Abstract:

Construction of the Belt and Road, an advocacy of China to promote win-win international cooperation in the new era, aims at building green, healthy, intellectual and peaceful Silk Road and ensuring joint development with the people of the countries along the Belt and Road. Systematic analysis on environmental characteristics, evolutionary tendency and future risk pattern is a scientific fundamental of sustainable development for the construction. Based on remote sensing monitoring and statistical analysis, this paper studies spatial-temporal characteristics of climate, topography, soil, hydrology, vegetation cover and production of terrestrial ecosystems. Taking the methodology of the classical integrated natural regionalization, the region is delineated into 9 sub-regions: Central and Eastern Europe, Mongolia and Russia, Central and Western Asia, Southeastern Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh-India-Myanmar, Eastern China, Northwestern China and Tibetan Plateau. By combining modeling simulation with scenario projections, natural disaster assessment methodology is used to assess the risk of abrupt extreme events such as heat waves, droughts and floods in the next 30 years. And trend-baseline comparison method is applied to assess the risk of gradual change events in macro-ecosystems, food production, etc. Results show that, on the basis of the regional framework, the western Eurasia would show a warming trend; both sides of Tibetan Plateau are in high temperature and heat waves risk; cold-wet region of central and eastern Europe in high drought risk; monsoon area of Bangladesh, India and Myanmar as well as eastern China in high risk of flooding; the desert margin areas in high ecological fragile risk; the middle and low latitude areas in high risk of grain production.

Key words: the Belt and Road, geographical patterns, environmental change, risks