Integrated ecological indicators for sustainable urban ecosystem evaluation and management

The theories and insights of ecological science have already risen in the last century but somehow they are shunned in terms of olving urban environmental problems (Grimm, 2008). However, n the face of eco-environmental problems caused by urbanizaion, the ecological perspectives and ad-hoc solutions have been ighlighted and matured over the last decade. Recently, increasing umbers of ecologists have collaborated with other scientists, planers, and engineers to evaluate and even regulate urban ecosystems nd the associated economic activities (Fath and Müller, 2010; Chen nd Chen, 2012; Chen et al., 2014a). Cities themselves can repesent microcosms of global environment change, making them nformative test cases for understanding socio-ecological system ustainability and the regulation and management of human perurbations (Wang and Yan, 1998; Wang et al., 2011; Chen and ang, 2013). Using appropriate methods and indicators based on nterdisciplinary effect of modeling and assessment is one of most mportant paces to do so (Jørgensen et al., 2005; Müller and Lenz, 006). To learn from the insights of global cities, share best pracices internationally, and discuss how cities and regions can play leading role in creating a sustainable society, we co-organized he International Workshop on Ecological Modelling for Low Caron Cities & ISEM-Pacific Annual Meeting in Beijing during March 9th–20th, 2013 as an attempt to provide a forum to discuss and dvance issues relevant to theories, methodologies and cases of rban and regional sustainability and their relevance to ecological ndicators. Meanwhile, to solve the ecological and environmental issues f coordinated urban-regional development, we also invite some esearch groups to explore the integrated water resource manageent of the river basin based on the current research of observation, xperiments, simulation and scenario analysis in the “Heihe River asin Major Research Plan” supported by the National Natural cience Foundation of China. Led by the principal investigator, rof. Xiangzheng Deng, the National Major Scientific Research Proram, entitled “Decision Support System for the Integrated Water esource Management in Heihe River Basin (No. 91325302), has hereby been launched in 2013. A conceptual framework has been uilt by compiling water resource extended input–output (IO) table ompilation at county level and incorporating the Computable Genral Equilibrium (CGE) model into integrated water management