It is widely accepted that environmental degradation and poverty are linked and that conservation and poverty reduction should be tackled together. However, success with integrated strategies has been elusive. Here, we present the results of a study that illustrates how development that combines environmental and economic perspectives and that provides appropriate compensation to affected populations can improve both nature and society, thereby eradicating the ''poverty trap.'' The results show that if we cannot improve the livelihood of local residents, we will be unable to restore degraded environments when state-owned property is transferred to private ownership to encourage better management by residents. In contrast, measures to eliminate poverty, combined with the development of green enterprises that improve the livelihoods of private land owners in the long term, is the precondition for successful ecological restoration.environmental conservation ͉ environmental policy ͉ payment for ecosystem service ͉ property rights

The ecological conditions in urban area are greatly changed during the process of industrialization and urbanization of China. The pressure-state-response (PSR) framework is the most popular method to evaluate the ecological quality by integrating a set of remote sensing and statistical indicators into one index through a weighting method. However, a completely remote-sensed ecological index (RSEI), integrating normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), Wet, land surface temperature (LST), and the normalized differential build-up and bare soil index (NDBSI) through principal components analysis (PCA) method, has been proposed to assess the regional ecological quality. The publications about urban ecological evaluation by RSEI often focus on only one city or a certain area and there are few types of research on the ecological quality assessment by RSEI of 35 major cities in China. In this paper, we employed RSEI to monitor the changes in the ecological quality in China' 35 major cities. The results of RSEI were compared to that of PSR and stepwise regression method was applied to establish the quantitative relationship among RSEI, NDVI, Wet, NDBSI, and LST. The results show that there are 18 cities with ecological quality deteriorated, mainly located in the east and southwest of China

Summary1. During the past three decades, conservation and restoration biologists have increasingly recognized that ecological communities are likely to exhibit threshold changes in structure. However, because long-term monitoring data are generally lacking, little is known about the consequences of such ecological thresholds for the processes of ecosystem degradation and recovery. 2. To identify whether a degradation threshold exists that defines the boundary between the possibility of natural recovery and the need for artificial restoration of an ecosystem and to use this knowledge to support the development of a suitable strategy for environmental restoration, we performed long-term monitoring of vegetation recovery in China's Changting County since 1984. 3. A major problem was identified, which we refer to as the 'irreversible loss of soil services'; when vegetation cover decreases below a degradation threshold, this leads to sustained degeneration of the vegetation community, erosion of the surface soil and declining soil fertility. These changes represent a severe and long-lasting disturbance that will prevent ecosystem recovery in the absence of comprehensive artificial restoration measures. 4. Synthesis and applications. We identified a degradation threshold at about 20% vegetation cover suggesting that for some sites, vegetation cover can serve as a simple proxy for more sophisticated approaches to identifying thresholds; restoration must start with the restoration of soil fertility and continue by facilitating vegetation development. Our results support the concept of ecological thresholds (specifically, for soil services in a warm and wet region) and provide a model to inform restoration strategies for other degraded ecosystems.

Environmental degradation and poverty are linked, and must be tackled together. Doing so requires a win-win strategy that both restores the environment and ensures a sustainable livelihood for those who are affected by the restoration project. To understand the importance of combining ecological restoration and biodiversity conservation objectives with a consideration of the livelihoods of residents, we examined a successful project in ecologically fragile Changting County, Fujian Province, China. We attribute the project's success to the development of a winwin strategy that sustainably improved resident livelihoods, in contrast with traditional strategies that focus exclusively on establishing forests and grassland. To develop this win-win strategy, we performed long-term monitoring (since 1984) under a program designed to permit ecological restoration and biodiversity conservation in the county. For our analysis, we chose a range of natural and socioeconomic indicators that could affect the ecological restoration; we then used a contribution model to identify the relative influence of each social, economic, or environmental factor on the dependent variables (vegetation cover, soil erosion, number of plant species). The results showed that by improving livelihoods and mitigating poverty in the long term, the project also reduced damage to the environment by local residents. Our calculations suggest that accounting for socioeconomic factors played a key role in the successful ecological conservation. This win-win path to escaping the poverty trap during ecological restoration provides an example that can be followed by restoration projects elsewhere in the world with suitable modifications to account for unique local conditions.

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