Liang Emlyn Yang

• Ph.D in Geography (climate resilience); Visiting Scholar at Harvard University
• Senior Researcher/Lecturer at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich

Densely populated coastal urban areas are often exposed to multiple hazards, in particular floods and storms. Flood defenses and other engineering measures contribute to the mitigation of flood hazards, but a holistic approach to flood risk management should consider other interventions from the human side, including warning information, adaptive b...

Several approaches have been used to assess potential human exposure to environmental stresses and achieve optimal results under various conditions, such as for example, for different scales, groups of people, or points in time. A thorough literature review in this paper identifies the research gap regarding modeling approaches for assessing human...

Open access link https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-00728-7#about ============ This open access book discusses socio-environmental interactions in the middle to late Holocene, covering specific areas along the ancient Silk Road regions. Over twenty chapters provide insight into this topic from various disciplinary angles and perspec...

Globally, growing concern about disaster risks necessitates the implementation of actions that combine vulnerability reduction and resilience building. This paper applies the concept of vulnerability and resilience to urban communities in the Pearl River Delta along the Southern Chinese coast that are facing climate-related water hazards. The study...

This study adopted an empirical analysis to explore social resilience to major natural disasters along the Tea-Horse Road (THR) in southwest China and to understand why and how the THR and its connected communities maintained and developed over a long period. A set of archive data, literature re-analysis, statistical data, monitoring data, and surv...

Due to water conflicts and allocation in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin (LMRB), the spatio-temporal differentiation of total water resources and the natural-human influence need to be clarified. This work investigated LMRB’s terrestrial water storage anomaly (TWSA) and its spatio-temporal dynamics during 2002–2020. Considering the effects of natura...

Our research group at the Department of Geography, LMU Munich, is calling for applications for a research position on modeling flood resilience. I would appreciate it if you could circulate the job announcement among your colleagues and in your network. Research Position (postdoc or doctoral student) on Modeling Flood Resilience at LMU Munich (m/f...

Increasing numbers of studies are investigating the phenomenon of social resistance, particularly instances of stability or prosperity in the face of climatic–environmental stresses over a long period. This emerging research field of climate resilience explores the capability of socio-ecological systems to cope with stresses, maintain functions, an...

Investigations of past extreme climate events offer insights into the interactions between natural forces, ecosystems, and human societies. The Chongzhen drought, which occurred from 1627 to 1644 CE, stands as possibly the most severe drought in central and eastern China over the last 1500 years, remarkable for its duration and extent and the vast...

Drought stress has a significant impact on the quality and quantity of lake water. Understanding this impact is crucial for preventing water security risks and pollution recovery. However, there is a lack of systemic understanding of how drought affects water quality and quantity, and how they change in multiple dimensions. This manuscript establis...

(English below) Der Klimawandel hat auch auf China tiefgreifende Auswirkungen und manifestiert sich in einer Häufung extremer Wetterereignisse. Diese Veränderungen stellen erhebliche Risiken und Herausforderungen für das Land dar. Der Beitrag wirft einen Blick auf die vielfältigen klimabedingten Extremereignisse, mit denen das Land konfrontiert ist...

Decision-makers are increasingly concerned about the sustainability of power generation technologies to achieve a secure and sustainable electricity supply in the future. This study aims to assess the sustainability of the eight key electricity generation technologies in the energy-importing Yangtze River Delta region of China and further enhance t...

Investigations of past extreme climate events offer insights into the interactions between natural forces, ecosystems, and human societies. The Chongzhen Drought, which occurred from 1627 to 1644 CE, stands as possibly the most severe drought in central and eastern China over the last 1500 years, remarkable for its duration, extent, and the vast nu...

Urban climate and disaster risks are set to rise, driven by the interaction of two global megatrends: urbanization and climate change. A detailed understanding of whether, where and how cities are growing within or into hazard-prone areas is an urgent prerequisite for assessing future risk trajectories, risk-informed planning, and adaptation decisi...

This article presents a flood risk assessment for Shanghai, which provides an indication of what buildings (including residential, commercial, office, and industrial) will be exposed to flooding and its damage. Specifically, this assessment provides a risk assessment that buildings may face after construction. To achieve the flood risk assessment o...

The effective adaptation of smallholders in regions severely affected by climate change is critical to their survival and development. This study provides insights into the climate change adaptation strategies of smallholders in the Yellow River-Huangshui River Valley (YHV), located on the eastern Tibetan Plateau (TP). The YHV is an important food-...

Private flood precautionary measures have proven to reduce flood damage effectively. Integration of these measures into flood response systems can improve flood risk management in high-risk areas such as Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). Since uptake of such measures is voluntary, it is important to know what drives householders to implement precautionary m...

As climate change and its impacts intensify, the role of governments in the climate adaptation process has received widespread attention. Effective adaptation to climate change depends not only on whether households or communities adopt appropriate adaptation strategies but also on whether governments intervene effectively. To improve the understan...

Sustainable flood risk management (SFRM) has become popular since the 1980s. Many governmental and non-governmental organisations have been keen on implementing the SFRM strategies by integrating social, ecological, and economic themes into their flood risk management (FRM) practices. However, the justifications for SFRM are still somewhat embryoni...

The natural vegetation has been substantially changed over the last millenium, especially from forest to agricultural areas in Europe. To study the effects of deforestation on carbon and climate system, it is essential to construct spatially precise maps in forest cover. The current representative historical forest data sets are either derivatives...

The dynamics of rural human-environment systems in developing countries have increasingly been attracting attention. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a valuable simulation tool for detecting complex feedback loops in rural human-environment systems with a ‘bottom-up’ approach. However, such models require the prerequisite analysis of household typolog...

Private flood precautionary measures have proven to reduce flood damage effectively. Integration of these measures into flood response systems can improve flood risk management in highly vulnerable areas such as Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). Since uptake of such measures is voluntary, it is important to know what drives householders to implement precaut...

DECIDER Project Newsletter #2

China announced a target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. As one of the most promising pathways to minimize carbon emissions, the low-carbon electricity supply is of high consideration in China’s future energy planning. The main purpose of this study is to provide a comparative overview of the regional siting potential of various low-carbon...

Plenty of various measures have been taken to mitigate flood losses in Shanghai over thousands of years, including the construction of sea dikes and floodwalls. However, the combined effects of intensified rainstorms, sea-level rise, land subsidence, and rapid urbanization are exacerbating extreme flood risks and potential flood losses in the fast-...

Sustainable flood risk management (SFRM) has become popular since the 1980s. Many governmental and non-governmental organisations have been keen on implementing the SFRM strategies by integrating social, ecological and economic themes into their flood risk management (FRM) practices. However, justifications for SFRM are still embryonic and it is no...

In recent decades, rapid economic growth and urbanization have driven significant livelihood transitions in rural China, which raised diverse climate and environmental impacts. This study investigated the impacts of such livelihood transitions on rural households’ carbon footprint at the Three Gorges Reservoir area in West China during the period o...

The expansion of artificial woodlands in China has contributed significantly to regional land-cover changes and changes in the regional net primary productivity (NPP). This study used Ximeng County in the Yunnan Province as a case study to investigate the overall changes, associated amplitude, and spatio-temporal distribution of NPP from 2000–2015....

By the 2050s, more than 120 million people are predicted to settle in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), which covers large coastal cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Cities in the PRD are vitally important to China in relation to their socio-economic contributions. From recent evidence, this strongly urbanized area is vulnerable to, and c...

How agriculture can better adapt to climate change has been a key topic of interest for scholars. This study provides insights from the eastern agricultural region of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). The Yellow River-Huangshui River valley (YHV) is an important food-producing region on the TP. The agricultural production of small households has been affec...

This paper presents the development of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) framework for quantifying the carbon footprint of individual households based on detailed household survey data. According to household consumption and production patterns, the comprehensive life-cycle assessment framework is designed with clarified life- cycle boundaries. The fra...

Changes of croplands often reflect the combined impacts of both natural environment changes and social agriculture activities. Such reflections manifested more significantly in agro-pastoral transition zones, e.g. in the North and West of China. In this study, cropland changes at the Yellow River-Huangshui River Valley, as a typical agro-pastoral t...

The Grassland Ecological Protection Award Policy was implemented to address severe grassland degradation in China. This policy utilizes grassland subsidies as an incentive to control the number of livestock and has become the largest payment for ecosystem services program. Although many studies have analyzed the performance of this policy, it remai...

A disaster resilience index aggregates numerous observed individual indicators into a numeric value, for the purpose of gauging various communities’ disparate disaster resilience capacities as part of decision-making in resilience management. There have been abundant studies on the creation of such indices, but only a few have sought to empirically...

The largest freshwater lake in China, the Poyang Lake, experienced a long history of evolution with combined influences from both climate factors and human activities. Along with the dramatic changes of water related disasters such as flood and drought, local society developed various strategies to cope with the water problems. This paper investiga...

Historical land cover data are the basis of quantifying the environmental effects of land use and land cover change (LUCC), and a lower deviation is expected when they are used to study the carbon cycle and create climate simulations. Generally, a global scenario of past LUCC that can be supported by relevant historical evidence is more likely to d...

Vietnam is exposed to different types of floods that cause severe economic losses, damage to infrastructure, and loss of life. Reliable information on the drivers, patterns and dynamics of flood risk is crucial for the identification, pri-oritization and planning of risk reduction and adaptation measures. Here, we present a systematic review of exi...

A large proportion of Vietnam’s populations and economic assets are located at river deltas and other low-lying areas, exposing these areas to multiple hazards such as sea-level rise (SLR), storm surges, typhoons, and flooding. Despite the heavy losses and damage caused by floods, information and data on the development of solutions to flood risk r...

DECIDER Project Newsletter No.1: DECisions for Adaptive Pathway Design and the Integrative Development, Evaluation and Governance of Flood Risk Reduction Measures in Transforming Urban-Rural-Systems ______________________________________________________________________________ DECIDER aims at developing knowledge-based solutions for the design, eva...

This paper aims to explore the evolution of bioenergy from a comprehensive and dynamic perspective and study how stakeholders in the industry exert influence during the development. Taking the development of bioenergy in the Yangtze River Delta as an example, the research builds a dynamic network of bioenergy stakeholders from a social network anal...

As a typical mountain area at the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau in Southwest China, the Erhai Lake Basin has uneven precipitation (frequent droughts and floods), affected by the Southwest Monsoon in Asia and significant vertical zonal differences determined by local topography. Though with such harsh physical environment, this area sustained development i...

Volcanic eruptions, climate changes and their influences on crop harvests and social development are of increasing concern in science communities. Using a dataset of crop harvest scores of southwest China from 1730 to 1910, which was derived from the memorials to the emperors in the Qing Dynasty of China, reconstructed climate proxies and the chron...

This is a scheduled Special Issue at the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS). ................................................................................................................................................. The "Call for Papers" is open from 01 Oct 2020 to 30 Sep 2021, while early submissions will be immediate...

Multi-hazards stress is an important factor that hinders social and economic development in disaster-prone areas. Assessing and improving community resilience has become an effective strategy for reducing the impacts of natural hazards and enhancing adaptive risk management. This study developed a novel framework for community resilience assessment...

This study reconstructed the possible existence of saline lakes in the Guanzhong Basin during the past 2000 years. Using Chinese historical literature as well as stone inscriptions, a total of five historical saline lake bodies which had existed in this region were documented: Lakes Yanchize, Xiluchi, Dongluchi, Zhuyanze and Xiaoyanchi. Lakes Zhuya...

This study focuses on the northern catchment of Erhai Lake that lies in the heart of the ancient Southern Silk Road (the Tea-Horse Roads) in southwest China. The hydrologic environment of this region is complex and evolved under significant human impacts, especially after large populations migrated after 1382 under the policy of military tillage. T...

This chapter introduces, by literature reviews, the issue of the links and processes behind climate change, environmental change, and socio-culture change in the past at the ancient Silk Road region. Analyses of the changes of the socio-environment system in this area enhance our understanding on the regular patterns of coupled natural and social e...

Spanning the Yangtze River of China, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) has received considerable concern worldwide with its potential impacts on the downstream side of the dam. This work investigated the spatio-temporal variations of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) at the downstream section of Yichang-to-Chenglingji from 2002 to 2015. A random fore...

During the past few decades, many studies have highlighted periods when significant climatic changes coincided with social upheavals. However, fewer studies have discussed periods of social stability or prosperity when faced with climate risks. The concept of social resilience has gradually become an important topic in scientific communities (e.g....

Understanding the driving factors of land-use spatio-temporal change is important for the guidance of rational land-use management. Based on land-use data, household surveys and social economic data in 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, this study adopted the Binary Logistic Regression Model (BLRM) to analyze the driving factors of land-use spatio-tempora...

This is an invited lecture at the Certificate Course in Sustainable Development and Social Innovation, Summer Semester 2018, University of Luxembourg. Luxembourg.

The importance of predicting the exposure to environmental hazards is highlighted by issues like global climate change, public health problems caused by environment stresses, and property damages and depreciations. Several approaches have been used to assess potential exposure and achieve optimal results under various conditions, for example, for d...

This article proposes a systematic analysis of water management and allocation on the scale of a river basin, considering climate impacts and stakeholder networks in the Dongjiang River basin in South China. Specific approaches are integrated to explore various subtopics. Findings indicate a slight increase of precipitation in the basin and strong...

The Silk Road is a modern concept for an ancient network of trade routes that for centuries facilitated and intensified processes of cultural interaction and goods exchange between West China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. The Silk Road flourished when the Han dynasty explored Central Asia around 139 BCE and thrived througho...

This study takes the perspective of emerging economies as an independent group to answer the question of how to reconcile food supply and bioenergy feedstock provision, a critical topic in bioenergy research. While much of the literature has covered this issue, the role of emerging economies has rarely been explored. Due to their transitional statu...

Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming

中国的城市和城市化发展正面临着严峻的环境压力，转型发展势在必行。国际社会的探索表明，可持续的城市发展不仅要减少对生态环境的破坏，还要进一步追求促进生态环境的良性循环发展，即建设循环城市。循环城市理念超越传统的可持续发展模式，涵盖广泛的制度、金融、经济、技术创新，旨在创造宜居、健康、参与性和服务性的城市。它还意味着必须提升城市的能源和资源自给率，改善城市的生态环境以及气候适应能力。循环城市也反应了中国的“新常态”社会经济发展模式，是以人为本、中速发展、鼓励创新、扩大内需等有益于环境保护的新型城镇化发展策略。循环城市的建设要求决策层有长期视野、强烈的政治决心和高效的领导能力，同时鼓励所有的利益相关者协同合作，充分利用公众参与，推动合理的规划和发展，并加快整个转型过程。

Driven by rising income and urban population growth, China has experienced rapid urban expansion since the 1980s. Urbanization can have positive effects on the urban environment; however, improvement of urban environment quality, especially its divergence between relatively developed and undeveloped cities in China, is currently a rather rudimentar...

Although there has been rapid rural-urban migration in rural China since the 1980s, the total grain production of China saw a continuous increase. As of today, the relationship between labor migration and grain output growth remains partial and contradictory. The main aim of this empirical study is to examine some specific measures adopted by peasa...

Städte stehen im Laufe des 21. Jahrhunderts verschiedenen Herausforderungen gegenüber. Hierzu gehören klimatische und ökonomische Veränderungen ebenso wie der demographische und soziale Wandel. Damit verbundene Belastungen müssen als Grundlage für eine nachhaltige Stadtplanung und Stadtentwicklung berücksichtigt werden. Für einzelne Fragestellungen...

Growing concern on climate-related flood hazards has led to increasing interest in understanding the interactions between climate, flood, and human responses. This paper jointly investigates climate change trends, impacts on flood events, flood vulnerability and risk, and response strategies in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), a rapidly urbanizing coas...

In many sub-Saharan countries, studies indicate that water scarcity is caused by institutional and political factors. However, despite implementation of a decentralized and integrated approach in water governance, additional water stress from climate-related impacts now threaten to fuel water insecurity. Borrowing from social network theory, this c...

It is becoming easier to combine geographical data and dynamic models to provide information for problem solving and geographical cognition. However, the scale dependencies of the data, model, and process can confuse the results. This study extends traditional scale research in static geographical patterns to dynamic processes and focuses on the co...

Hong Kong is often portrayed as a water abundant city because of its location in the subtropical zone. However, Hong Kong currently imports large volumes from the Dongjiang-Shenzhen Water Supply Project (DSWS Project) due to low local freshwater availability. The water situation is becoming more complicated with the population growth, economic deve...

城市土地承载力研究进展 . 开展城市土地承载力研究既是对土地承载力研究体系的深化，也是对城市持续发展的有益探索。总结城市土地承载力研究的起源、发展、内容、方法以及在相关领域的应用，发现其多出自于城市规划、土地利用、资源环境、生态系统等领域的延伸，或为某一领域的一部分，而其自身的研究体系尚未形成。已有研究主要从承载主体、承载对象和影响因素3 个视角探讨了与城市土地承载力相关的内容，重在分析和评价城市各类土地与人口规模、经济增长、社会发展以及生态环境之间的关系。在研究方法上，数理分析、模型方法、指标体系等被普遍采用，但各评价方法根据评价对象和城市特点有所不同，评估结果在很大的程度上依赖于选择的不同方法，从而使得到的结果之间缺乏可比性。在实践层面，城市土地承载力分析的实际应用还很薄弱，但其指导作用...

土地承载力是分析人地关系是否协调发展的理论基础和重要判据之一，其研究成果的应用为社会经济可持续发展做出了重要贡献。当前，我国城市化进程的推进和城市人口的增长使得城市土地不断扩张，利用程度也不断增强，城市人地关系日趋紧张。开展城市土地的承载力研究能够为合理利用城市土地、促进城市可持续发展提供有益参考。鉴于此，本文梳理了土地承载力和城市土地利用相关的研究进展，分析了城市土地承载力的内涵，以城市发展需求为导向建立了城市土地承载力研究体系。借鉴生态足迹研究的理念和方法，提出“空间足迹”的概念，构建了基于空间足迹分析的城市土地承载力评价体系，并以深圳市为案例进行了实证研究。

基于经济发展需求、县域统筹规划、基层发展意愿三种情景分别对2020年重庆市酉阳县建设用地规模进行预测，并采用规划配额法测算了存量建设用地集约利用的潜力。结果显示：①建设用地中农村居民点所占比重达到74．39％，其次是公路尤其是乡镇低等级公路．建设用地总体表现出“农村占地一头独大”的特点：②建设用地增长的驱动力与约束力并存，基于县域统筹规划预测的2020年新增建设用地需求为5244．85hm^2，在三种预测方法中规模最小．但绝对数量仍然很大．土地紧缺的矛盾已经显现：③现状建设用地集约利用水平很低，2004—2020年间集约挖潜的潜力达到3113．58hm^2．主要源于农村居民点整理。笔者认为，合理做好土地利用规划，尤其进行低效用地调查、规划、整理，促进已利用土地的集约化利用．控制建设用地总量的...

随着中国－东盟自由贸易区的建立以及“早期收获”计划的实施，双方农产品贸易条件不断改善，贸易额大幅增加，总体呈现出较强的资源－市场互补性格局，但双方进出口格局不对等，中国对东盟出口目的国分散，而进口来源国相对集中。另外，中国对东盟的农产品贸易逆差增大，长江以北地区获益，而江南地区则受到冲击。当前中国-东盟农产品贸易格局的地缘经济与政治影响主要包括四个方面：①增进了双方经济发展的活力；②为双方走向地缘经济一体化打下基础；③带动次区域经济发展，促进了区域经济的极化和地区性中心城市的成长，为地缘政治运作提供支持；④从长期来看，农产品贸易的不对等格局有碍于双方长期经济政治战略的持续，对中国有负面影响。因此，农产品贸易是双方建立面向和平繁荣战略伙伴关系的具体行动之一，但全面战略伙伴关系的建立显然还需要双...