An effective production structure of economic sectors may play an important role in balancing societal advances and environmental conservation, which are two competing sustainable development objectives. We tested the notion in the context of Tibet region. The region is considered to be a critical barrier for ecological security in China, whereas its environment is largely impacted by economic development that is dominated by major regional cities like Lhasa. To understand what the overall role of economic structures prevailed by major cities may play in the balancing act, we integrate a complex network with an input-output (IO) table from regional perspectives, to delineate the sector-based production and unravel more about the core sectors that drove the overall economic production from 2012 to 2107 in Tibet. We found that there was a significant influence of public administration and social security sector on production, but economy was largely contributed by primary and construction sectors, which highly depended on natural resource consumption. However, the production structure was undergoing a shift, largely reflected by the changes of the core sectors, which started leaning to service sectors with relatively higher productivity and lower environmental impacts. Meanwhile, it highlighted the challenges to sustain the economy without more withdrawal of natural resources, consequently towards more balanced development. Therefore, based on key production path assessment, we further put forward pathways towards more sustainable development by improving supply chain that is centered in agriculture, while transforming sectors around green manufacturing and shifting to more robust and productive service sectors.

Characterizing the effects of particle interaction and the influence of the fabric of granular materials is one of the primary challenges in studying the constitutive behavior of granular materials. The evolution of the fabric of granular materials and their response to applied stresses have been investigated extensively in the literature. Contact number is one of the most common metrics used to assess the evolution of the fabric of granular materials subjected to external loading. However, contact number is a limited metric as it incorporates only the effect of the particles in contact with a specific particle; it cannot be used to characterize the evolution of the fabric of granular materials at a mesoscale. A new metric that can incorporate the effect of particles in direct contact with a specific particle (as well as other particles within its vicinity) is much more powerful in characterizing the evolution of granular material fabric. Subgraph centrality (SC) is a complex network property that describes the change in the number of closed cycles in a network and represents a new metric for characterizing the contact network of the particles at the particle scale and mesoscale. 3D Synchrotron micro-computed tomography images (SMT) and SC were used to characterize the evolution of the fabric in five specimens, which were composed of two different types of silica sand particles subjected to axisymmetric triaxial loading. The effects of the specimens' initial density, confining pressure, kinematics of the particles, and particle morphology on the evolution of the contact network of the particles were investigated. The evolution of four node structures as one of the underlying fabric structures within the specimen was investigated to illustrate how the structure of the specimens was evolving and causing the change in the SC of the particles. Variation in the average SC of the specimens was correlated with their volumetric strain to demonstrate the relationship between the change in the contact structure of the particles and the constitutive behavior of sheared sand.

The accumulation of soil organic carbon (SOC) is crucial for the development and ecosystem function restoration of reclaimed mine soils (RMSs). To optimize reclamation management practices, this study aims to explore the factors and underlying mechanisms influencing the recovery of SOC and its components in RMSs from a systemic perspective using complex network theory (CNT). This study focused on coal mining subsidence areas in the eastern mining regions of China, comparing reclaimed cultivated land with surrounding non-subsided cultivated land. Soil samples were collected at depths of 0-20 cm, 20-40 cm, and 40-60 cm, and 25 soil indicators were measured. CNT was applied to explore the intricate relationships between soil indicators and to identify the key factors and underlying mechanisms influencing SOC and its components in RMSs. The results revealed that the compaction-induced soil structural damage during the reclamation process led to a chain reaction, resulting in increased soil bulk density (11.92 % to 15.03 %), finer soil particles (5.00 % to 9.88 % more clay and silt), and enhanced SOC mineralization (SOC decreased by 10.70 % to 15.62 % with a lower C/N ratio by 2.30 % to 28.55 %). Microbial activity also decreased, with a 6.25 % to 13.16 % drop in MBC and a 0.91 % to 27.68 % decrease in enzyme activity. The utilization of active SOC fractions by more adaptable bacterial communities was crucial within this chain reaction process. The intermediate role of soil structure in the RMS ecosystem, particularly in carbon cycling, becomes more prominent. RMSs exhibited heightened sensitivity to soil structure changes, with the response of microorganisms and enzymes to soil structure changes being pivotal. In the carbon cycling