The evaluation of ecosystem health in urban clusters will help establish effective management that promotes sustainable regional development. To standardize the application of emergy synthesis and set pair analysis (EM–SPA) in ecosystem health assessment, a procedure for using EM–SPA models...

Energy security usually considers both the stability of energy supply and security of energy use and it is receiving increasing attention globally. Considering the strategic importance and sensitivity to international change of the crude oil supply, we decided to examine China’s energy...

Hydropower is the major renewable energy source for many nations and regions. Dam construction caused direct or indirect detrimental impacts on river systems by altering the water flow pattern and reshaping natural habitats. The dam-induced environmental impact assessment is critical in...

An overview of energy consumption pattern by available data and the analysis of some relevant aspects of energy policy in rural China are presented in this paper. The most obvious trend is the steady decreased proportion of biomass use, from 70.79% to 30.95%, and increased percentage of coal and...

We explore the use of Fisher Information as a basis for an index of sustainability. Sustainability of an ecosystem refers to the robustness of a preferred dynamic regime to human and natural disturbances. Ecosystems under perturbations of varying regularity and intensity can either remain within...

Cities consume 80% of the world׳s energy; therefore, analyzing urban energy metabolism and the resulting carbon footprint provides basic data for formulating target carbon emission reductions. While energy metabolism includes both direct and indirect consumptions among sectors, few researchers...

Sustainability as a concept has multiple disparate perspectives stemming from different related disciplines which either maintain ambiguous interpretations or concentrate on metrics pertaining to single aspects of a system. Given the embedded multi-dimensionality of sustainability, systemic...