In order to fully explore the fertilizer use intensity and its potential threats to the ecological environment, this paper has studied the decomposition of fertilizer use intensity and its environmental risk in China’s grain production. Based on the statistical data collected from 10 provinces during 2004–2015 in China’s grain producing areas, this paper has analyzed the effect of fertilizer use intensity from a regional perspective. The environmental risk assessment model considers some factors such as the fertilizer application safety thresholds use efficiency, multiple cropping index, and environmental impact weight. The fertilizer application safety thresholds are calculated on the target output of local food crops. The results show that: (1) during 2004–2015, the fertilizer use intensity shows an increasing trend in China’s grain producing areas, and the intensity is significantly higher than the upper limit of the international safety fertilization; (2) the cumulative contribution rate of the increase of fertilizer use intensity caused by regional fertilizer use efficiency and grain planting structure adjustment are 57.03% and 1.81% respectively; (3) in 2015, China’s grain producing areas’ environmental risk index of phosphorus and potash was low, with the values in these two provinces being quite different and indicating the characteristics of aggregation and distribution. Therefore, the Chinese government should unswervingly encourage the application of some technology that could save fertilizer and increase efficiency, establish environmental risk monitoring and control systems, and improve relevant policies and regulations.

Investigating the choice of livelihood strategies has great significance for improving the living standards of peasant households who rent out farmland. This study evaluates the impact of renting-out land on households’ livelihood strategies in China’s western poverty-stricken areas. Data were obtained from cross sectional survey of 585 field survey data from peasant households who rent out land. The K-means clustering method was used to classify the livelihood strategies of the sample households. In view of sustainable livelihood framework, this paper used combination weighting model based on game theory to calculate the quo of households’ livelihood capital. The Multinomial Logistic Regression was used to explore the relationship between livelihood capitals and livelihood strategies. Results show that: livelihood strategy of households who rent out the land can be divided into “agricultural-led” livelihood strategy, “working-oriented” livelihood strategy and “part-time” livelihood strategy. Additionally, the results of Multinomial Logistic Regression show that the households with high human capital and financial capital tend to choose the “working-oriented” livelihood strategy and the households with high natural capital tend to choose the “agricultural-led” livelihood strategy. Therefore, in order to realize the sustainable livelihood of these households, different policy support should be proposed based on the heterogeneity of households in the process of land transfer.

Calculating China’s transportation carbon emissions and exploring its principles are essential for achieving high-quality development of the transportation industry. Firstly, we use a “top-down” method to assess carbon emissions from transportation operations from 2003 to 2019. Secondly, the logarithmic average weight decomposition approach is built to decompose the factors affecting China’s transportation carbon emissions. Thirdly, the Tapio decoupling model examines how transportation carbon emissions are dynamically decoupled in various Chinese provinces. The findings suggest that China's transport carbon emissions are growing at an annual rate of roughly 16 percent. Transportation carbon emissions are increased by GDP per capita, transportation energy intensity, and population size, whereas transportation carbon emissions are reduced by unit turnover energy consumption and transportation intensity. There is a lot of variation in China's carbon emissions decoupling index from year to year.