In recent years, global warming and intense human activity have been responsible for significantly altering vegetation dynamics on the Mongolian Plateau. Understanding the long-term vegetation dynamics in this region is important to assess the impact of these changes on the local ecosystem. Long-term (1982–2015), satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) datasets were used to analyse the spatio-temporal patterns of vegetation activities using linear regression and the breaks for additive season and trend methods. The links between these patterns and changes in temperature, precipitation (PRE), soil moisture (SM), and anthropogenic activity were determined using partial correlation analysis, the residual trends method, and a stepwise multiple regression model. The most significant results indicated that air temperature and potential evapotranspiration increased significantly, while the SM and PRE had markedly decreased over the past 34 years. The NDVI dataset included 71.16% of pixels showing an increase in temperature and evaporation during the growing season, particularly in eastern Mongolia and the southern border of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous region, China. The proportion indicating the breakpoint of vegetation dynamics was 71.34% of pixels, and the trend breakpoints mainly occurred in 1993, 2003, and 2010. The cumulative effects of PRE and SM in the middle period, coupled with the short-term effects of temperature and potential evapotranspiration, have had positive effects on vegetation greening. Anthropogenic factors appear to have positively impacted vegetation dynamics, as shown in 81.21% of pixels. We consider rapid economic growth, PRE, and SM to be the main driving factors in Inner Mongolia. PRE was the main climatic factor, and combined human and livestock populations were the primary anthropogenic factors influencing vegetation dynamics in Mongolia. This study is important in promoting the continued use of green projects to address environmental change in the Mongolian Plateau.

On the tenth anniversary of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, investigating the evolution of disaster science is worthwhile and can be used to improve the future execution of disaster risk management. Based on more than 55,786 articles on the relative topic of “Disaster” derived from the Web of Science Core Collection from 1999–2017, this study employs CiteSpace and Google Earth to identify and visualize the spatial distribution of publications, bursts of keywords and categories, highly cited references, and interdisciplinary levels and then identify the emerging trends of disaster research over the past 20 years. The results show that the earthquake indeed jumpstarted a massive wave of disaster research around the world and increased international cooperation over the last decade. However, in terms of both the quantity and quality of publications in disaster research fields, China is lagging behind the U.S. and European countries. Moreover, although designing disaster prevention and mitigation strategies is a new popular field of disaster science, geological environment changes and geologic hazards triggered by earthquakes are more popular research topics than disaster emergency and recovery. In addition, the transdisciplinary level of disaster science increased after the earthquake. This interdisciplinary characteristic of disaster science gradually increased in popularity, which demonstrates that people can learn from catastrophes. These emerging trends could serve as a scientific basis to clearly understand disaster science progress over the last 20 years and provide a reference for rapidly identifying frontier issues in disaster science.

The existence of multiple disaster-hit regions with spatially heterogeneous economic structures is vital to the investigation of the spatial ripple effects of disaster disturbances in the inter-regional supply-demand chain. We employed the inter-regional input-output (IRIO) model to modify the adaptive regional input-output model (ARIO) and reproduce indirect economic losses (IELs) after the Bohai Sea ice disaster event in the mainland of China. The results showed that the total IEL in China comprised 38% of the direct economic loss. The disaster area (the Bohai Rim region) lost 1460.55 million CNY, and other provinces were burdened with 49% of the total IEL. Agricultural services absorbed 44% of the total IEL in China. Furthermore, lingering effects of the disaster were detected in non-disaster areas ∼5–10 months after the removal of the spatial ripple effect compared with the disaster areas. Finally, the difference in total IEL in China caused by spatial heterogeneity in the supply-demand chain was ∼46.8%. Our findings suggest that the spatial ripple effect and the spatial heterogeneity of economic structures play an important role in the extent of disaster impacts on inter-regional economic systems.

During the Late Paleozoic and Early Mesozoic, intensive tectonic and magmatic activity along the northern margin of the North China Craton (NCC) was associated with widespread gold mineralization. This study investigates the petrology, geochemistry, and zircon U–Pb ages of granite porphyry, quartz monzonite, and granite dikes from the Zhuanshanzi gold deposit in the Chifeng–Chaoyang region, central segment of the northern NCC, to constrain the petrogenesis and tectonic evolution. The zircon U–Pb dating yields emplacement ages of 245 ± 3 Ma and 248 ± 3 Ma for the granite porphyry and quartz monzonite, respectively (Early–Middle Triassic), and 364 ± 3 Ma for the granite dikes (Late Devonian). From the Late Devonian to the Early Permian, the study area was an active continental margin characterized by subduction of the Paleo-Asian Ocean beneath the NCC. The Late Devonian granite dikes are peraluminous, high-K calc-alkaline, and adakitic, and likely formed during arc–arc collisions that led to localized crustal thickening. By the Early–Middle Triassic, the Xing’an–Mongolian Orogenic Belt had collided with the NCC, marking the final closure of the Paleo-Asian Ocean. The Early Triassic quartz monzonite is a high-K calc-alkaline, peraluminous C-type adakite, derived from partial melting of thickened lower crust during the late- to post-collisional transition. In contrast, the Middle Triassic granite porphyry exhibits high-K, calc-alkaline, metaluminous A-type granitic affinities, consistent with a low-pressure partial melting of crustal material during post-orogenic extension transitioning to intracontinental rifting. Integrated with previous studies, we conclude that the Zhuanshanzi region records a prolonged evolution from subduction, through arc–arc collision and crustal thickening, to post-orogenic extension and intracontinental rifting of the Paleo-Asian Ocean from the Late Devonian to the Middle Triassic.