As the most developed and the most densely populated region in China, the Yangtze River Delta has underwent fast urbanization. The interaction of external development environments, such as globalization, economic and social transition within the national and regional contexts, and increasing internal pressures from environments pollution as well as resources consumption, has led to the evolution of new characteristics and patterns of urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta. The process of urbanization impacts the economic and social development of the region, particularly the increasing population, resources and some other economic elements. This article first examines the evolution and relationship between population migration, land use change and economic growth. It then analyses the process of industrialization and urbanization, the urbanization pace in terms of land and population, the trends in migration, the recession and renaissance of the rural, the extensive and intensive areas during the urbanization process and so on. Finally, we propose some development pathways and strategies for institutions as well as important scientific issues on the new urbanization for future research.
Tourism is not only considered important to the development of China's frontier areas, but also one of many ways for protecting core national interests. In this paper, the pertinent literature is reviewed. It is concluded that: (1) The research for frontier tourism began after R.W. Bulter aroused attention upon frontier areas. (2) The general attitude among western scholars is that practice was combined closely with research in the limited frontier area studies. During the post-frontier era, scholars from Europe and America concentrated on the study of their own individual borderlands and focused on the tourist demand and transnational economic cooperation because of the fact that they had more territorial frontiers rather than cultural frontiers. On the other hand, scholars from Australia and Canada were more concentrated on how the tourism promotes the local communities' development in peripheral areas away from the center and how it protects cultural diversity under the perspective of generalized frontiers. (3) Borderland tourism studies based on economic perspective dominates in China and frontier tourism studies focused on cultural perspective have surged in recent years. Spreading from borderlands-only to other frontier areas brings the growth of research fields and draws attention to both sides of frontier economy and cultural preservation, which is good for the sustainable tourism development in frontiers and the stability of frontier communities.To sum up, the paper makes an attempt to interpret the subject of China's frontier tourism by defining the connotations and denominations, and proposes that narrowly defined frontier tourism consists of borderland tourism and island tourism, while the generalized frontier tourism refers to ethnic tourism in the areas west of the Heihe-Tengchong line (Hu Huanyong Line). The clear themes of frontier tourism research and clear definition of the concept are good for developing sustainable tourism research that fit Chinese geographic and cultural characteristics. The several important research issues are: (1) The research has been conducted on the coupling processes of the frontier economic development and tourism development in time dimension. The two processes started in the same period in China, compared with the western countries having an independent research process. (2) The research of the population migration is caused by frontier tourism development in the space dimension. (3) One of the subjects in practice level is the understanding of demands for frontier tourism such as the element of Chinese frontier mythologies and characteristics of tourists who are attracted by frontier mythologies. (4) Another subject in the practice level is the management of supply for frontier tourism. (5) Research on the sustainable development of island tourism should be strengthened.
This paper presents an overview and scrutiny of what is termed the "new cultural geography", which first emerged in the 1980s and has acted as a radical rethinking and subversion of traditional approaches in cultural geography. This paper summarizes the fundamental rationales and orientations in new cultural geography from two perspectives. On the one hand, this study suggests that new cultural geography, as an established field of knowledge and research, does have a relatively unified theoretical foundation. Above all, new cultural geography rejects the idea of superorganism that undergirded the theoretical edifice in traditional cultural geography, especially the Berkeley School of landscape studies. It undermines the Sauerian view of culture as an ontological entity that determines ways of life from above. In contrast, new cultural geography conceptualizes culture as a social construction that emerges, in a bottom-up manner, from everyday life and social practices. It is contingent upon social contexts and the relations of production, and is radically unstable and dynamic. Culture, in this sense, provides a system of meanings and values that grassroots social actors inhabit and, in many circumstances, also contest. Meanwhile, geographical elements, such as nature, landscape, space and place, are not merely the passive expression or container of culture. Rather, they are inherently constitutive of cultural meanings, values, norms and ideologies. In other words, the formation of culture works through geography and spatiality as medium. On the other hand, this paper also stands for the diversity of research themes and topics. Such diversity should not be understood in terms of the risk of disciplinary fragmentation, but a necessary outcome of the reconceptualization of culture per se. Because culture is viewed as emerging from actual social practices and everyday life experiences, its study necessarily covers diverse aspects of social life. New cultural geography also places a focus on multiple social groups and scales, which further adds to its richness. This article calls for Chinese geographers’ enhanced engagement with new cultural geography. Not only to grasp better understanding of the ways in which geography is constitutive of meanings and values, but also to know how the study of culture has broader implications for other sub-disciplines in human geography, such as economic geography and urban geography.
The study of neo-tectonic movement and its impact on alluvial river can deepen the understanding of the complex response theory in a geomorphic system and the complex hypothesis of multi-cycle deposition, and investigate thoroughly the relationship between sedimentary sequence and basin depositing processes, which can be widely applied to earth science, water engineering, traffic transportation, communications, oil and gas exploration and development, etc. In this paper, it is mainly reviewed the research progress of the influence of neo-tectonic movement in alluvial rivers, and neo-tectonic movement is described very briefly. In the embryonic period of the neo-tectonic movement, the study of the drainage pattern in a basin and the river towards controlled by the neo-tectonic movement, had been increasingly popular as a new discipline, but mainly focused on the geologic interpretation. Since the 1970s, research on the neo-tectonic stress field can help us understand the neo-tectonic mechanism and dynamics. In author’s point of view, active tectonics can be taken as part of the neo-tectonic movement, and the type and ratio of neo-tectonic movement has significant effect on alluvial river morphology and channel evolution, including the plane form, channel width, longitudinal profile, cross section, sinuosity, braided index, cutting strength and range, channel pattern, transport type and amount of sediment, which shows the complexity, hierarchy, sensitivity and prophetic. Influenced by active fold, uplift and depression on river longitudinal profile development, the compensation of subsidence by the sedimentation is concerned specially. As for the influence of neo-tectonic movement on alluvial river plane shape, the sinuosity was taken as the barometer of alluvial river in response to neo-tectonic activity. As for the effect of active fault on river development and evolution, sensitivity and prophetic are especially mentioned. This paper deals with the research progress in the bedrock exposed on riverbed by active uplifting, which resulted in developing both pressed and release meandering along upstream and downstream, respectively, and the so called "New structure", formed by river erosion. The traditional research methods and techniques are not generally described but mentioned that the experiment simulation has obtained remarkable achievements at home and abroad, and the mathematical simulation is just unfolding. It is prospected that at first, to pay attention to the crossing, permeating and comprehensive research of neo-tectonic movement impacting to alluvial river, the second to focus on effects of rapid tectonic movement to alluvial river, the third to observe regularly lifting rate of neo-tectonic movement, the riverbed evolution and sediment transportation in the neo-tectonic active area, the fourth, to take caution more with the physical model experiment and mathematic simulation, in which there is a great space for development, and finely to strengthen the cooperation and fusion of research ability. The study will enter a new stage of development.
As unique landforms, sandy lands are mostly found in northern China, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and along the edges of seas, lakes, and rivers. Sandy lands are generally in ecologically fragile zones and are important in maintaining regional sustainable development. Researchers in China have focused on sandy lands since the 1950s and have proposed many classification methods for these lands. However, there is no widely accepted classification system, owing to a lack of integration of sandy land resources. Therefore, confusion has resulted from too many classification methods. Furthermore, the absence of a sandy land resource database might have restricted appropriate management of sandy land resources by the government and affected proper implementation of ecological management policies. In this paper, progress on sandy land research in China is comprehensively summarized. Sandy land classification methods and a cataloging system are also discussed. Results show that: (1) Existing sandy land classification methods are mainly based on sandy land mobility, desertification degree and processes, and geographic location. This may have resulted in the omission of some sandy land areas, a smaller quantitative classification index, degraded ability to express spatial information, a chaotic classification index system, and others. Moreover, systematicness and comparability of sandy land classification results were inadequate. (2) Vegetation coverage has been widely used for sandy land classification and its index can quantitatively express the mobility, desertification degree and processes, and other features of such land. According to climatic differences, using vegetation coverage to classify sandy land by sand mobility (fixed, semi-fixed and mobile sand) and desertification degree (mild, moderate, severe or very severe) could highlight the most important information. (3) The cataloging system here includes different code levels for identification, geographic location, mobility, desertification degree, and other sandy land features. The sandy land identification code can effectively differentiate desert, Gobi, and other desertification types. Based on an eco-geographical regional system of China, geographic location codes include information on 11 temperature zones, 21 wet and dry areas, and 49 natural regions, covering the entire sandy land area in the country. Those codes also effectively identify differences of temperature, humidity, vegetation, landscape, and others. Codes of mobility, desertification degree, area, and sandy land use can highlight its natural and social characteristics. Thus, the cataloging system of sandy land in this study is comprehensive, well-integrated, and easy to use.
Climate change is producing significant impacts on global agricultural production. Climatic variations affect crop production, and tend to be a key constraint of agricultural production, primarily on continuous increase of winter wheat yields worldwide. The great uncertainties in predicting the effects of climate change on wheat production are most likely due to less understanding of the responses of wheat production to extreme climatic factors, e.g. high temperatures, low humidity as well as high wind speed. Dry-hot wind hazard represents one of the main natural disasters for Chinese winter wheat production, especially in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain. However, there still exist great uncertainties of the effects of dry-hot wind hazard on winter wheat production, mainly due to the gaps of long-term observations. Therefore, we selected Shangqiu as the case study area to determine the occurrence regularity of dry-hot wind hazard on winter wheat production in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain. We analyzed regional meteorological data with daily resolution in the later growth stage of winter wheat during the period 1963-2012. In accordance with the meteorological industry standards of "Disaster Grade of Dry-hot Wind for Wheat" by the China Meteorological Administration, we synthetically analyzed the distribution of annual average days of dry-hot wind in winter wheat growing seasons and the associated responses to the climate change. Hence, the relationship between dry-hot wind times and winter wheat yields was examined. The results showed that the annual average days of light and severe dry-hot wind tended to decline in recent 50 years. Great inter-annual variations of light and severe dry-hot wind were observed. The significant inter-annual variations were related with the corresponding meteorological conditions of temperature, moisture and wind speed. The most serious damages of both light and severe dry-hot wind occurred in the 1960s, while less damages appeared in the 1980s and the last decade, which could be also explained by the corresponding temperature, moisture and wind speed conditions. From 1963 to 2012, a climatic mutation point of daily maximum temperature was found in 1972 (p>0.05). The wind speed at 14:00 and the relative humidity at 14:00 were closely related to the hazard. A climatic mutation point of the wind speed at 14:00 was found around 1984, and climatic mutation of the relative humidity at 14:00 was found in 1981 (p<0.05). Daily maximum temperature and wind speed at 14:00 and the relative humidity at 14:00 played a major role in the decreasing trend of dry-hot wind disaster, and the significant decrease of wind speed at 14:00 was a main factor in Shangqiu. Dry-hot wind hazard had a strong response to climate change. Yields of winter wheat were negatively correlated with annual average days of dry-hot wind in Shangqiu (p<0.05). In actual practices, great attention should be paid to the defense of dry-hot wind for winter wheat production. Thus, the most effective measures have to be taken to enhance the resistance of winter wheat to dry-hot wind hazard through improving field microclimate condition.
The article aims to reveal the coupling co-evolution rule of non-agricultural transformation among population, land and industry target during rural-urban transformation developing process. In this paper, the non-agricultural transformation indicators have been built for population, land and industry, simultaneously, based on the coupling coordination model and referring data, the spatial-temporal pattern and the rule of coupling co-evolution of non-agricultural transformation about population, land and industry were examined comprehensively in county scale around the Bohai Rim in China. Main results for this study are as follows: (1) there is a significant spatial difference in the coupling and coordination degree for non-agricultural transformation among population, land and industry in county scale around the Bohai Rim in China. The level of the coupling and coordination degree for non-agricultural transformation among population, land and industry are higher in developed region than in others, which have consistent changes in sensitivity among population urbanization, land urbanization and industrial structure. In less developed areas, the coupling and coordination degree for non-agricultural transformation among population, land and industry is low. (2) It is common that the coupling and coordination degree for non-agricultural transformation between population and land lags behind that between land and industry in county scale around the Bohai Rim in China. (3) The evolution rules have emerged gradually on the coupling and coordination degree for non-agricultural transformation among population, land and industry, so that the relationship of the organization and coordination process changes as the rules from low to high level. (4) Innovating the mechanism of land use optimal allocation, building reasonable and order hierarchy multi-level systems of economic development and intensive land use in rural and urban areas, which are the integration of basic land systems to improve the basic mechanism of land supply, the planning and decision-making mechanism, market allocation mechanism and income distribution mechanism. This will be the main ways to solve disordered relation of non-agricultural transformation on population, land, industry and employment during rural-urban transformation process. In future, research should be strengthened on the mechanism and non-agricultural transformation theory among the population, land, industry and employment, as well as on about the core theory of rural-urban land use optimal allocation and regulation, which will be the core issues on the rural-urban transformation geography and land management science.
As the most dynamic "economy-society" space in the progress of regional development, industrial district has the function of driving the development, enhancing the rate of employment and strengthening competitiveness, which arouses much attention from economic geography, sociology, management science and so on. Classical industrial district theory places emphasis on the impact of the endogenous factors on its evolution, such as the agglomeration economies, specialized division of labor and institutional environment. But under the background of economic globalization, regional integration and technological change, and the trends of institutional turn, cultural turn, relational turn, scalar turn and evolutional turn, the classical industrial district theory is limited to explain the externalization of industrial district, "lock-in" effect, and the transformation of space function. Through the review of the research progress of industrial district, it can be found that the angle of research in the new period has changed, which is from system dynamics to firms strategy, from local embeddedness to global network, from spontaneous growth to pluralistic governance, from life cycle theory to multiple path-dependence. At the same time, the related empirical research of industrial district evolution is also following up: (1) Based on the reconstruction of industrial district theory, scholars have discussed upgrading paths of industrial district from several aspects, such as production organizational form, innovation mode, spatial structure and function, governance policies. (2) Strategic behavior of leading firm, global production network, institutional and technological innovation have become the new focus of evolution mechanism research of industrial district. (3) The influence of industrial district development on the evolution of local and global production network, regional society and economy development and urban spatial structure has attracted much attention. Then, we summarize the progress of industrial district study in China, and on this basis, we estimate the development and research direction of industrial district in China: (1) A theoretical framework, which reflects the development law of industrial district in China, should be built. (2) The evolution law of the interior space form of industrial district and its relationship with urban space should be explored. (3) The evolution mechanism of industrial districts needs to be further examined. (4) The evolution trend and its effect of industrial districts remain to be perfect.
The world is moving further toward economic globalization and trade liberalization. Industrial relocation is an important way to upgrading the industrial structure and promoting regional coordinated development, which usually assumes relocating industrial production from prosperous zones to less developed zones. Against the background, it has become a hotspot in the research of regional sustainable development in the places where the pollution-intensive industry is relocated and what causes the pollution.Based on the panel data of the Yangtze River Delta from 2000 to 2010 and using spatial analysis tool of ArcGIS, this paper explores the characteristics and regularities of spatial-temporal pattern of pollution-intensive industry, and comes to a quantitative conclusion on the driving mechanism of pollution-intensive industry's relocation by constructing a metrological model. Results suggest: (1) In the last 10 years, the phenomenon of pollution-intensive industry's relocation is found in the Yangtze River Delta. The direction of its relocation coincides with Shanghai-Nanjing railway and Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo railway. Moreover, the general trend is from the center to the periphery, which is an accelerated diffusion trend. Generally, the speed of diffusion is faster in the latter 5 years than in the former 5 years, but it has been a little slower since 2008; (2) There are many factors contributing to the relocation of pollution-intensive industry in the Yangtze River Delta, among which export-oriented degree and labor costs help pollution-intensive industry to relocate, while the intensity of environmental governance, industrial structure and innovation capability prevent pollution-intensive industry from relocating to destination. What’s more, economic development level is negatively related to the relocation. Given that, it is concluded that the economic development of the Yangtze River Delta is independent to pollution-intensive industry, which contributes less to the growth of GDP nowadays than 10 years ago. However, the Yangtze River Delta has not got rid of the position of "Pollution haven", because the location of pollution-intensive industry has not changed fundamentally, and Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou remain to be on centre stage of pollution-intensive industry in the Yangtze River Delta, as well the export-oriented degree is particularly noticeable in this region. To some extent, this is related to the recent economic downturn after the financial crisis in 2008. Hence, it is an arduous task and long way to upgrade the overall industrial structure, in order to maintain the sustained regional development. Furthermore, the need for more serious environmental supervision is urgent, so government should pay more attention to the coordination between industrial development and environmental protection.
This paper, combined with all previous information on urban planned land, dynamically tracks the Huainan's spatial-temporal evolution process of urban spatial structure with the aid of GIS software. Qualitative research shows that Huainan's urban space pattern is relatively scattered and has gradually evolved into the compact layout. Firstly, from 1960 to 2009, industrial land increases from 9.37 square kilometers to 21.19 square kilometers, warehouse land from 0.69 square kilometers to 1.22 square kilometers, residential land from 10.147 square kilometers to 43.572 square kilometers, and the land for commerce and public facilities from 0.96 square kilometers to 7.86 square kilometers. Therefore, the increase of industrial land, residential land, and land for commerce and public facilities is primary feature for internal space. Secondly, industrial land, mainly the coal mining industry and choosing-washing industry, is characterized by resource dependency and spatial variability, the coal power industrial land and the chemical industrial land are featured by the spatial inertia, and the land represented by food industry, textile industry and machinery manufacturing industry is significant. Thirdly, the phenomenon of internal spatial restructure has been gradually significant since the 1980s, which contains two main forms: industrial land replaced by residential land and residential land replaced by land for commerce and public facilities. Furthermore, this paper, based on a micro perspective, focuses on the space combination relationship among the main land use patterns. Then it comes to the conclusions that the coal resource-based city can be identified into 6 types of spatial expansion mode and that the spatial expansion modes of the coal resource-based city are distinct in different life-cycle stages. In occurrence period, the urban-mine symbiotic expansion mode plays a dominant role. In growth period, it employs the pattern of driving the towns' development with factories, joining the factories and expanding along the traffic line. After mature period, the effective way to optimize the urban spatial structure is new district expansion model. Meanwhile, the self-organizing extension pattern has existed throughout the process of coal resource-based city development. Finally, this paper summarizes the external spatial form and internal spatial structure evolution mechanism of coal resource-based city through the analysis of several major influencing factors, such as resources, natural environment, traffic condition, industry structure, urban planning and so on. The conclusions can be drawn as follows: Firstly, resource factor affects the urban industrial structure through its economic effect, and the production factor affects the urban external spatial morphology and internal spatial structure by its space effect. Secondly, natural environment factor and traffic condition factor affect the external form of the coal resource-based city. Thirdly, the intensive degree of various influencing factors is distinct in different stages of urban development.
With the rise of the knowledge-based economy in the 1980s, knowledge (including code and tacit knowledge) as the backbone of innovation has become a key factor affecting production process. Cities have gathered not only a large number of professionals, universities and research institutions, but also a great many producers and consumers, which provides the premise for the innovation actions. City's knowledge storage and its position in the regional knowledge network play an important role in comprehensive competitiveness. Published papers and patents are main outcomes of innovation, which are used to evaluate the urban innovation capability. Moreover, co-publications and co-patents are not only the form of knowledge spillover, but also the key indicators to measure regional innovation. Taking the co-publication and co-patent in the field of biotechnology in China during 2000-2009 as the original data, we built scientific knowledge network (SKN) and technological knowledge network (TKN) between cities. From the perspective of complex networks and geospatial analysis, we explored the temporal and spatial complexity of knowledge spillovers combining the indicators of whole network structure, ego network, power-law, hubs and so on. The results show that: firstly, the nodes degree distribution of SKN and TKN is consistent with the power-law distribution, which means that the both networks not only have a scale-free network structure, but also present a preferential attachment rule when the cities choose the cooperation partner. Secondly, central cities have an obvious hierarchical structure, and are featured by a "big scattered and small gathering" spatial pattern in SKN, while the TKN is not showing this feature. From the view of central city ego network, the cooperation develops between the coastal capital cities at first, and then turns to inter-regional cooperation, such as Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and inter-regional knowledge spillovers is obvious in SKN. The central cities and its partners are still in the coastal city instead of western provincial capitals, and inter-regional knowledge spillovers are not significant in TKN. Thirdly, the temporal evolution of central cities and its ego-network presents hierarchical diffusion and contagious diffusion, and conforms to law of grades process in SKN. The TKN is dominated by hierarchical diffusion. Finally, this study draws conclusions on the temporal and spatial complexity of innovation network, which has a positive impact on quantifying spatial knowledge spillovers and measuring its space-time evolution. Besides, the results clarify the status of each city in innovation networks, which provides a new perspective for the cities to formulate innovative policies.
The paper puts forward an evaluating method of urban valid density based on FCD. It mainly applies the kernel density estimation (KDE) for network data and floating car data (FCD) to analyze the characteristics of effective network density level distribution from two aspects: the static layout of the structure and dynamics traffic of urban road network. And then it analyzes the differences of density distribution between the theoretical simulation and the actual conditions, finds out the differences in regional road network, and provides a reliable basis for the urban road network planning. This paper uses KDE to analyze the FCD gathered from the downtown of Guangzhou during the May Day holiday in 2010 and the main road networks in Yuexiu and Liwan districts. The following conclusions can be drawn: In terms of the number of density nuclei and nuclear scopes, there are great differences among these roads, such as Renmin Central Road, Renmin South Road, Baiyun Road, Zhongshan Six Road and Zhongshan Seven Road, especially Renmin Central Road and Renmin South Road. From the perspective of theoretical analysis, the effective road network density of the two roads is high, but the actual traffic flows reflect that they are low density areas. This phenomenon shows that there is a traffic waste of resources. On the whole, according to the results of comparative analysis of road network and FCD, we can solve the problems in the urban road network, which can provide us some reliable basis for the future design of urban road network and rational planning of transport.
The security of cultivated land use system is the foundation for protecting the health of cultivated land and guaranteeing food supply security. This paper took Bayan County, which is located in Heilongjiang Province of Northeast China, as the study area. We forecasted the security pattern of cultivated land use system in 2016 and 2021 by the improved neural network pattern recognition model in Matlab. Meanwhile, according to the catastrophe theory, we determined the threshold of it by butterfly model. The conclusions included four points. Firstly, the spatial factors of the security pattern of cultivated land use system, to a certain extent, had great influence on the evolution of regional cultivated land use system security pattern. Both the spatial distribution and the scale change of each kind of land use pattern would have certain impact on the pattern. Secondly, cultivated land use system security pattern underwent a significant transition from 1976 to 2011. According to current development status, from 2011 to 2021, the changes of cultivated land and construction land present reciprocity, the expansion of construction land and other types of agricultural land were all at the cost of the decrease of cultivated land. The task to protect cultivated land had not been performed. Thirdly, cultivated land use system security status was divided into three categories: safe state, critical state and dangerous state. The thresholds of the safe state, critical state, and dangerous state range from -1 to -0.2, -0.2 to 0.2, and 0.2 to 1, respectively. Generally, the current cultivated land use system security pattern of the study area tends to be dangerous. Therefore the problem of cultivated land use system security would become more and more serious if we do not take concrete measures to prevent the worsening trend.
Terrestrial vegetation ecosystem plays an important role in maintaining the sustainable development of global ecosystem, providing strong supports in exchanging energy and substances between pedosphere and atmosphere. With the rise of global change researches, vegetation research becomes an important content of land use and cover change research, which is one of the branches of studies on global changes. And it is a key step to understand the complex relationships between the vegetation distribution and its physical and artificial processes by using synthetical, quantitative and multi-scale means. In this research, Normalized Differentiation Vegetation Index (NDVI) was calculated as an indicator of vegetation, and three environmental variables were selected as the influencing factors including two topographic variables (elevation and slope) and one human variable (land use intensity, LUI). Continuous wavelet based methods were used to investigate the hierarchical structures and scale-location correlations between NDVI and other environmental factors. And two transects were selected along the east-west orientation (transect A) and the north-south orientation (transect B) in subtropical mountainous and hilly region, Zhejiang, China. The results showed that: (1) Four scales about the spatial distribution of NDVI and its driving factors were identified from the wavelet variance curves, with stronger variance values at larger scales; (2) The characteristic scales along the east-west transect were around 40 km and 80 km, whereas the characteristic scales along the north-south transect were around 30 km and 50 km. In these scales, the distributions of vegetation cover, landform and human activities exhibited richer structure information; (3) Topographic and humanity factors affected the distribution of NDVI at different scales, which was concluded from the wavelet coherence figures. It was proved that the humanity was the major influencing factor in larger scales (>8 km), while the terrain factors had more important effects in relative smaller scales (0-8 km). Generally, wavelet based approach provides an effective tool to analyze the multi-scale structure of ecosystem and to understand the scale-location specific relationships between environmental factors.
The essential requirement for sustainable development is to meet the needs of contemporary people, but not to damage the ability development that satisfies the requirements of future generations. The realization of quantitative evaluation lays the foundation for implementing the strategy of sustainable development. The sustainable development evaluation system for water tourism can be divided into five subsystems, namely, sustainable economic development, sustainable social development, sustainable environmental development, sustainable management development, and development conditions and potentials. Composed of 28 index factors, this evaluation system measures index weight coefficients by using AHP with the support of entropy technology. By conducting an empirical study on three typical water tourism destinations (National Water Conservancy Scenic Spots) in Nanjing, this study indicates the sustainable development level rankings of the three destinations, that is, Taurus Lake (0.896), Pearl Spring (0.883) and Outer Qinhuai River (0.796) respectively. The Jinniu Lake is particularly outstanding with respect to the environment, while the Pearl Spring ranks first in other aspects. The Outer Qinhuai River is superior to others in terms of development conditions and potential, however, it is inferior to others in the remaining aspects. Aiming at specific evaluation data, this paper proposes policy recommendations for the three destinations with regard to sustainable development requiring urgent improvement.
Under the background of tourism urbanization, the urbanization of land use of the ancient town is an important scientific problem, especially the evolution and driving mechanism of land use pattern. Combined with the methods of high-resolution remote sensing images, spatial analysis of GIS and the field research, the study selects Zhouzhuang as the typical case of the ancient town and analyzes the evolution and its driving mechanism of land use pattern from 2002 to 2012. The results are obtained as follows. (1) The amount of land transfer is increasing obviously in the ten years. It is the rapid development of urbanization and the transformation and upgrade of the tourism industry that promote the transformation progress, i.e. from the land use of agriculture and forestry into the construction land use of tourism and public services, etc. (2) Apart from the land use of agriculture and forestry as well as water area, the dynamic degree of other types of land use is positive value. Meanwhile, the dynamic degree of the land use of tourism, public management, public services land and industrial land are gradually increasing. (3) The land use types of ancient town, which are mainly for tourism, displays the change trend of expanding gradually to the periphery from the core of the scenic spots of the ancient town. In addition, the structure of land use shows the mode of "concentric circles plus the shape of fan". (4) The space conversion of land use pattern is caused by the internal and external driving forces, such as the limitation of natural geographical environment, the government behavior and policy guidance, the economic development and industrial transformation, the change of social production mode. Therefore, the effective way should be constructed by the tourism development, the fusion of industry and town, the government regulation and the market guidance based on the advantage of cultural resource of itself so as to promote the quality of urbanization. Finally, the efficient use and intensive development of the land resource of the ancient town can be realized.
