| This project greatly benefited from the unique
institutional environment of IIASA. Without its excellent archive of
global data bases, GIS systems and models, and without its extensive international network
of scientists, it would have been impossible to compile this broad range of data and
research results on China's food prospects. I am particularly grateful to Gordon
J. MacDonald, IIASA's director, for encouraging this project. I would also like to express special thanks to my colleagues at the IIASA
Land-use Change Project. They not only contributed data files and statistical material,
but also helped me to better understand issues in fields, where I am certainly not an
expert.
In particular, I thank Günther Fischer for data
and numerous valuable information related to cultivated land and water. He also provided
preliminary results from his AEZ-model on China's potentially cultivated land. Without my
colleagues Mingcha Zhao, Yufeng Chen, Xiubin Li,
Xiao Ping, and - in particular - Laixiang Sun, most Chinese
statistics would have remained to me pages of mysterious signs. Moreover, during our
extended lunch conversation they provided me with valuable insight into China's
everyday-life. I also benefited from discussions with Ken Strezpek, David
Wiberg and Anna Brismar on the hydrological problems of China. Gui-Ying
Cao from IIASA's population project helped me to better understand China's
migration and urbanization problems. Nina Drinkovic edited and organized
the bibliography, Rok Perger improved some of the Java scripts.
Special thanks to Sylvia Prieler, the GIS expert of the IIASA
LUC project, who greatly helped with maps and grid-based images. She also contributed
valuable suggestions and comments to the section on soil erosion.
Many thanks also to the Production Estimates and Crop Assessment
Division in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) / Foreign
Agricultural Service for giving us permission to use some of the (GIF and JPG
representations of) AVHRR and SPOT images on their web page.
More than anyone else I want to thank my wife Claudia Heilig-Staindl for
her patience, competent support, and encouragement. |