Understanding how vegetation growth responds to climate change is a critical requirement for projecting future ecosystem dynamics. Parts of North America (NA) have experienced a spring cooling trend over the last three decades, but little is known about the response of vegetation growth to this change. Using observed climate data and satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from 1982 to 2006, we investigated changes in spring (April–May) temperature trends and their impact on vegetation growth in NA. A piecewise linear regression approach shows that the trend in spring temperature is not continuous through the 25-year period. In the northwestern region of NA, spring temperature increased until the late 1980s or early 1990s, and stalled or decreased afterwards. In response, a spring vegetation greening trend, which was evident in this region during the 1980s, stalled or reversed recently. Conversely, an opposite phenomenon occurred in the northeastern region of NA due to different spring temperature trends. Additionally, the trends of summer vegetation growth vary between the periods before and after the turning point (TP) of spring temperature trends. This change cannot be fully explained by summer drought stress change alone and is partly explained by changes in the trends of spring temperature as well as those of summer temperature. As reported in previous studies, summer vegetation browning trends have occurred in the northwestern region of NA since the early 1990s, which is consistent with the spring and summer cooling trends in this region during this period.

Biodiversity conservation plays an important role in the sustainable development of human society. China had made significant progress in biodiversity conservation studies and practices. This paper reviews major achievements in China in the past decades, especially those since 2010. In terms of the science behind biodiversity conservation, Chinese scholars have made significant contributions to priority research subjects, including mechanisms for maintaining biological communities and the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Simultaneously, biodiversity conservation and management systems specific to China have been basically established. The Chinese Government and researchers have undertaken a number of investigations, scientific studies, and monitoring, and have established relevant databases. With efforts taken to protect and restore biodiversity and ecosystems, the concept of biodiversity has gradually become popular in China. This review is an attempt to share with the world the learning from China’s progress towards becoming an ecological civilization and highlights that the efforts towards biodiversity conservation need to be organically integrated with sustainable development goals.

Land use and land cover change is an important driving force for changes in ecosystem services. We defined several important human-induced land cover change processes such as Ecological Restoration Project, Cropland Expansion, Land Degradation, and Urbanization by the land use/land cover transition matrix method. We studied human-induced land cover changes in the Yellow River Basin from 1980 to 2015 and evaluated its impact on ecosystem service values by the benefit transfer method and elasticity coefficient. The results show that the cumulative area of human-induced land cover change reaches 65.71 million ha from 1980 to 2015, which is close to the total area of the Yellow River Basin. Before 2000, Ecological Restoration Project was the most important human-induced land cover change process. However, due to the large amount of cropland expansion and land degradation, the area of natural vegetation was reduced and the ecosystem value declined. Since 2000, due to the implementation of the “Grain for Green” program, the natural vegetation of upstream area and midstream area of Yellow River Basin has been significantly improved. This implies that under an appropriate policy framework, a small amount of human-induced land cover change can also improve ecosystem services significantly.

Numerous studies have implicated urbanization as a major cause of loss of biodiversity. Most of them have focused on plants and animals, even though soil microorganisms make up a large proportion of that biodiversity. However, it is unclear how the soil bacterial community is affected by urban development. Here, paired-end Illumina sequencing of the 16 S rRNA gene at V4 region was performed to study the soil microbial community across Beijing’s built-up area. Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Verrucomicrobia, Planctomycetes, and Chloroflexi were the dominant phyla in all samples, but the relative abundance of these phyla differed significantly across these concentric zones. The diversity and composition of the soil bacterial community were found to be closely correlated with soil pH. Variance partitioning analysis suggested that urban ring roads contributed 5.95% of the bacterial community variation, and soil environmental factors explained 17.65% of the variation. The results of the current work indicate that urban development can alter the composition and diversity of the soil microbial community, and showed pH to be a key factor in the shaping of the composition of the soil bacterial community. Urban development did have a strong impact on the bacterial community of urban soil in Beijing.