With the increasingly prominent environmental problems and the decline of fossil fuel reserves, the reduction of energy consumption (EC) has become a common goal in the world. Urea industry is a typical energy-intensive chemical industry. However, studies just focus on the breakthrough of specific production technology or only consider the EC in the production stage. This results in a lack of evaluations of the life cycle of energy consumption (LcEC). In order to provide a systematic, scientific, and practical theoretical basis for the industrial upgrading and the energy transformation, LcEC of urea production and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated in the process of EC are studied in this paper. The results show that the average LcEC is about 30.1 GJ/t urea. The EC of the materials preparation stage, synthesis stage, and waste-treatment stage (ECRMP, ECPP, ECWD) is about 0.388 GJ/t urea, 24.8 GJ/t urea, and 4.92 GJ/t urea, accounting for 1.3%, 82.4%, and 16.3% of LcEC, respectively. Thus, the synthesis stage is a dominant energy-consumer, in which 15.4 GJ/t urea of energy, accounting for 62.0% of ECpp, supports steam consumption. According to the energy distribution analysis, it can be concluded that coal presents the primary energy in the process of urea production, which supports 94.4% of LcEC. The proportion of coal consumption is significantly higher than that of the average of 59% in China. Besides, the GHG emissions in the synthesis stage are obviously larger than that in the other stage, with an average of 2.18 t eq.CO2/t urea, accounting for 81.3% of the life cycle of GHG (LcGHG) emissions. In detail, CO2 is the dominant factor accounting for 90.0% of LcGHG emissions, followed by CH4, while N2O is negligible. Coal is the primary source of CO2 emissions. The severe high proportion of coal consumption in the life cycle of urea production is responsible for this high CO2 content of GHG emissions. Therefore, for industrial urea upgrading and energy transformation, reducing coal consumption will still be an important task for energy structure transformation. At the same time, the reformation of synthesis technologies, especially for steam energy-consuming technology, will mainly reduce the EC of the urea industry. Furthermore, the application of green energy will be conducive to a win-win situation for both economic and environmental benefits.

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National parks have been adopted for over a century to enhance the protection of valued natural landscapes in countries worldwide. For decades, China has emphasized the importance of economic growth over ecological health to the detriment of its protected areas. After decades of environmental degradation, dramatic loss of biodiversity, and increasing pressure from the public to improve and protect natural landscapes, China’s central government recently proposed the establishment of a pilot national park system to address these issues. This study provides an overview of the development of selected conventional protected areas (CPAs) and the ten newly established pilot national parks (PNPs). A literature review was conducted to synthesize the significant findings from previous studies, and group workshops were conducted to integrate expert knowledge. A qualitative analysis was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot national park system. The results of this study reveal that the PNP system could be a potential solution to the two outstanding issues facing CPAs, namely the economic prioritization over social and ecological considerations that causes massive ecological degradation, and the conflicting, overlapping, and inconsistent administrative and institutional structures that result in serious inefficiencies and conflicts.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of dynamic and static forest bathing (Shinrin-yoku) on the physiological and psychological health of males and females. Dynamic pre-test and post-test forest bathing was performed on 11 participants (5 males and 6 females) as a single group in a forest environment. In addition, a randomized controlled trial involving 20 participants (10 males and 10 females) was conducted to evaluate static forest bathing in both forest and urban environments. Various physiological indicators, including systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), pulse, heart rate variability (HRV), and self-assessed psychological indicators such as profile of mood states, were measured. Dynamic forest bathing resulted in a significant increase in the natural logarithmic value of the high frequency (lnHF) of HRV and significantly decreased ratio of the natural logarithmic value of the low frequency (lnLF) to lnHF (lnLF/lnHF) of HRV. Static forest bathing not only had the effects of dynamic forest bathing but also significantly decreased the participants’ SBP, DBP, and pulse. Both dynamic and static forest bathing enhanced human parasympathetic nervous system activity and reduced sympathetic nervous system activity, particularly affecting females. Negative mood state scores (tension, anger, fatigue, depression, and confusion) and total mood disturbance scores significantly decreased after forest bathing. In contrast, positive mood state (vigor) scores significantly increased, indicating an enhancement in positive mood. These improvements in mood were particularly pronounced in male individuals. Short-term exposure to a forest environment has positive effects on both physical and mental health of individuals. The extent of these improvements varied according to factors such as engagement in physical activity and gender.

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