The development of traffic infrastructure involves massive land use changes along the transportation routes and stimulates urban sprawl at transfer nodes, leading to a degradation in ecosystem services, including soil conservation. For developing countries, especially for China, it is very important to differentiate the influences between different standards of traffic infrastructure associated with the different administrative levels of the regions where they are constructed on soil conservation. In this study, we attempt to analyze the differences in the influence of accessibility at different levels on soil conservation, for the case study area in Hunan province in China. The results indicate that: (1) traffic conditions in Hunan province have witnessed continuous improvement, and the time taken to access mega-cities, prefecture-level cities, and county-level cities from various regions has been significantly reduced. (2) The total annual soil conservation in Hunan province is maintained at approximately 2.93 × 10⁹ t. However, the spatial heterogeneity shows severe degradation in regions with lower accessibility, and weak enhancement in regions with higher accessibility. (3) A negative spatial autocorrelationship exists between accessibility and soil conservation at all levels, with the increase of administrative rank of the destination making it more obvious and intense, along with an increased tendency for the spatial distribution to concentrate. (4) Building more railways and highways from prefecture-level cities with LH clusters nearby as transfer nodes, instead of the construction of national roads and provincial roads that diverge from these railways and highways, will help limit the massive expansion of construction land and soil erosion within prefecture-level cities, rather than spreading to towns of LH clusters. This research provides an important scientific basis for future regional planning and traffic infrastructure construction, and also a reference for traffic infrastructure development in other geographically similar regions on a synchronous development stage in the world.

The carbon sequestration of food crops is of great significance to slow down agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural production and management. This paper analyzes the dynamic change and regional differences of net carbon sequestration of food crops from temporal and spatial perspectives for the case study area of the Yangtze River economic belt (YREB) in China. We use the calculation formula of carbon sequestration and carbon emission to calculate the net carbon sequestration in the Yangtze River economic belt. On this basis, we analyze the dynamic trend and regional differences of net carbon sequestration in the Yangtze River economic belt. Furthermore, we use the Gini coefficient to measure the quantitative gap of net carbon sequestration of grain crops in different regions of the Yangtze River economic belt. The results show that: (1) from 2000–2018, the net carbon sequestration of food crops keeps rising within the studied area, while the carbon emission shows a fluctuating downward trend; (2) remarkable regional differences in the net carbon sequestration of food crops have occurred, and most provinces (cities) show an upward trend for the studied area; (3) the unequitable distribution of net carbon sequestration of food crops is clearly displayed in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the studied area. Moreover, the most uneven place is located on the lower reaches, and the least uneven place is in the upper reaches. These findings are important points of reference for reducing the carbon emissions of the agricultural industry in the Yangtze River economic belt of China and in China more generally.

Rural community resilience (RCR) is crucial to rural sustainable development in the context of rural decline globally. Previous studies seem to underestimate the role of the built environment (BE) in the proactive aspect of RCR (P-RCR), that is, a rural community’s ability to cope with change proactively. This study explores BE’s effects on P-RCR with a holistic framework involving objective BE (OBE), perceived BE (PBE), place attachment (PA) and P-RCR, using structural equation modeling (SEM) based on a sample of 7528 rural respondents from eastern, central and western China. The results are as follows: (1) Both OBE (population density and accessibility) and PBE (perceptions of facilities, surrounding environment and safety) can significantly affect P-RCR in terms of social, economic and environmental dimensions. (2) In all regions, PBE’s impacts were consistent and positive on social and economic dimensions at both the individual and community levels (except the community-level economic dimension in western regions), but negative on the individual-level environmental dimension; OBE’s impacts were varied among regions. (3) In certain regions, PA and PBE were mediators in the BE-P-RCR relationship. This study can help researchers to construct a more detailed picture of the BE-P-RCR relationship and identify BE-related factors that contribute to P-RCR enhancement.