In recent years, market-oriented allocation of land has been promoted to support rural revitalization and urban–rural integrated development. To follow the path of sustainable development, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of resource utilization and to rationally allocate and use resources on the premise of ensuring the sustainable use of resources. This study aims to measure the degree of land marketization in Shaanxi Province, China during the period 2008–2019 and analyze its driving forces. The methods used include Gray Relation Analysis and Hot Spot Analysis. The MK trend method was used to analyze the average area of land acquired through Bidding–Listing–Auction (B-L-A), protocol, and allocation methods. The results show that the land marketization level in Shaanxi declined from 2008 to 2014 and fluctuated upwards from 2014 to 2019. In addition, B-L-A transactions increased across the province. There was little spatial heterogeneity of land marketization, but southern Shaanxi had less land marketization than the other key areas. Urbanization, non-agricultural output, and foreign direct investment were found to be the main driving factors of land marketization, while the influence of fixed asset investment and per capita disposable income declined each year. Based on these findings, we suggest that there is a need for land management reforms and urbanization efforts to encourage land marketization in southern Shaanxi. Further, we suggest that northern Shaanxi would benefit from optimizing the land use structure and focusing on the energy land market. This study also provides theoretical support for realizing the reform of the marketization of national land elements, the healthy operation of urban land marketization, and sustainable urban and rural development.

Spatiotemporal Assessment of Land Marketization and Its Driving Forces for Sustainable Urban–Rural Development in Shaanxi Province in China

This paper provides a fundamental and critical review of biomass application as renewable reductant in integrated ferroalloy reduction process. The basis for the review is based on the current process and product quality requirement that bio-based reductants must fulfill. The characteristics of different feedstocks and suitable pre-treatment and post-treatment technologies for their upgrading are evaluated. The existing literature concerning biomass application in ferroalloy industries is reviewed to fill out the research gaps related to charcoal properties provided by current production technologies and the integration of renewable reductants in the existing industrial infrastructure. This review also provides insights and recommendations to the unresolved challenges related to the charcoal process economics. Several possibilities to integrate the production of bio-based reductants with bio-refineries to lower the cost and increase the total efficiency are given. A comparison of challenges related to energy efficient charcoal production and formation of emissions in classical kiln technologies are discussed to underline the potential of bio-based reductant usage in ferroalloy reduction process.

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9717/8/11/1432/pdf

Charcoal as an Alternative Reductant in Ferroalloy Production: A Review

The European beech (Fagus sylvatica L) is the most prevalent deciduous tree species in Central Europe The implementation of sustainable, close-to-nature silvicultural practices increased the percentage share of beech in forest species composition, raising the economic significance of beech roundwood, especially in terms of revenues from timber sales The elucidation of roundwood price mechanisms as well as long-term equilibrium relations between international markets may be helpful in calculating the profitability of beech roundwood production The study material consists of quarterly time series of beech roundwood prices from Austria, Czechia, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia in the years 2005–2018 The price time series were described with a multiplicative model incorporating seasonal, cyclical, and irregular, as well as long-term trend components The time series were decomposed using the Census X11 method Stationarity was tested by means of the augmented Dickey–Fuller test (ADF) and the Kwiatkowski–Phillips–Schmidt–Shin test (KPSS) Cointegration was assessed using the Johansen and Engle–Granger methods From 2005–2018, the highest mean beech roundwood prices were found for Austria (775 € m−3) and Germany, and the lowest for Poland and Slovakia Roundwood prices were badly affected by the 2008/2009 financial crisis, which caused an approx 27% decline The prices of large-diameter beech logs exhibited seasonal fluctuations, typically reaching a maximum in Q1 and a minimum in Q3 The amplitude of those fluctuations was the highest in Slovenia in 2005 (101%), while in Czechia and Germany, seasonal effects increased over the period of study The lowest seasonality was found in Slovakia and Austria (in the latter country it was not statistically significant) On an annual scale, cyclical changes generally accounted for the largest proportion of price variation, and were particularly pronounced in Poland (789%), Slovakia (786%), and Austria (692%) On the other hand, seasonal effects were predominant in the Slovenian (406%), German (341%), and Czech (333%) markets In countries with price series of type I(0), simple correlation between stationary beech roundwood prices is positive and the strongest between Czechia–Poland and Czechia–Austria; on the other hand they are the weakest in the German market In Slovakia and Slovenia with nonstationary price series, both Johansen’s and Engle-Granger’s cointegration tests indicated the absence of a long-term equilibrium between the analyzed beech timber markets Results revealed integration between the prices of large-diameter beech logs in Czechia, Austria, and Poland It should be mentioned that in this study, the time series of price used are rather short for long time cointegration analysis, which might prevent the proper detection of cointegration between all analyzed countries

The Dynamics of Beech Roundwood Prices in Selected Central European Markets

Research trends: Forest investments as a financial asset class.

China’s wood industry is vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic since wood raw materials and sales of products are dependent on the international market This study seeks to explore the speed of log price recovery under different control measures, and to perhaps find a better way to respond to the pandemic With the daily data, we utilized the time-varying parameter autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model, which can incorporate structural changes in emergencies into the model through time-varying parameters, to estimate the dynamic impact of the pandemic on log prices at different time points We found that the impact of the pandemic on oil prices and Renminbi exchange rate is synchronized with the severity of the pandemic, and the ascending in the exchange rate would lead to an increase in log prices, while oil prices would not Moreover, the impulse response in June converged faster than in February 2020 Thus, partial quarantine is effective However, the pandemic’s impact on log prices is not consistent with changes of the pandemic After the pandemic eased in June 2020, the impact of the pandemic on log prices remained increasing This means that the COVID-19 pandemic has long-term influences on the wood industry, and the work resumption was not smooth, thus the imbalance between supply and demand should be resolved as soon as possible Therefore, it is necessary to promote the development of the domestic wood market and realize a “dual circulation” strategy as the pandemic becomes a “new normal”

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/12/4/449/pdf

R.P. Chudy

Papers

Dynamics of global roundwood prices – Cointegration analysis