Tourism development is often the primary and optimal way for historic towns' heritage conservation and socio-economic revitalization. After defining the concept of historic town destination, this paper describes the evolving stages of historic towns in Jiangsu, from geographical tradition of regional studies, and answers the practical question of how many historic towns there are in Jiangsu province (116). The main findings include: It is not necessarily linked between a historic town's outstanding universal value (OUV) and its physical, economic and social revitalizations. To boost a historic town’s revitalization, it needs to consider the historic town's OUV and its use way (such as tourism), and it also needs to consider whether or not the traditional hub function linking a city and its surrounding rural areas still exists. And it needs to evaluate the historic town's regional economic and social backgrounds, whether or not there are adjacent superior resources or promising external opportunities. The innovative development of Zhouzhuang and Tongli, i.e., which put heritage protection and tourism development together, have appeared many negative effects when Zhouzhuang and Tongli subsequently enter the stages of stagnation and post-stagnation. According to Butler's TALC theory, when the various negative regional impacts exceed the positive regional impacts, a destination will inevitably lose its attractiveness. There are drawbacks for present evaluation systems to guide the historic towns' heritage conservation and tourism development. The evaluation system of China's historic towns mostly evaluates the heritage value and ignores the value's uses. And the evaluation system of China's characteristic landscape and tourist towns, have not considered the comprehensive influencing factors of the tourism industry. So this paper proposes an integrated evaluation system including a lot of indexes helpfully to measure a historic town's heritage value, tourism development and its innovations. It helps to answer whether or not a historic town has the suitability and uses its heritage value to boost tourism development. After grading, this paper differentiates the 116 historic towns in Jiangsu into three development choices, i.e., brand ones, updated ones and potential ones. The evaluation system also helps to guide heritage conservation. Some need entire conservation, and some need partial conservation while the others need dotted ways. This paper also suggests an equilibrium analysis model, and three recommendations are proposed, including the conservation priority strategy, the marketing priority strategy and the balanced strategy. The study finds that it needs to consider the two concepts of region and scale together in the geographical tradition of regional studies. The regional disparities on meso-scale (Jiangsu) can be homogenous on large-scale (the national scale). Considering the regional disparities on meso-scale, also it is ncessary to consider the small-scale (prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu) and the further nested historic town scale based on the results of the evaluation system in a practical way.

This paper aims to examine the distribution of cities in China during 221 BC-1911 AD and its influencing factors. Some conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) the urban distribution gravity center of China during the entire study stage was located in the central and eastern regions and firstly, moved sharply southwestward from the Qin dynasty to the Tang dynasty. Secondly, the gravity center moved toward the northeast from the Tang dynasty to the Yuan dynasty, and then toward the southwest direction. Finally, the gravity center during the Yuan-Qing dynasty moved mainly towards the north direction. In this paper, we divided China into east and west parts by the population line of Tengchong-Aihui and found that during the study period, the gravity center path in the western region presented a large fluctuation trend in both the south-north and the east-west directions. However, the moving trajectory of the gravity center in the eastern region was similar to that of the whole country. (2) The analyses of the standard deviational ellipses showed that the urban distribution in the whole country, the eastern region, and the western region exhibited a distribution pattern of "decentralization, centralization and decentralization", and this trend in the western region was most obvious. From the perspective of the average direction, the urban distribution in the whole country and the eastern region were similar to a certain degree, with the northeast-southwest as the main characteristics. However, the urban distribution in the western region took the northwest-southeast as the main features. (3) Based on the urban density distribution and spatial correlation, we found that its spatial continuity and self-organization were continuously strengthened, and the structural variation was in a significant state. Viewing from the direction, we concluded that the degree of homogenization on the Omni-direction tended to decline. The urban density homogenization degree of each dynasty in the northwest and southeast directions was relatively good and the spatial differences were minimal, but the spatial differences in the east and west directions were most obvious. (4) The analysis of the related factors of the urban setting up in different periods revealed that the setting up of the cities of China during 221 BC-1911 AD mainly focused on the flat terrain near the river and the central city with moderate climate.

Prior researches mostly focused on spatial dependence among house prices, ignoring the effects of spatial heterogeneity on house hedonic price; also, few comparative studies based on econometric models were conducted to obtain the accuracy of spatial variances on influencing factors of housing price. Considering the problems above and taking the center of Changsha as a research objective, this paper adopts spatial expansion model and geographic weighted regression model (GWR) to examine the spatial variances of factors that influence housing prices. The main findings are: (1) the analysis of spatial expansion model and GWR model shows that marginal prices of house attributes in the center of Changsha vary in different locations, indicating that the factors are significantly spatially heterogeneous, and some factors such as community environment, transportation conditions, educational facilities and living facilities have obvious spatial variances. (2) Spatial expansion model and GWR model can both modify traditional hedonic model; however, GWR model has stronger explanatory power and is more accurate in simulating the results than spatial expansion model; as for the analysis of attribute coefficient estimation spatial mode, the results from GWR model are more complicated and objective than those from spatial expansion model which adopts coordinate-based polysemy extension.

Residential environment is closely related to people's basic living conditions, such as dwelling, daily trip, shopping, medical care, school attendance and environmental quality. In recent years, residential environment has become a great concern for residents, scholars and governments at all levels. For example, the central government proposed: "the living space should be livable and proper in size" in the report of 18th Party Congress last year. Besides, the Beijing government set "livable city" as one of its development goals in 2004. However, improving residential environment and building livable city require a deep understanding of residential environment types, including their status quo, characteristics and problems. The paper, taking Beijing city as a research case, studies the types of its residential environment from a comprehensive way using both objective and subjective methods. The objective data comes from "Digital Beijing" database and the fifth national census, while the subjective data comes from a large-scale residential survey. The paper uses "Jiedao" as a basic research unit and employs factor ecology method to identify six residential types. Then it uses respondents' satisfaction level as an evaluation indicator to find out major problems of each residential environment type. The results indicate that Beijing city can be identified as six types: heterogeneous inner-city districts; homogenous inner-city districts; mix land-use suburban districts; high-density suburban districts; mix land-use exurban districts; and developing exurban districts. The spatial organization of these residential types reflects the spatial attributes of concentric circles, sectors and multi-nuclear patterns at the same time. Residents' evaluation varies greatly among the six types. The most obvious feature is the inclining satisfaction level from urban center to suburbs. Residents are satisfied with the heterogeneous inner-city districts, while they exhibit a quite low satisfaction level with developing exurban districts because of the low accessibility performance. Furthermore, their ratings for mix land-use districts are also at a low level due to the pollution and crowding problems. This paper will not only improve the understanding of the pattern of residential environment, but also inform government policies guiding public facilities provision, urban space construction and residents' migration.

Air transportation, with its high time efficiency and economic efficiency, has become an important transport organization mode in regional social economic activities and spatial interaction relations, which exerts great influence on regional development. Aviation network is of significance in air transport. With the implementation of deregulation on civil aviation, airlines are becoming the main factors affecting the aviation network. The network spatial pattern analysis and airlines' marketing research are helpful to cognize companies' organizational behavior. Based on flights time lists data and quantitative analysis, this paper compares China Southern Airlines with national aviation network on air routes, aviation cities, flights frequency and passenger flow, divides the market into six hierarchies and analyzes its spatial patterns. The research considers absolute markets (market scale) and relative markets (market competitiveness) of China Southern Airlines. The results are as follows: (1) uneven spatial distribution exists in aviation network of China Southern Airlines. The company's absolute monopoly markets concentrate on feeder airports and routes connected with Guangzhou, while flights focus on hub airports and main routes. (2) The factors that influence the markets are demand for aviation, economic development and the base of China Southern Airlines. The tertiary industry, especially tourism makes contribution to aviation. Meanwhile, the bases offer convenient conditions for the airlines, which promote agglomeration of market commitment. This paper complements aviation network research from perspectives on aviation companies, with guidance to their decisions on aviation market development.

The ecological asset refers to the sum of natural resource value and ecosystem services provided by ecosystem to human beings, which is an important indicator for ecological environment assessment and ecological construction level. Assessment ecological asset for Contiguous Destitute Areas is conducive to the poor areas of ecological environmental protection. Further, study coupling between ecological value of the assets and economic development in poor areas is the basic premise for co-ordinate ecological construction and poverty alleviation. This study took Qinling-Dabashan Region as study areas, and assessed the ecological value of the assets based on quantitative measurement remote sensing method. In addition, this study constructed suitable poor economic evaluation index system from the natural, social and economic development aspects, and evaluated the level of economic poverty of the counties in the study areas. Then, on this basis, this research also built ecological assets-regional economic poverty coordination coupling model, and calculated the coupling coordination degree of ecological assets and regional economic poverty. The results can basically show the actual situation of the extent of ecological assets and economic poverty in the study area. The results showed that the ecological value of the assets in study area was 50.42 billion yuan in 2010 and shrub had the highest ecological value (11.347 billion yuan). For poverty evaluation aspect, the characteristic of natural conditions and other natural factors in the study area are important factors to poverty, and the corresponding social and economic development has brought a significant effect on poverty alleviation. As a whole, the evaluating results of coupling coordination degree indicated that the lower level of ecological assets goes with the lower comprehensive development level of ecological assets and economic poverty as well as the higher level of economic poverty. The ecological assets and economic poverty have symbiotic relationship. This study concluded that improving ecological environment and strengthening management of ecological assets can achieve the goal to reducing poverty in study area and should be added in the policies of poverty reduction. Finally, this research also discussed the interactive mode between ecological protection and poverty reduction in Qinling-Dabashan Region and Support mechanism is put forward from several aspects, which includes Conversion of Cropland to Forest, eco-migration, eco-tourism and ecological construction of cities and towns. This research can provide the reliable guidance for strengthening management of ecological assets and poverty reduction of Contiguous Destitute Areas in Qinling-Dabashan Region.

Based on ArcGIS software and an Access database software platform, high precision of county-level farmland classification data at a scale of 1:10,000 were aggregated to create summarized a 1:500,000-scale provincial-level farmland classification data by the multi-attribute cluster method. Landscape classification was conducted using country codes, land type data, classification of natural areas based on quality, landuse classification, economic classification, and multi-attributes of control conditions while using a clustering technique. Three methods are proposed to create a cluster point visual summary of the landscape as follows: 1) by moving the cluster points, 2) by dividing provincial units into county-level units, and 3) by generalizing the outlines of the county-level units. Research results: The cluster research method using multiple landscape attributes could be used to improve the efficiency and the precision of a provincial-level farmland classification system, and to explore the development of a scientifically sound and feasible method of summarizing provincial-level farmland data. ArcGIS was also used to construct a traceable query relation table between provincial- and country-level units. The results show that this method allows the development of an excellent farmland classification system. This farmland classification method provides a theoretical basis and technical support for the implementation of a provincial-level method of summarizing farmland data and the classification of farmland, even at the national level.

Land use change and its carbon effects by human activities play an important role in researches on regional and global carbon cycle. Taking Haidong city as a study area, which is located in the eastern part of Qinghai Plateau, this paper firstly calculated carbon cycle coefficients of each land use type based on local carbon mechanism. Then by linear programming method, an optimization model was constructed to estimate land use quantitative structure under low-carbon scenario in 2020. Finally, CLUE-S model was used to simulate land use spatial allocation of the study area in low-carbon and land-use planning scenarios. Through comparing the two land use simulation maps in 2020 of Haidong city under different scenarios, four conclusions can be drawn: (1) Both irrigated and no-irrigated land will continue to decline under low-carbon scenario from 2009 to 2020, and the amount of high-quality farmland loss based on low-carbon emission will be less than that in the land use overall planning scenario; (2) Forest land would increase stably and grassland will expand slowly under low-carbon scenario, which results in a continuous increase in regional carbon sequestration; (3) Both urban land and rural residential land under low-carbon scenario will increase to a certain degree, while the total area of construction land under low-carbon scenario is less than that under land-use planning scenario. Therefore, the carbon emission from construction land under low-carbon scenario is less than that under land-use planning scenario. For example, the area of urban land under low-carbon scenario will be 974.61 ha lower than that under land-use planning scenario, that is, the carbon emission under low-carbon scenario is 14.03×10⁴ t lower than that under land-use planning scenario; (4) Compared with the planning scenario, land use patterns of low-carbon scenario show an overall upward trend in carbon sinks, which would increase carbon stocks of 7.77×10⁴ t, decrease carbon emissions of 31.99×10⁴ t. The results demonstrate that the low-carbon land use distribution pattern of Haidong city will have a positive effect on increasing carbon storage and decreasing carbon emission, which can keep balance between construction land, farmland, forest land and grassland. Generally speaking, regional land use structure adjustment and spatial allocation optimization from a low-carbon perspective will support decision making of regional land use management and ecological civilization construction in the eastern part of Qinghai Plateau.

Based on the natural background of land bearing capacity difference in the lithology and landform areas, we put forward that in different lithology and landform in the hinterland of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, because the land bearing capacity is different, then, the interactions, the response and feedback between people and land are different also, further, there is the difference of number and the spatial distribution pattern of settlements from the view of man-land relationship, and showing different process and intensity of ecological degradation, such as soil erosion and so on, so that the diversity and different adaptability of man-land relationship are formed in different lithology and landform areas of Three Gorges Reservoir Area. The coupling relationship between sloping cultivated lands and the settlement is an important factor influencing the suitability of man-land relationship. We took the settlement on behalf of the "people", the sloping cultivated lands and soil erosion on behalf of the "ground" (environment), and chose the 27 towns of Fengjie County located in the center region of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area as the study case, revealed the allocation relationships of between settlements and sloping cultivated lands and the difference of coupled mode between settlements and sloping cultivated lands on different lithology, and made type division of the man-nature of study area applying grid unit analysis technology to divide 1 km x 1 km grid as the research unit. The results showed that: a) The spatial distribution of settlements and sloping cultivated lands presented strong space convergence, the high proportion and the higher patch’s grade of settlements and sloping cultivated lands distribute mainly at the Meixi river valley in the north and the Yangtze river valley in the middle, the low area of them distribute mainly at exposed limestone area of the southern study area. b) Of all the coupling relationship types of sloping cultivated lands and settlements, the type of more sloping cultivated lands distributed mainly at exposed sandstone region and the type of less sloping cultivated lands distributed mainly at exposed limestone region, and the type of which settlements and sloping cultivated lands keep balance present random distribution pattern. c) The reasons of the sloping cultivated lands abound in study area were attributed to the large number of sloping cultivated lands and the difficult to shift from agricultural use. The soil erosion of the coupling type of more sloping cultivated lands is more serious than other coupling type because of the distribution of more sloping cultivated lands. d) The man-land relationship of the 27 towns are divided into four types such as the salient type of contradiction, the less salient type of contradiction, the less assuasive type of contradiction, the assuasive type of contradiction, and the area with less salient region of contradiction between human and land accounted for the largest, therefore, there is facing the dual problems of the cultivated land from grain to green and cultivated land pressure. On the one hand, this research results verify the effectiveness of the theoretical assumptions proposed by this paper and can provides the theory basis for the sloping cultivated lands utilization and the implementation to coordinate man-land relationship in the hinterland of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, on the other hand, it is also a beneficial attempt and supplement for the study on the regional man-nature relationship.

The serious air pollution by haze in large cities has become a critical issue of urban living environment. As the crucial component of the urban society-economy-natural complex ecosystem, urban green land plays an important role in providing urban ecosystem services. Estimating the value of haze absorption by urban green land and analyzing its spatial pattern make significant contributions to the improvement of the urban eco-environmental quality. With the help of Fragstats 4.1 and ArcGIS 10.1 software, we estimate and analyze the ecosystem services value of haze absorption by urban green land in Xi'an, based on TM images and the theory of landscape ecology and ecosystem service. The research results show that: (1) There are big differences of landscape fragmentation among different landscape types in Xi'an built-up area. (2) The total value of ecosystem services on haze absorption in Xi'an built-up area is 29.54 million yuan. The contribution to haze absorption by all types of landscapes are quite different. (3) The spatial patterns of total and individual ecosystem services density show an obvious degrading trend from city center to the edge of the area. (4) There are significant correlations between landscape indexes and the ecosystem services density of haze absorption in built-up area of Xi'an city. The value of haze absorption of total and individual ecosystem services are positively related to the number of patches and the total area. The service value of nitrogen oxides absorption are positively related to the largest patch index. There is a significantly negative correlation between the service value of nitrogen oxides absorption and fragmentation index. The value of sulfur dioxide absorption and dust detention are positively related to landscape shape index. Green patches and corridor mosaics of landscape pattern play an important role in pollutant gases absorption, dust removal and atmosphere purification. Furthermore, the bigger the average patch area is, the lower the degree of fragmentation is, and the more obvious the function of atmosphere purification is.

It arouses attention that the transformation and fragmentation of the Brazilian tropical rainforest has caused great changes in its ecosystem and environment as well as in forest cover. The forest fragmentation changes the function of forest ecological system and regional environment in Brazilian tropical rainforest, which attracts global attention. In this paper, the authors used ESA global land use/land cover data and Landsat interpreted data, as well as scientific methods such as hotspot extraction, information entropy, statistical analysis model and trajectory analysis to explore the relationship between change features of forest fragmentation in different deforestation stages and changes in forest fragmentation and regional landscape pattern. The results showed that: (1) The area of forest decreased rapidly in the tropical rainforest, among which Rondonia State, Maton Grosso State and Para State were the most typical; (2) The changing trend of forest fragmentation was not holistically increased or decreased, but represented a obvious regional pattern; (3) There was positive correlation between the number of deforestation and land system information entropy, namely the quantity and quality of forest directly determined the stability of the land system in Brazil's tropical rainforest.

Net primary productivity (NPP) and its responses to climate change stand one of the focuses of global change research. At the regional scale, it is significant to investigate the annual spatial variation and the impact of climatic factors on vegetation. Based on SPOT VEGETATION NDVI data, vegetation classification data and meteorological data, the spatio-temporal pattern on the NPP of Taihe county during 1988-2012 was simulated by CASA model. Then, the relationship between NPP and climatic factors was investigated deeply. The results showed that average annual NPP from 1988 to 2012 was 762 gC/m²·a in the study region. Spatial dimension is characterized by "high in the middle, but low in the east and west". There was a rising trend in the vegetation NPP during 1988-2012. The annual value fluctuated greatly. Mean NPP in the study area is 2.21×10⁶ g C/a. It can be found that vegetation NPP showed a weak positive correlation to annual precipitation, while it showed a significant negative correlation to annual average temperature. So, it can be concluded that temperature is the dominant climatic factor affecting vegetation NPP in the study region.

The issue of health has drawn extensive attention from many fields, and environmental pollution exposure is one of the newest hot topics of human mobility and health researches. Using activity-travel diary data of 2010 website-based and GPS-enabled travel survey in Beijing suburban areas (Tiantongyuan and Yizhuang) and air pollution (PM_2.5 and CO) intensity data within micro travel environment of the same period, this paper measures residents' daily travel air pollution exposure and compares the difference of residents' daily travel air exposure between different groups (gender, age, income, car ownership, etc.) through Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Furthermore, Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used to explore the mechanism of residents' daily travel air pollution exposure. The results indicate that the mid-income group suffers the highest PM_2.5 and CO exposure per day, while the high-income group suffers the lowest amount; the tenants experience lower air pollution exposure both at PM_2.5 and CO than house owners; the unmarried suffer higher level of PM_2.5 exposure per day than the married; driving license holders expose to higher level of CO exposure per day than those who have no driving license. This offers an insight into health inequity and social justice. To explore the mechanism, we invite the endogenous variables including motorized travel rate, travel duration, travel times, commuting distance, and the exogenous variables such as residents' social-economic attribute. It is found that the motorized travel rate significantly determines the travel duration and times, and the commuting distance is positively correlated with travel duration and times. High motorized travel rate and the commuting distance enhance the air pollution exposure to PM_2.5 and CO. The exogenous variable of "whether there is a child under 18 at home" contributes positively to residents' daily travel exposure to PM_2.5 and CO. Car ownership and possession of license card are highly correlated with the motorized travel rate, and further influence the air pollution exposure; residents' income level contributes significantly to PM_2.5 exposure, and the education level contributes significantly to CO exposure. Research prospects and drawbacks are discussed in the last section. Healthy urban planning and management should be encouraged as well as the guidance of healthy life style, to improve residents' health level and to promote health equity.

Cities in the lake watershed on the plateau of western China have experienced a rapid urbanization process and greatly changed land-use/land-cover since 1978 when China started the reform and opening up policy. The great land-use/land-cover change (LULCC) brought serious ecosystem and environmental problems to the lake watershed. Regional and urban development policies should be adjusted to improve human-friendly ecosystem and environment. This paper uses LULCC data derived from remote sensing images to calibrate geosimulation system for grasping the mechanism of LULCC in a case study of Kunming city in the Lake Dianchi watershed of Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Six kinds of urban development policies are set to forecast land-use/land-cover pattern of Kunming through calibrated geosimulation system. Spatial metrics and spatial analysis methods are adopted to assess the impact of policies scenarios on the Lake Dianchi watershed. The results show that LULCC in Kunming city was characterized by typical urban sprawl since 1974. Urban road network played an important role in land-use/land-cover pattern. Urban landscape of Kunming in the future shows a characteristic of intensive and compact development trend. The integrated policy scenario of environmental protection and urban development control has positive impact on the watershed. The policy also advantages the share of urban public facilities and concentrated process of urban garbage. When the integrated policy scenario of multi-centers and urban development control has notable effect on urban size control, the policy is not appropriate in the near shore area of Lake Dianchi. Landscape preservation area should be set in the near shore area of Lake Dianchi to prohibit the transformation of agricultural land to urban built-up area. The integrated policy of environmental protection and urban development control should be carried out in the area except the near shore of Lake Dianchi.

The scale-dependence of geographical pattern requires that research on the spatial heterogeneity of vegetation cover should be conducted at multi-scales. Based on the satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), this paper applied Geographic Information System (GIS) and Geostatistics (GS) softwares to investigate the scale-dependence, isotropy and anisotropy of spatial heterogeneity of vegetation cover, with a case study of Guizhou Karst Plateau. The main conclusions can be drawn as follows. (1) The spatial heterogeneity of NDVI was significantly scale-dependent because scale coarsening had remarkable smoothing effects on NDVI. However, the mechanism of data coarsening was different between two kinds of resampling methods. (2) There were differences in the spatial patterns of NDVI between RS data sources. The comparative results from traditional statistics and geostatistics for three NDVI datasets were different, indicating that spatial information is very important for statistical analysis. (3) Spatial heterogeneity of NDVI was accompanied with anisotropy, which was sensitive to RS sources. The important impact of altitude, precipitation and bio-temperature on the macro spatial distribution of NDVI also changed with spatial directions. The research findings are helpful for rocky desertification controlling and ecological reconstruction.

There is a the strong correlation of major land use transformation patterns with the timing and strength of subjectivity projects and their hysteresis effects when large-scale water conservancy projects (especially extra-large reservoir) constructed. The construction phase of Three Gorges Project in this paper was divided into five time points, considering the impacts of strong cloudy and foggy on image quality and its availability. The objectives of this paper was to comparatively understand the characteristics and trajectories of land use change the different project construction stages in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area through single land use dynamic degree, land use composite index, land use degree change, using five-term TM/ ETM image data. The results showed: (1) The transformation of cultivation land and forest-grass land, building land occupied cultivation land and forest land, interchange between forest and grassland, and cultivation land, forest land and grassland water flooded by water body were the main ways of land use conversion throughout the construction phase of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area. (2) Land use change and its drivers presented significant detailed trajectory with the stage under the framework of the overall pattern, due to the drivers occurring at different times, and the differences of their role strengthen degree during various construction stages. (3) The composite index of land use degree was relatively stable, and it was more than in the middle level throughout the construction phase. However, the change in land use composite index took overall on decreasing tendency with a "W"-type dynamic pattern. (4) The distribution breadth and concentration degree of major land use conversion patterns possessed larger differences at spatial scale. Moreover, the effects of subjectivity projects on major land use conversion patterns showed strong heterogeneity with the deepening of project construction phase. The results of this paper will contribute to rich the people's understanding to land use under the stress of water conservancy, and provide a scientific basis and reliable support to arrange adaptive land use regulation policy in the future.

In this paper, we selected two typical profiles in karst mountainous area of Liannan county, Guangdong province, the underground distribution feature of funnels and crack were investigated and grain-size parameters were measured. The results show that, main underground transport channels of soil are funnels, cracks and caves, which are formed by differential weathering of carbonate rock, abundant rainfall infiltration, gravity and corrosion. Funnels, cracks and caves distribution depends primarily on the rock composition and the joint structure, and surface range of 0-10 m is the main distribution area. The funnel soil area accounted for 23.1%-28.1% of the total cross-sectional area, while the crack soil area occupied 5.3%-8.9% of the total area, and the hole soil area is only 0.16%. The total soil area in the profiles accounted for 28.4%-37.16% of the total area of profiles. Soil grain-sizes underground are mainly coarse silt and sand, followed by clay and fine silt. The vertical grain-size distribution of soil in the funnel and crack proves that there are two processes of soil migration: the horizontal erosion and vertical leakage. There are three soil migration stages: surface erosion, infiltration of fine-grained soil material, and accumulation of fine-grained soil material in the karst mountains. The main driving force of the soil migration leakage is soil gravity and the infiltration of water gravity.

The Huangpu river basin is physically and socio-economically vulnerable to storm induced flooding. In the future, climate change and associated sea level rise are very likely to cause negative impacts on this area. Considering estuary sea level rise, tectonic subsidence and compaction of sediments, two projections of relative sea level rise were presented for 2030 (170 mm) and 2050 (390 mm). And then, extreme storm flood elevations were generated for 2030 (7.17 m) and 2050 (7.39 m) using a simplified algebraic summation of the relative sea-level rise, monitoring maximum storm surge and the maximum astronomical high tide level. A 1D/2D coupled flood inundation model (FloodMap) was used to simulate the two scenarios. The results indicated that all the riparian regions of both sides of Huangpu river would be inundated, and the inundation depths gradually reduced from upstream to downstream. Finally, future research needs, such as uncertainty analysis, floodwall breach inundation scenarios, and changes in intensity and frequency of storms, were suggested.

Based on Landsat TM Image, vegetation field survey data and meteorological data, we derived the distribution patterns of vegetation types, temperature and precipitation in Liupan Mountains by using image classification methods and regression analysis method. Subsequently, we analyzed the changes of landscape pattern in three transects with different climate conditions. The results showed that the annual mean temperatures in Liupan Mountains vary at different altitudes, ranging from 0.8℃ to 7.0℃, (the mean temperature lapse rate is 0.51℃/100m). The annual precipitation ranges from 599 mm in northwest region to 770 mm in southeast region. In the vertical direction, the precipitation tends to increase as the altitude increases and then begin to decrease when the altitude is more than 2502 m. The main vegetation type in Liupan Mountains is warm temperate deciduous broad-leaved forest. However, as the precipitation decreases from southeast to northwest, there is a tendency in vegetation types from forest to steppe. Therefore, precipitation is dominant factor affecting the vegetation landscape pattern in arid area of Northwest China. The conclusion is helpful for people to understand the mechanism of ecological response to climate changes and it can also provide scientific basis for regional ecological construction.