Community residents have a strong stake in a local heritage site and may be an important force in its conservation, management and development. Positive relationships between the heritage site and community residents can promote its protection. A questionnaire survey was conducted with local residents of Bogda World Natural Heritage, Xinjiang, China, to assess their perceptions towards the World Natural Heritage, and their attitudes towards participation in heritage conservation. The local residents have made positive contributions to the conservation of heritage resource in the past several years. However, because of the asymmetry between responsibility for conservation and benefit sharing, the authors recommend that a “Community co-management framework” should be established to mobilize residents to participate in heritage conservation. Furthermore, participatory approaches and communication mechanisms are suggested to promote sustainable relationships between community development and heritage conservation. The empirical study can be used as an input to policy making and management for sustainable conservation, and the study contributes to the literature related to community participation at heritage sites.

In this study, we analyzed the temporal-spatial variations of the characteristics of land use change in central Asia over the past two decades. This was conducted using four indicators (change rate, equilibrium extent, dynamic index, and transfer direction) and a multi-scale correlation analysis method, which explained the impact of recent environmental transformations on land use changes. The results indicated that the integrated dynamic degree of land use increased by 2.2% from 1995 to 2015. The areas of cropland, water bodies, and artificial land increased, with rates of 1047 km²/a, 39 km²/a, and 129 km²/a, respectively. On the other hand, the areas of forest, grassland, and unused land decreased, with rates of 54 km²/a, 803 km²/a, and 359 km²/a, respectively. There were significant increases in cropland and water bodies from 1995 to 2005, while the amount of artificial land significantly increased from 2005 to 2015. The increased areas of cropland in Xinjiang were mainly converted from grassland and unused land from 1995 to 2015, while the artificial land increase was mainly a result of the conversion from cropland, grassland, and unused land. The area of cropland rapidly expanded in south Xinjiang, which has led to centroid position to move cropland in Xinjiang in a southwest direction. Economic development and the rapid growth of population size are the main factors responsible for the cropland increases in Xinjiang. Runoff variations have a key impact on cropland changes at the river basin scale, as seen in three typical river basins.

Evapotranspiration is one of the critical processes in the terrestrial hydrological cycle, and the assessment of evapotranspiration is essential for understanding the regional hydrological cycle. In this study, the Minjiang River Basin, a typical watershed in the humid subtropical climate zone, is selected as the study region. The Penman-Monteith equation and the dual crop coefficient method are used to calculate the actual evapotranspiration (ET_a) at seven meteorological stations within the study basin. Meanwhile, the applicability of the Global Land Data Assimilation System-Noah (GLDAS-Noah) ET_a data in the Minjiang River Basin is evaluated based on stations P-M equation results, then to analyze the changes of the ET_a in the Minjiang River Basin from 2000 to 2019. The results show that the GLDAS-Noah ET_a data are well applicable in the Minjiang River Basin (R² > 0.9 and NSE > 0.8). The ET_a in the basin shows an increasing trend since 2000, and the increasing rate is 3.60 mm·yr⁻¹ (p < 0.01). The seasonal variation results show that ET_a tends to increase in winter and spring, with increasing rates of 1.10 mm·yr⁻¹ (p < 0.01) and 2.60 mm·yr⁻¹ (p < 0.01), respectively, while the ET_a did not change significantly in summer and autumn. Annual air temperature has the largest effect on annual ET_a (59.6%), followed by precipitation at 33.9%. ET_a increased in spring was mainly influenced by increasing temperatures (89.4%) in the Minjiang River Basin from 2000 to 2019. The research results are of great benefit to further improve the understanding of ET_a variations in the basin under global warming.