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  • 2014 Volume 33 Issue 5
    Published: 10 May 2014
      

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  • LIU Chunla, LIU Weidong, LU Dadao
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    Geography studies the nature and movement law of earth surface in a systematic way that involves perspectives of regional differentiation, regional interactions, a synthesis of environmental, societal and human dynamics, and interdependence between spatial scales. The discipline takes human-land territorial system (HLTS) as its hard core of studies. This paper argues that eco-compensation is a typical geographical issue and presents similar features of the HLTS, such as semi-opening, instability and random. Based on such an argument, the paper examines the geographical features and implications of eco-compensation. First, the physical side of the HLTS determines the fundamental relationships between different stakeholders in eco-compensation;second, patterns of economic geography play a critical role in regional differences of eco-compensation;third, regional cultural and institutional environment affects the formation and implementation of eco-compensation policies and measures;and fourth, geographical methods provide techniques for formulating eco-compensation. The paper suggests that region is a key to studying eco-compensation issues, regional structure is a major reference for formulating eco-compensation policies, externality is the scientific basis to carry out eco-compensation, and ownership of geographical elements and resources is a key factor to distinguish different stakeholders in eco-compensation. As such, eco-compensation studies should take a geographical research paradigm of "region-differentiation-scale". In short, the geographical features of eco-compensation can be best manifested by such terms as regionalization, spatial differentiation, comprehensiveness, and dynamics.
  • ZHOU Yi, HE Canfei, WANG Rui, WANG Jieyu
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    With the rapid development of urban economy, China's urban environmental quality has become a global concern. Based on the data from the 2007 survey of pollution sources in Shenzhen, this paper explored the role played by environmental externalities in the intra-city space distribution of polluting enterprises. We found that polluting enterprises were located close to regions with lower environmental costs. Water and solid polluting enterprises were located significantly close to the city boundary but away from Hong Kong and Shenzhen Special Economic Zone so that they would not contaminate the central city and expand the negative environmental externalities to adjacent cities. Different polluting enterprises have significantly different space distribution characteristics. Water polluting enterprises were likely to be located near outflow rivers, which pollutes the cross-border river basins even more severely. Polluting enterprises were not likely to be located close to the transportation infrastructures because of the environmental costs. Ownership and operation time of enterprises have impact on pollution abatement to a certain extent. Therefore, the adjustment of the industrial layout in the transitional economy should take into account the integrity of the regional environment so that cross-border rivers would not become victims of negative externalities. This study sheds light not only on the policies of industrial structure adjustment but also on the location theory, which enlightens coordinated development of urban economy and environment.
  • WEI Hai, QIN Bo, PENG Jian, JIN Xin
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    Land is one of the most important natural resources. The exploitation of low-slope hilly land could provide the basic resource and support for industrial development in areas of land shortage. Evaluation on the land exploitation suitability is the fundamental work of planning and utilizing low-slope hilly land. It focuses on the types and grades of unused land in a region. After redefining the range of low-slope hilly land according to the physical features of Wumeng Mountain continuous poverty-stricken region, the article selected suitability evaluation indicators of arable and constructive land exploitation and then built the index system. The GRNN model was used to evaluate the grades of land exploitation suitability. What's more, it placed emphasis on the scale benefit of contiguous land exploitation and evaluated the comprehensive exploitation suitability of low-slope hilly land using neighborhood calculation. The results showed that it is of great potential to exploit low-slope hilly land in the study area. There are 313,700 and 38,400 hectares of land to be exploited as arable and construction lands respectively. However, up to 17,900 hectares of land are suitable for more purposes than one. Based on the principle of scale benefit and taking the adjacency relation with current land use and exploitation into account, it is believed that 8,400 hectares of land are more suitable to be arable land, 6,900 hectares to be construction land and 2,600 hectares not to be exploited due to the spatial isolation. Evaluation of comprehensive exploitation suitability determined that 276,800 and 22,100 hectares of land could be exploited to be arable and construction lands. The results could be significant guidance for comprehensive exploitation of low-slope hilly land in Wumeng Mountain region.
  • XUE Jingjing, SHEN Lei, LIU Litao, GAO Tianming, CHEN Fengnan
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    As a large energy production and consumption country, China's energy supply security issues have attracted much concern. Even some international organizations which have ulterior motives heavily hype "China energy threat". For the actual outstanding problems of China's energy supply, we need to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the energy supply security. It helps to make a profound understanding of China's energy supply security situation and identify the major obstacle factors. And based on this we could strengthen policy protection. According to the concept of energy supply security, the paper built comprehensive evaluation index system of energy supply security, the assessment model and indicators evaluation criterion model based on set pair analysis method. The entropy method was applied to determine the index weights. And the level of energy supply security, the evolution feature and the main obstacle factors in recent years were profoundly analyzed. The results of the research show that from 2000 to 2008 China's energy supply security level is III, it rises to II in 2010 and I in 2009 and 2011. The relation degree between China's energy supply security exponent and optimal evaluation set I rises with fluctuations, increasing from-0.46 in 2000 to 0.23 in 2011. The obstacle factors analysis of China's energy supply security shows that the price index of energy products and energy processing and conversion efficiency are the top two obstacle factors, whose occurrence frequency reach to 91.67%, followed by the renewable energy share and the reserve-production ratio reaching to 83.33%. In recent years, China's energy consumption continuously increased, while the energy supply security level improved rather than fall, which is inseparable from the implementation of positive energy policy. Based on domestic resources advantages and development base, enhancing the energy supply support capability;technological innovation; improving energy efficiency;diversified development;deepening reform, building system and mechanism for promoting energy sustainable development;enhancing energy "going out" and "bringing in" level. All the above measures effectively promoted China's energy supply security and provide a good opportunity and the environment for China's energy development. In the long run, with comprehensive national power increasing and technological progress, there is a big potential for China's energy supply, and the energy supply security has greater room for improvement.
  • HU Zhiding, GE Yuejing, XU Jianwei
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    Combining the theories of politics of scale from political geography, security theory from international relations and energy security theory, and putting the scale conversion of energy contention, geographical relationship and geo-structure in geo-setting, and the three properties of safety in consideration, this paper rebuilds a geo-energy security evaluation model and uses the model to quantitatively evaluate China's geo-oil energy security in the Russian Pacific oil pipeline construction from 1995 to 2010. Five results could be drawn as follows: (1) from the aspect of time, an up-surging Geo-oil Safety Index of China in the Russian Pacific oil pipeline construction indicated an increasing disadvantage of China in the geo-oil contention by politics of scale. If the United States and South Korea are involved, the competition would be further intensified;(2) from the aspect of geopolitical relationship, a general decrease occurred in the Sino-Japan Energy Competition Index, but a specific increase appeared in the competition of energy imports from Russia by China and Japan individually;(3) from the aspect of regional strategy of energy export, an obvious downward tendency in Energy Export Strategy Index showed that Russia has changed its exports destination off Europe;(4) from the aspect of geosecurity, a relatively steady proportion of China's oil consumption and a friendly comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation between China and Russia reduced the worries of China's geo-oil energy security to some extent;(5) from the aspect of geopolitical structure, the increasing comprehensive national power in China driven by the rapid economic growth will intensify the geo-oil competition in Northeast Asia.
  • YANG Zuying, ZHAO Yuan, HUANG Kelong
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    According to the overlap between the gravity center of the source system (or the sink system) of China's crude oil flow and the gravity center of China's overall economy, as well as the consistency of their displacement trends, this paper analyzes the spatial coupling degree between the gravity centers of the source system (or the sink system) and economy in five typical years from the research period 1985-2009. To reveal the driving mechanism of China's crude oil flow, Indicator Kriging Interpolating Method is applied to be fit for the trend surfaces of the source and sink system, as well as the distribution of main domestic oil fields, seaports of oil import (including land ports, same as below), and domestic refineries, and then, the spatial correlation coefficients are used to determine the spatial correlation between them. Some conclusions are as follows. (1) In the research period, the gap between the gravity centers of sink system and economy remained a certain range within 300-400 km, which reflects that economic growth has more influence on the sink system than on the source one. Meanwhile, the gap between the gravity centers of source system and economy has narrowed rapidly after the typical year of 2003, which showed that the influence of the economic growth on the source system had been growing gradually. (2) According to the spatial correlation analysis of the source system, the regional differences of crude oil production and import is the major determining factor of the spatial correlation between the source system and main domestic oilfields, as well as between the source system and main domestic oilfields-import seaports;and the distribution and displacement of crude oil flow elements, including oilfields, pipelines, oil refineries and others, also have some influence on the changes of the spatial correlation coefficients. Thus it can be seen that the displacement of the source system in typical years of 1985 and 1995 was mainly driven alone by the development of domestic oilfields, and it was also driven by both the development of domestic oilfields and import seaports in the typical years of 1999, 2003 and 2009. (3) There is a close relationship between the spatial distribution of the sink system and domestic refineries, as reflected by the spatial correlation coefficient. Therefore, domestic refineries' huge need of crude oil is the principal driving force of the displacement of sink system. Because of data limitation, this paper only analyzed the typical year of 2009, and it is necessary to be further improved.
  • DANG Yunxiao, ZHANGWenzhong, LIU Zhilin
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    Economical housing projects have been regarded as an important method to solve housing issues of low-income families in China. Despite the heightened political will expressed by the central government, the local implementation of economical housing programs remains highly contentious and unsatisfactory. The media have consistently reported on the "unexpected consequences" associated with economical housing programs, such as residential segregation, poverty concentration, home-work separation. Existing literature tends to focus on housing affordability and equity issues in Chinese cities and the evolution and framework of economical housing policy in China. Few studies have focused on the local implementation of economical housing programs as determined by the strategic decision making of city governments. Although many scholars have stressed that land-based interests of city governments determine urban development patterns, empirical evidence on the impact of government's land-based interests on economical housing policies has rarely been published.
    This paper attempts to provide an institutional explanation for economical housing projects policy implementation in Chinese cities. We argue that the location of economical housing projects is a result of local government strategic policy implementation on the basis of its fiscal and political interest. Our main hypothesis is that, while local governments account for policy implementation, land-based interest drives economical housing projects to be located to certain sites that would minimize land-based revenue loss. Besides, removing pressure, housing market structure and public transportation are important factors that influence local governments'policy implementation. Using Beijing as the case study, we employed both GIS spatial analysis method and Logistic model. Based on the spatial distribution and influencing factors that impact the layout of economical housing projects in Beijing, we found that: (1) Construction speed of initiated economical housing projects in Beijing was slowing down. (2) Newly-built economical housing projects were spreading to the urban fringe and tended to gather at some sub-districts. (3) Land price was an important factor which influenced government's decision on the location of economical housing projects. In order to reduce financial revenue loss, local governments chose sub-districts with low land price to construct economical housing projects. (4) Local governments were more likely to choose sub-districts with less old houses and more rental households.
  • LIN Liyue, ZHU Yu, LIANG Pengfei, XIAO Baoyu
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    China's rapid urbanization and economic development have given rise to the fast growth of the floating population, and housing is a key issue in the process of their integration into the destination cities. This paper intends to explore this topic by analyzing the spatial patterns of housing conditions of the floating population. Based on the sixth census data, the paper selects six indicators to measure housing conditions of the floating population: the home-ownership rate, the rental-housing rate, the floor area index, the housing facilities index (constructed by summing up the situation of five variables: availability of running water, washroom, bathroom, kitchen, and the type of fuel), the index of privacy (constructed by summing up the situation of two variables: the function of the dwelling and the number of the dwelling's floors), and the housing consumption index. It uses the methods of Spatial Autocorrelation Analysis and Hierarchical Cluster to examine the spatial distribution and agglomeration patterns of the floating population's housing conditions. The results of the calculation show that compared with urban permanent residents, members of the floating population are much more likely to live in rental homes;their housing conditions are generally worse;and their rental expenses are higher. The spatial variation of the homeownership rate, the rental-housing rate, and the housing facilities index is mainly manifested as north-south differences;the floor area index, and the index of privacy show marked difference between eastern and western China. The low-value centers of the housing consumption index are located in Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Hubei and Anhui provinces, while the high-value centers are located in Beijing. Furthermore the results of Spatial Autocorrelation Analysis demonstrate that there is a significant positive spatial correlation in the indicators of the floating population's housing conditions on a national scale, and identify the phenomenon of their spatial clustering and the centers of such spatial clustering. The analysis of Hierarchical Clustering identifies the housing conditions of the floating population into four distinctive groups, and suggests that the housing conditions of the floating population in the inner and east parts of China are better than those in the outer and west parts, and such a spatial variation extends from the north to the south. Finally, on the basis of the above findings, the paper puts forward some policy suggestions for improving the housing conditions of the floating population.
  • MAO Qiliang, DONG Suocheng, HUANG Yongbin, LI Jun, WU Dianting
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    This paper researches the area-characteristics and industrial-characteristics of agglomeration and dispersion of manufacturing industries in Capital Metropolitan Region of China by using exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, and evaluates the spatial spillovers effects of core-cities on changes of landscape of economic activities by building on spatial econometrics model. From 2001 to 2009, it has been more evident in reference to the general geographical pattern for most of manufacturing industries, that is, regions with similar development levels tend to be concentrated, and the trend has been intensified. Hot spot of each sector of manufacturing industries has moved to a certain extent. In the context of further agglomeration of aggregated economy in core-areas of Capital Metropolitan Region--Beijing and Tianjin, manufacturing industries tend to spread to surrounding suburban and rural counties. The regions close to core-areas have been the hot spots with respect to industrial development. Spatial spillovers of core-areas are proved in this paper to be one of important factors driving the agglomeration and dispersion of industries. Even though, effects of spatial spillovers vary from industrial sector and core city. Generally, Beijing brings out spread effects to the technology and capital intensive industries, but brings out backwash effects to the labor and energy intensive industries. However, Tianjin has not showed consistent spatial spillovers to surrounding regions in either growth of aggregated economy or specific industry.
  • HOU Songyan, JIANG Hongtao
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    The accessibility of urban public transportation reflects the level of development of the public transportation system and provides a favorable scientific support for formulating urban transport planning, optimizing spatial distribution of social service facilities and so on. Applying ArcGis9.3, this article created a public transportation network of Changchun. The shortest accessible time and public transportation service frequency were selected as the indexes of accessibility assessment and we took the off-peak and peak hours as the dividing basis of time. We analyzed the accessibility of residential districts to the hospitals during the peak and off-peak hours. Moreover, this article analyzed the average accessible time of hospital to residential districts during the peak and off-peak hours. The results found that: The overall level of residential districts' average accessible time was higher and the accessibility of off-peak hours was better than that of peak hours. The spatial heterogeneities are conspicuous. The distribution pattern of residential districts' average accessible time shows a discontinuous concentric trend. The shorter the residential districts' average accessible time, the higher the transportation service frequency, but it does not necessarily mean that these two indexes are always consistent. During peak hours, the public transportation service frequency has been significantly improved. The level of hospitals' average accessible time is better during off-peak hours, while in the peak hours there is a remarkable descent. The average accessible time of hospitals at different levels is not identical, but the differences are not significant. On the basis of the above analysis, we examined the problems and reasons of public transportation in Changchun and proposed relevant suggestions.
  • JIAO Jingjuan, WANG Jiao'e
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    Along with the reforms of civil aviation market, aviation enterprises have more autonomy in the tariff, route selection, flight planning and joint restructuring of aviation enterprises, and become the most active part of the China's aviation network. Therefore, it is of great significance to the spatial structure and complexity of aviation enterprises. Hainan Airlines is the largest joint-stock aviation company in China and the structure of Hainan Airlines network has certain uniqueness. So this paper, taking Hainan Airlines as an example, analyzes its spatial characteristics and complexity and compare it with China's aviation network. As a result, we find that: (1) the network of Hainan Airlines is still in the developing stage, and shows the characteristics of small-world and scale-free;(2) the correlation coefficient between degree centrality and closeness centrality is higher than that between degree centrality and betweenness centrality, and is much higher than that between closeness centrality and betweenness centrality; (3) the slope of the rank-size curve decreases by sequence from betweenness centrality, to degree centrality, and then to closeness centrality;(4) the network centrality is gradually decreasing, and the difference of nodes is reduced;(5) Beijing, Xi'an and Hainan are the cores of the air network of Hainan Airlines, but other hierarchies are unclear yet.
  • XIE Zuolun, ZHAO Ruifeng, JIANG Penghui, LIU Haimeng, ZHU Wen
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    Rural residential space reconstruction is one of the important measurements and techniques to restructure the rural land use so that it is also significant to arable lands protection. The method of rural residential space reconstruction in Loess Hilly Regions is significantly different from that in other regions of China. This paper aimed at finding out the appropriate method for rural residential space reconstruction in Loess Hilly Regions, in which Yuzhong county was taken as the study area. Firstly, the spatial distribution of rural residential lands in Yuzhong county was described with GIS spatial analysis tools. Then the space partitioning capabilities of weighted Voronoi diagram and the rural "residential field and power" were used to implement the space reconstruction of rural settlement in Yuzhong county. The settlement was divided into three types: central settlement, retention type residential settlement and scattered settlement depends on the rural settlement influence. The weighted Voronoi diagram was used to draw the influence scope of central settlement. The diagram was also used to describe the relocation of scattered settlements. Then the relative value of rural "residential field and power" was calculated. Those scattered settlements, where the "residential field and power" was higher than the corresponding central settlement, were classified as class II retention-type settlements. The result shows that Yuzhong county has 1077 central settlements. The settlement occupies 6082.6 hectares of the lands, which accounts for 61.25% of the county lands for residential area. There are 4083I retention-type settlements, a total of 2707.55 hectares of land, accounting for 27.26% of the rural settlement lands in the county. The area of II retention-type settlements is 235.68 hectares. It involves 679 settlements and accounts for 2.37% of the area. There are 2854 scattered settlements, a total of 905.26 hectares of the lands, accounting for 9.12% of the rural settlement land in the county. This research combines the weighted Voronoi diagram space partition function with the rural "residential field and power", making the residential space reconstruction scheme more reasonable. The study of rural residential optimization is the basis of rural residential land space reconstruction. Voronoi diagram space partition function with the rural "residential field and power", making the residential space reconstruction scheme more reasonable. The study of rural residential optimization is the base of rural residential land space reconstruction.
  • DING Jianjun
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    The development of contiguous destitute areas and the pro-poor growth effects of economy are the hot topics of regional economics in recent years, but there are few studies on the pro-poor properties of economic growth in contiguous destitute areas. As the pilot area of China's contiguous destitute areas' development and poverty alleviation strategy, Wuling Mountain Area is a typical research case. Taking it as an example, this paper analyzed the spatial differences in the pro-poor properties of economic growth, and the evolution of spatial differences in this region as well as the effect of the differences in the pro-poor properties on the spatial differences in the last 12 years.
    According to this research, three conclusions can be drawn as follows. Firstly, there were obvious differences among subareas of Chongqing, Guizhou, Hunan and Hubei, while economic growth in the whole Wuling Mountain Area was pro-poor. Especially, Chongqing and Guizhou presented pro-poor growth, then, Hunan and Hubei manifested as trickle-down growth and balanced growth, respectively. Similarly, the annual poverty growth curves differed greatly. There were 6 years of pro-poor economic growth in 2000-2001, 2002-2003, 2004-2005 and 2007-2010, whereas other years, such as 2001-2002, 2003-2004, 2005-2006, 2006-2007, 2010-2011, witnessed a trickle-down growth.
    Secondly, the evolutionary trend of regional disparity in Wuling Mountain Area rose up from 2000 to 2007 and then declined gradually. The largest contribution to the disparity was the internal inequalities in these four subareas, which accounted for 44.3% averagely and rose up over time. The inter-subarea disparity was also important, which made up to 36.94%, and its evolution presented an irregular W shape. Among the four subareas, Hunan had the biggest regional disparity, with the largest Gini coefficient in the whole region, which was almost twice that of Chongqing and Hubei, and Guizhou ranked second in these subareas.
    Thirdly, there was obvious relationship between pro-poor properties of economic growth and the evolution of spatial differences in Wuling Mountain Area. During the pro-poor growth years, due to the poor's income growth was quicker than the others', the Gini coefficient, proxy index of regional disparity, declined with probabilities of 67.67%, 75%, 80%, 100% and 67.67% for the whole region, Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing and Guizhou, respectively. The reason is that the slopes of pro-poor growth curves were not steep enough, namely the propoor effects were not strong enough and slowed down the Gini coefficients decline.
    Based on the positive analysis, this paper finally proposed some suggestions for Wuling Mountain Area and its four subareas so as to promote pro-poor effect of economic growth and optimize spatial pattern respectively.
  • LI Rui, WU Dianting, YIN Hongmei, HU Hao, ZHU Taoxing, WU Mengshan
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    Taking prefecture-level cities, vice-provincial cities and provincial capitals in China as analytical units, this paper measures and analyzes urban tourism development efficiency and spatial characteristics of four coastal urban agglomerations in eastern China by adopting the traditional DEA, Bootstrap-DEA and Malmquist models. Major conclusions include: (1) Measured by Bootstrap-DEA model, comprehensive efficiency and factorized efficiency of urban tourism of four urban agglomerations are both lower than those evaluated by traditional DEA model, indicating the obvious overestimate of traditional DEA model. (2) The comprehensive resource utilization efficiencies of urban tourism of municipalities, provincial capitals and main prefecture-level cities in the four urban agglomerations have kept in good condition since 2000;at the same time, the average comprehensive resource utilization efficiencies of urban tourism of Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta urban agglomerations have transformed from ineffective to effective, and those of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shandong Peninsula urban agglomerations have changed from ineffective to moderately effective. (3) Since 2000, the comprehensive efficiencies of urban tourism of Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations have been affected by pure technical efficiency slightly more than those have been affected by scale efficiency, while it is opposite for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shandong Peninsula urban agglomerations. (4) The Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of most cities in the four urban agglomerations has substantially increased since 2000;the TFP increasing rates of Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations are both slightly higher than those of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shandong Peninsula urban agglomerations;however, the overall trend of TFP increasing rates declines. Meanwhile, the average TFP increasing rates of urban tourism of Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shandong Peninsula urban agglomerations decline in turn.
  • WANG Zhaofeng
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    Public transport in good condition is important for tourist activities and tourism destination development. The level of tourists' perception of public transport is a factor influencing tourists' destination satisfaction and behavioral intention. It is important to identify the dimensionalities of tourism public transport and which dimensionality is affecting tourist satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Using method of factor analysis, this paper studies tourists' perception dimensionality, and its impact on tourists' destination satisfaction and behavioral intention in Zhangjiajie city, which is famous for world natural heritage of Wulingyuan beauty spot, in China. The result reveals that there are three dimensionalities of tourists' perception on public transportation, including convenience, cost and security, and aesthetics and scientificalness. This conclusion is consistent with previous research. The new dimensionality of tourist public transport perceived is cost and beauty. These dimensionalities have weak impact on tourists' destination satisfaction and behavior intention. The impact of convenience on tourism satisfaction of whole public transport and revisit intention is stronger than that of the other two dimensions, which is weak on tourist destination satisfaction too. The dimensionality of aesthetics and scientificalness has no obvious impact on tourist destination satisfaction. Impact of cost and security on tourists' destination satisfaction is also weak. Finally, advice is presented to improve service level of tourism public transport. Firstly, overall urban planning and traffic planning should consider different traffic demands between tourists and local residents. Secondly, it should place emphasis on the coordination and collaboration between all kinds of tourist traffic way, such as aviation, railway, and bicycle. Finally, it should improve label identification of tourism public transportation and security system of public transportation.
  • HE Lei, LI Guosheng, LI Kuo, CUI Linlin, REN Huiru
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    Low spatial resolution of tide gauge records and shortness of satellite altimetry data are the main obstacles in studying regional long sea level change. The present study proposes a reconstruction of consistent regional sea level anomalies (CRSLA) in the Pearl River Delta over the period 1959-2011 by combining satellite altimetry dataset with tide gauge records using empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and principle components analysis method. The results indicate that the reconstruction method addresses issues such as the relative shortage of satellite altimetry data and the sparse and discontinuous nature of tide gauge records, demonstrating the applicability of this technique in investigation of long-term sea level change. Moreover, the rate of regional sea level rise obtained based on CRSLA (4.08 mm/yr) indicates acceleration over recent decades. Compared with the estimation from single tide gauge, the reconstruction explains the leading characteristics of regional sea level change with a low noise level. Both river flow and El Niño-Southern Oscillation events have considerable impacts on sea level variability in the Pearl River Delta.