating social vulnerability is a crucial issue in risk and disaster management. In this study, a household social vulnerability index (HSVI) to flood hazards was developed and used to assess the social vulnerability of rural households in western mountainous regions of Henan province, China. Eight key indicators were identified using existing literature and discussions with experts from multiple disciplines and local farmers, and their weights were determined using principle component analysis (PCA) and an expert scoring method. The results showed that (1) the ratio of perennial work in other places, hazard-related training and illiteracy ratio (15+) were the most dominant factors of social vulnerability. (2) The numbers of high, moderate and low vulnerability households were 14, 64 and 16, respectively, which accounted for 14.9, 68.1 and 17.0 % of the total interviewed rural households, respectively. (3) The correlation coefficient between household social vulnerability scores and casualties in a storm flood in July 2010 was significant at 0.05 significance level (r = 0.748), which indicated that the selected indicators and their weights were valid. (4) Some mitigation strategies to reduce household social vulnerability to flood hazards were proposed, which included (1) improving the local residents' income and their disaster-related knowledge and evacuation skills, (2) developing emergency plans and carrying out emergency drills and training, (3) enhancing the accuracy of disaster monitoring and warning systems and (4) establishing a specific emergency management department and comprehensive rescue systems. These results can provide useful information for rural households and local governments to prepare, mitigate and respond to flood hazards, and the corresponding strategies can help local households to reduce their social vulnerability and improve their ability to resist flood hazard.

There are many studies showing that public flood risk perception may promote people’s motivation to reduce flood risk and enhance their coping behavior, thus providing useful insights for flood risk management. The purpose of this article is to estimate residents’ flood risk perception in Jiaozuo City and to identify the influencing factors. A questionnaire survey method was used to collect data and a composite index was constructed to measure public risk perception. Each respondent’s grade of flood risk perception was calculated using the relationship between the standard deviation (SD) and the mean value (MV) of flood risk perception index (RPI) scores. Moreover, the hypotheses concerning different groups were tested using an independent sample T-test and one-way ANOVA (analysis of variance), and the group differences in flood risk perception on each observed dependent variable were explored using post hoc tests. The flood risk perception of the total respondents was divided into three levels based on the SD and MV of RPI scores: low (68.4%), moderate (13.7%), and high (17.9%). Respondents with low education, low income, less flood experiences, and who have married, lived in rural areas or near rivers/reservoirs had a higher flood risk perception than others, and respondents who lived in flood storage areas had a lower risk perception. Moreover, the ability to mitigate floods and the trust in flood-control projects were negatively related to the flood risk perception.