Water quality is highly influenced by the composition and configuration of landscape structure, and regulated by various spatiotemporal factors. Using the Wujiang river watershed as a case study, this research assesses the influence of landscape metrics—including composition and spatial configuration—on river water quality. An understanding of the relationship between landscape metrics and water quality can be used to improve water contamination predictability and provide restoration and management strategies. For this study, eight water quality variables were collected from 32 sampling sites from 2014 through 2017. Water quality variables included nutrient pollutant indicators ammoniacal nitrogen (NH₃-N), nitrogen (NO₃⁻), and total phosphate (TP), as well as oxygen-consuming organic matter indicators COD (chemical oxygen demand), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD₅), dissolved oxygen (DO), and potassium permanganate index (COD_Mn). Partial least squares (PLS) regression was used to quantitatively analyze the influence of landscape metrics on water quality at five buffer zone scales (extending 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 km from the sample site) in the Wujiang river watershed. Results revealed that water quality is affected by landscape composition, landscape configuration, and precipitation. During the dry season, landscape metrics at both landscape and class levels predicted organic matter at the five buffer zone scales. During the wet season, only class-level landscape metrics predicted water contaminants, including organic matter and nutrients, at the middle three of five buffer scales. We identified the following important indicators of water quality degradation: percent of landscape, edge density, and aggregation index for built-up land; aggregation index for water; CONTAGION; COHESION; and landscape shape index. These results suggest that pollution can be mitigated by reducing natural landscape composition fragmentation, increasing the connectedness of region rivers, and minimizing human disturbance of landscape structures in the watershed area.

Studying vulnerability has become one of the hot issues of ecological research under global change and sustainable development scenarios. However, there are few studies focusing on the vulnerability of karst areas, especially on the comparison between karst and non-karst areas. This study integrated climate factors, soil and vegetation factors, and social factors within a vulnerability evaluation framework that combined the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique to evaluate and compare the ecological environments of 10 karst nature reserves and five non-karst nature reserves in Guizhou Province, China. The evaluation results were divided into five categories: potential, light, moderate, severe, and extremely severe vulnerability. The results indicated that the general vulnerability of national nature reserves in Guizhou Province showed moderate vulnerability. The vulnerability index of karst nature reserves was significantly higher than that of non-karst nature reserves. The general vulnerability of karst nature reserves showed moderate vulnerability, while that of non-karst nature reserves showed light vulnerability. Average soil thickness, arable area, and the length of roads may be the factors contributing to the significant difference in the vulnerability between karst and non-karst nature reserves. Overall, this study is conducive to a comprehensive understanding of the ecological environment status of national nature reserves in Guizhou Province, and is of great significance to maintaining ecological security and sustainable development in karst areas.

Traditional knowledge is a favored research area in agrobiodiversity conservation at home and abroad, and plays a vital role in the sustainable use of ecosystems, livelihood support, and food security. In this paper, the WoS Core Collection was used as the data source to statistically analyze the literature on the topic of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research. The results show the following: (1) The number of articles published in agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research has been increasing annually. (2) The United States is the most influential country in this field of research, and other leading countries include India, Mexico, Germany, and Italy. (3) The existing research is mainly in the field of natural science, and the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine is the most crucial journal in terms of the number of articles published. (4) Neither authors nor institutional collaboration networks have formed a close transnational collaboration network. (5) Popular research in this area includes the conservation of local varieties, agricultural landscape changes, livelihood support, and agroforestry systems. (6) In addition to the ongoing focus on natural ecological aspects of research, future research will focus more on cultural and social benefits. Finally, we propose to enhance the exploration of quantitative analysis research methods, strengthen interdisciplinary research exchanges, expand the breadth of disciplinary research, strengthen stakeholder cooperation, and promote the construction of relevant policies and regulations.

While China has succeeded in dramatically reducing income poverty, it is increasingly recognized that poverty is multidimensional. Moreover, all countries are expected under the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to halve poverty in all its dimension by 2030 “according to national definitions”. However, there is little agreement, either in China or elsewhere, as to what the dimensions should be. Therefore, qualitative research was undertaken in Guizhou in 2019 to identify the dimensions of poverty through discussion with people with direct experience of poverty. Forty-two people participated in one of five extended creativity groups that met for up to 12 hours over two days. One group comprised people on middle incomes, the others, people in poverty, a substantial minority of whom were functionally illiterate. Eight dimensions of poverty were identified in addition to low income and poverty duration: lacking decent work; material deprivation; physical suffering; emotional suffering; social abuse and exclusion; institutional injustice; powerlessness; and struggle and resistance. If replication confirms these dimensions, indicators should be developed to enable multidimensional poverty to be adequately measured and anti-poverty policies better evaluated.

This article explores impacts of migration on young women's status and gender practice in rural northern China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a village in Shanxi Province, it suggests that rural-urban migration has served partially to reconstruct the traditional gender-based roles and norms in migration families. This reconstructive force arises mainly from the changes of the patrilocal residence pattern and rural women's acquisition of subjectivity during the course of migration. However, after migrant women return to their home villages, they usually reassume their roles as care providers and homemakers, which is vividly expressed by a phrase referring to one's wife as 'the person inside my home' (wo jiali de). Meanwhile, although migrant women's capacity and confidence have greatly increased consequent upon working out of the countryside, their participation in village governance and in the public sphere has been decreasing. Further examination suggests that the reinforcement of gender inequality and the transformation of gender relations result from the continuous interplay of local power relations, market dominance, and unchallenged patrilocal institutions. Through adopting a life course perspective, it challenges too strict a differentiation between migrant and left behind women in existing literature.