The high-altitude landscape of western Tibet is one of the most extreme environments in which humans have managed to introduce crop cultivation. To date, only sparse palaeoeconomic data have been reported from this region. The authors present archaeobotanical evidence from five sites (dating from the late first millennium BC and the early first millennium AD) located in the cold-arid landscape of western Tibet. The data indicate that barley was widely grown in this region by c. 400 BC but probably fulfilled differing roles within local ecological constraints on cultivation. Additionally, larger sites are characterised by more diverse crop assemblages than smaller sites, suggesting a role for social diversity in the development of high-altitude agriculture.

This study presents preliminary discoveries from Sding Chung cave, an early multi-burial cave site in the Himalayan highlands dating from 300BC–AD 300. Multiple human and animal bones within the cave provide unique evidence for understanding the diverse mortuary rituals and biocultural adaptations in this region.

This paper is concerned with spreading phenomena of the classical two-species Lotka-Volterra reaction-diffusion system in the weak competition case. More precisely, some new sufficient conditions on the linear or nonlinear speed selection of the minimal wave speed of travelling wave fronts, which connect one half-positive equilibrium and one positive equilibrium, have been given via constructing types of super-sub solutions. Moreover, these conditions for the linear or nonlinear determinacy are quite different from that of the minimal wave speeds of travelling wave fronts connecting other equilibria of Lotka-Volterra competition model. In addition, based on the weighted energy method, we give the global exponential stability of such solutions with large speed $c$. Specially, when the competition rate exerted on one species converges to zero, then for any $c>c_0$, where $c_0$ is the critical speed, the travelling wave front with the speed $c$ is globally exponentially stable.

This study deploys RTK-GNSS in 2012, TLS in 2015 and UAV in 2018 to monitor the changes of Urumqi Glacier No. 1 (UG1), eastern Tien Shan, and analyzes the feasibility of three technologies in monitoring the mountain glaciers. DEM differencing shows that UG1 has experienced a pronounced thinning and mass loss for the period of 2012–18. The glacier surface elevation change of −0.83 ± 0.57 m w.e. a−1 has been recorded for 2012–15, whereas the changes of glacier tongue surface elevation in 2015–18 and 2012–18 were −2.03 ± 0.95 and −1.34 ± 0.88 m w.e. a−1, respectively. The glacier area shrunk by 0.07 ± 0.07 × 10−3 km2 and the terminus retreat rate was 6.28 ± 0.83 m a−1 during 2012–18. The good agreement between the glaciological and geodetic specific mass-balances is promising, showing the combination of the three technologies is suitable to monitor glacier mass change. We recommend application of the three technologies to assess each other in different locations of the glacier, e.g. RTK-GNSS base stations, ground control points, glacier tongue and terminus, in order to avoid the inherent limitations of each technology and to provide reliable data for the future studies of mountain glacier changes in western China.

Weight criteria for embedding of the weighted Sobolev–Lorentz spaces to the weighted Besov–Lorentz spaces built upon certain mixed norms and iterated rearrangement are investigated. This gives an improvement of some known Sobolev embedding. We achieve the result based on different norm inequalities for the weighted Besov–Lorentz spaces defined in some mixed norms.

Archaeological research demonstrates that an agropastoral economy was established in Tibet during the second millennium BC, aided by the cultivation of barley introduced from South-western Asia. The exact cultural contexts of the emergence and development of agropastoralism in Tibet, however, remain obscure. Recent excavations at the site of Bangga provide new evidence for settled agropastoralism in central Tibet, demonstrating a material divergence from earlier archaeological cultures, possibly corresponding to the intensification of agropastoralism in the first millennium BC. The authors’ results depict a more dynamic system of subsistence in the first millennium BC, as the populations moved readily between distinct economic modes and combined them in a variety of innovative ways.

We analyze the geometrically consistent schemes proposed by E. Lu and Yang [6] for one-dimensional problem with finite range interaction. The existence of the reconstruction coefficients is proved, and optimal error estimate is derived under sharp stability condition. Numerical experiments are performed to confirm the theoretical results.

Small, irregular terraces on hillslopes, or terracettes, are common landscape features throughout west central China. Despite their prevalence, there is limited understanding of the nature of these topographic features, the processes that form them, and the role humans played in their formation. We used an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the geology, ecology, and cultural history of terracette development within Jiuzhaigou National Park, Sichuan Province, China. Terracettes occur on south facing, 20° slopes at 2500 m elevation, which appears to coincide with places people historically preferred to build villages. Ethnographic interviews suggest that traditional swidden agricultural cycles removed tree roots, causing the loess sediments to lose cohesion, slump, and the terrace risers to retreat uphill over time. This evidence is supported by landslide debris at terracette faces. Archaeological analysis of terracette sites reveal remains of rammed spread soil structures, bones, stone tools, and ceramics dating from at least 2200 years before present within a distinct paleosol layer. Radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating of terracette sediments ranged in age from between 1500 and 2000 14C yr BP and between 16 and 0.30"ka, respectively. These multiple lines of evidence indicate a long history of human habitation within Jiuzhaigou National Park and taken together, suggest strong links between terracette formation and human-landuse interactions.