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Using the example of China's Wutai Shan-recently designated both a UNESCO World Heritage site and a national park-Robert J. Shepherd analyzes Chinese applications of western notions of heritage management within a non-western framework. What does the concept of world heritage mean for a site practically unheard of outside of China, visited almost exclusively by Buddhist religious pilgrims? What does heritage preservation mean for a site whose intrinsic value isn't in its historic buildings or cultural significance, but for its sacredness within the Buddhist faith? How does a society navigate these issues, particularly one where open religious expression has only recently become acceptable? These questions and more are explored in this book, perfect for students and practitioners of heritage management looking for a new perspective.

By the tenth century CE, Mount Wutai had become a major pilgrimage site within the emerging culture of a distinctively Chinese Buddhism. Famous as the abode of the bodhisattva Ma ju r (known for his habit of riding around the mountain on a lion), the site in northeastern China s Shanxi Province was transformed from a wild area, long believed by Daoists to be sacred, into an elaborate complex of Buddhist monasteries. In Building a Sacred Mountain, Wei-Cheng Lin traces the confluence of factors that produced this transformation and argues that monastic architecture, more than texts, icons, relics, or pilgrimages, was the key to Mount Wutai s emergence as a sacred site. Departing from traditional architectural scholarship, Lin s interdisciplinary approach goes beyond the analysis of forms and structures to show how the built environment can work in tandem with practices and discourses to provide a space for encountering the divine. For more information: http://arthistorypi.org/books/building-a-sacred-mountain

In this work, Mary Anne Cartelli introduces a significant corpus of Chinese Buddhist poems from the Dunhuang manuscripts celebrating Mount Wutai. They offer important literary evidence for the transformation of the mountain into the earthly paradise of the bodhisattva MañjuÔsri by the Tang dynasty.

In The Five-Colored Clouds of Mount Wutai: Poems from Dunhuang, Mary Anne Cartelli introduces a significant corpus of Chinese Buddhist poems from the Dunhuang manuscripts celebrating Mount Wutai. They offer important literary evidence for the transformation of the mountain into the earthly paradise of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī by the Tang dynasty.

Using the example of China's Wutai Shan-recently designated both a UNESCO World Heritage site and a national park-Robert J. Shepherd analyzes Chinese applications of western notions of heritage management within a non-western framework. What does the concept of world heritage mean for a site practically unheard of outside of China, visited almost exclusively by Buddhist religious pilgrims? What does heritage preservation mean for a site whose intrinsic value isn't in its historic buildings or cultural significance, but for its sacredness within the Buddhist faith? How does a society navigate these issues, particularly one where open religious expression has only recently become acceptable? These questions and more are explored in this book, perfect for students and practitioners of heritage management looking for a new perspective.

The complexity of processes affecting soil organic carbon (SOC) turnover on spatio‐temporal scales often hinders the extrapolation of results from specific sites to larger scales. This study presents Holocene speleothem U‐Th ages paired with 14C ages of carbonate and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) through three caves located on a north‐south transect through China. The deviations of speleothem 14CDOC ages from the U‐Th ages show clearly spatial variability, and they are positively correlated with mean ages of modern SOC and soil turnover time, suggesting that deviations can be used to infer the SOC turnover. We further demonstrate that slow SOC turnover (large deviation) was associated with weak monsoon (low temperature/less precipitation) on temporal scales. Our findings reveal that climate dominates the speleothem 14CDOC ages and SOC turnover. As global warming likely will intensify, the accelerated turnover of SOC, particularly at higher latitude areas, may partially offset the existing soil carbon stock. Plain Language Summary Understanding the controls of the soil organic carbon (SOC) turnover on spatio‐temporal scales is of great significance to predict the soil carbon stock. The current knowledge of SOC turnover on the longer temporal scale is scarce due to a lack of accurate chronology. Here, we present Holocene speleothem U‐Th ages paired with 14C ages of carbonate and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) through three caves located on a north‐south transect through China. We found the deviations of speleothem 14CDOC ages from the baseline U‐Th ages positively and negatively correlated with soil turnover time and climate variables (i.e., temperature and precipitation), respectively. Concretely, long turnover time as indicated by large deviations was associated with weaker monsoon (low temperature and less precipitation), and vice versa. It suggests that climate dominates SOC turnover and the speleothem 14CDOC ages. Our study not only provides a compelling approach to diagnose the past cycling of SOC under climate shifts exceeding present‐day variability and but also projects a promising perspective for studying the interactions between SOC turnover rates and climate changes on broad spatio‐temporal scales. Meanwhile, it creates an opportunity to evaluate the changes in SOC turnover rates for the future. Key Points Using 14C ages of dissolved organic carbon in speleothem as an alternative approach to date the speleothem is questionable The deviations of speleothem 14CDOC from the U‐Th ages can be used to infer the turnover of the soil organic carbon (SOC) Climate dominates the speleothem 14CDOC ages and SOC turnover on spatio‐temporal scales

In this study, a group of overmature coal-measure shale core samples was collected in situ from an exploration well located in the Wuxiang area of the Qinshui Basin, north China. The pore water contents ( C PW) of the shales under as-received conditions, equilibrium water contents ( C EW) of the shales under moisture equilibrium conditions (relative humidity: 100%), and nanopore structures of the shales under both as-received and dried conditions were measured. The results indicate that the C PW values of these shales are much lower than their C EW values, which implies that the bulk pore systems of these shales have low water-bearing extents. In addition, approximately half of the total pore volumes and surface areas of the as-received shales are occupied by pore water, and the effects of pore water on shale nanopores with various pore types and widths are different. The average water-occupied percentages ( P W) are 59.16%−81.99% and 42.53%−43.44% for the non-micropores and micropores, respectively, and are 83.54%−97.69% and 19.57%−26.42% for the inorganic-matter hosted (IM) and organic-matter hosted (OM) pores, respectively. The pore water in shales not only significantly reduces the storage of shale gas by occupying many pore spaces, but also causes the shale gas, especially the absorbed gas, to be mostly stored in the OM pores; meanwhile, the IM pores mainly store free gas. Therefore, the water-bearing characteristics and their effects on the pore structures and gas-bearing properties of coal-measure shales should be noted for the evaluation and exploration of shale gas in the Qinshui Basin.

The behavior of coalbed methane (CBM) diffusion considerably influences gas productivity. Based on the multi-porous diffusion model and on-site CBM desorption data of coal cores, the behavior of CBM diffusion and its implications on the gas productivity of No. 3 coal seam in the southern Qinshui Basin (SQB) were elaborately analyzed. Results indicate that CBM diffusion of No. 3 coal seam demonstrates noticeable three-stage characteristics, including the fast diffusion, transitional diffusion, and slow diffusion stages. During the gas diffusion process, the gas content and/or the degree of developed pores and fractures/cleats in coal seams can affect the desorption of CBM and the amount of diffused CBM by influencing the changes in gas pressure in pores, thus controlling the behavior of gas diffusion in different stages. Because gas content and the developed degree of pores and fractures/cleats are closely associated with the deformation degree of the coal seams, variably deformed coal seams exhibit unique characteristics of gas diffusion. The low-deformation degree of the coal seams have a relatively uniform distribution of gas production over the history of a well. By contrast, the moderate-deformation degree of the coal seams have a relatively high rate and amount of gas diffusion in the fast and transitional diffusion stages, producing most of the gas in the early-to-intermediate stages of the wells. Finally, the high-deformation degree of the coal seams has a high rate and amount in the fast diffusion stage, indicating that most of the production stage occurs during the early stage of the gas production history of a well. In summary, the behavior of gas diffusion can be used for predicting gas production potential.

Traditional interpolations might cause smoothing effect on geochemical anomaly detection due to the moving weighted average properties. Since Multiple-Point Statistics (MPS) is a kind of stochastic simulation based on regional variables statistical patterns in a certain space, it can reduce the smoothing effect and quantify the element distribution uncertainties effectively. However, due to the insufficient Training Images (TIs) in geochemical exploration fields, simulation processes cannot be directly applied on the original data. Meanwhile, element spatial distribution patterns cannot be finely characterized under single scale, with uncertainty exists during the attribute information prediction in some regions. In addition, due to the stochastic properties, it is difficult to identify geochemical anomalous information accurately based on various simulation results. Therefore, a hybrid framework combined MPS and Local Singularity Analysis (LSA) are mainly introduced in this paper. Firstly, rasterization algorithms are used to construct geochemical TI to ensure the MPS simulation processes. Then, two-step simulation, including large-scale and small-scale simulation, is applied to finely represent the geochemical element distribution patterns. Based on various simulation results, LSA and information fusion are finally introduced to construct the probability map of geochemical anomalies. The stream sediment geochemical data was mainly used in this paper to verify the feasibility of proposed methods. Results show that comparing with the Kriging-based ones, smoothing effect of different geochemical anomalous fields is significantly reduced, which shows a closer spatial correlation with the known deposits according to the ROC curve analysis. Based on the anomaly identification results, some mineralization indices can be preliminarily determined to offer some theoretical supports for further mineral exploration.