The rapid development of information and communication technologies and the wide use of smart devices in people′s daily life have generated a large amount of data-the big data. The information exploration has not only greatly influenced our life, work and thinking, but also presented a new paradigm of social science research, that is, from data-scarce to data-rich study, from static to dynamic analysis, from relatively simple hypothesis and model to comprehensive simulations and theory. Especially these big data with spatial information brings opportunities for human geography. Big data meets geography’s quantitative revolution and social transition and should not be overlooked, since it provides a large amount of timely and detailed data of human behavior. In the meantime, geographers also face risks and challenges. Firstly, geographers require careful rethinking with respect to the philosophy of science and consideration on the important distinction between data and knowledge. Data never speak for themselves and require contextual knowledge with respect to analysis and interpretation. Secondly, it is hard to say that geographers have well underprepared for big data. Geographers have long been used to the traditional statistical methods which are designed with regard to data-scarce science. New methods of handling and analyzing data sets that consist of millions or billions of observations are urgently needed. Thirdly, despite the emerging data deluge, there are a number of ethical and security challenges in working with these data. How to define the scale and boundary of data is also a challenge, since the data are growing all the time. Then this paper points out that emphasis should be equally placed on quantitative and qualitative research and small-data and big-data research. Geographers should pay attention to the "digital divide" since access to big data is limited, and geographers should cooperate with scholars in other academic fields.
As important member states of Shanghai Cooperation Organization and key areas of the Silk Road Economic Belt, Russia and Central Asia are gaining a closer and closer relationship with China, which will play a much more important role in ensuring China's geopolitical security and promoting the opening-up of Chinese inland provinces in the future. Under this background, this paper employs Trade Intensity Index, Trade Complementarity Index and Export Concentration Index to depict the dynamics of China's trade with Russia and Central Asia during 1992-2012. Thereafter, the spatial pattern and industrial structure of China's trade with Russia and Central Asia in 2012 are studied thoroughly with special attention paid to the spatial pattern of trade in several key commodities. At last, based on the historical data of China's trade, the authors make a brief predication for the prospects of China's trade cooperation with Russia and Central Asia to the year 2020. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) China's trade intensity and trade complementarity with Russia & Central Asia have been increasing over the past 20 years. Besides, the range of commodities imported from Russia and Central Asia has been extended dramatically. (2) Primary energy and raw materials account for a large proportion in export from Russia and Central Asia to China, while the commodities exported from China to those countries are mainly composed of machinery equipments, textile and clothing. (3) The provincial structure of China's export trade to Russia and Central Asia is the result of a combination of cross-border trade and geographical specialization in China, while China's import trade from those countries is mainly affected by cross-border trade as well as spatial distribution of energy demands. (4) In 2020, the trade volume of China with Russia and Central Asia is expected to exceed 400 billion dollars, among which Turkmenistan will account for a much higher proportion. The commodity structure of China's export will be improved to some extent while that of China's import is more likely to remain the same. Besides, the status of some richer inland provincial units, such as Chongqing, Shaanxi and Sichuan, will be enhanced significantly in China's trade with Russia and Central Asia.
As an important part of China′s "Going Global" strategy, the construction of "Pan-Asia High-speed Railways" can enhance cross-border cooperation not only between China and Indo-China Peninsula, but also between China and Southeast Asia. Based on aspects of accessibility changes and spatial pattern evolution, this paper explores the influence on spatial relation between border areas of Southwest China and Indo-China Peninsula, which has been brought up by the construction of Pan-Asia High-speed Railways. The results indicate that the construction of Pan-Asia High-speed Railways has generated time-space astringency effect of accessibility both on global and local levels, reduces relative disparity inside the study area to a certain extent, and brings more balance on the degree of transportation convenience along the trunk railways in the study area. It promotes the enhancement of population and GDP service level in the whole region as well, and will lead to a variability from country to country.Relatively speaking, countries with a large population or great economic powers in the research area can have easy access to to the high-speed railways. What′s more, the construction of Pan-Asia High-speed Railways can not only highlight the location advantages of the cities and autonomous prefectures along the railway line, like Kunming city, but also promote regional integration along the mid-route of the line. As a traffic point of connection, Kunming connects China′s western border area and Indo-China Peninsula, links China′s interior heartland and Southeast Asia and even takes up the position as a bridgehead of China′s opening up to the Southeast Asia. Pan-Asia High-speed Railways even strengthen the intensity of spatial relation between the cities and autonomous prefectures in the border area of Southwest China and countries or capital cities in Indo-China Peninsula, especially the ones along the high-speed railways, and it shapes a "^" style pattern of spatial relation, which is an enclosure of Kunming (Qujing)-Bangkok and Kunming (Qujing)-Hanoi. In the end, some targeted suggestions for policy making are provided based on the main research conclusions.
The numerical model HydroTrend is applied to simulate the variations of water discharge and sediment fluxes into Poyang Lake during 1956- 2010 from the five tributaries of Poyang Lake Basin, namely Gan, Fu, Xin, Rao and Xiu rivers. Furthermore, the influences of climate change, vegetation cover variation and reservoirs construction on the sediment load are analyzed, and the contribution of the above three factors to the sediment load entering the Poyang Lake is quantitatively evaluated. The results show that, during the period of 1956-2010, the average annual sediment discharge into Poyang Lake under the influence of climate, vegetation cover and reservoir construction reached 15.5 Mt, 20.8 Mt, 8.5 Mt, respectively; whereas, the sediment load entering the Poyang Lake under the combined-influence of the above three factors is 12.6 Mt a-1. In addition, during the same period, the sediment load delivered to the Poyang Lake increased by 4.2 Mt a-1 due to water and soil erosion, and decreased by 8.2 Mt a-1 attributed to reservoir interception, which accounted for 32.4% and 63.2% of the observed sediment load discharged into the Poyang Lake, respectively. From 1956 to 1989, the increased sediment load caused by water and soil erosion and the decreased sediment load induced by dam emplacement, in terms of both quantity of 5.1 Mt a-1, is equivalent; However, during 1990-2010, the sediment load resulting from water and soil loss decreased to 2.7 Mt a-1, and that intercepted by reservoirs increased to 13.3 Mt a-1, suggesting that the effect of reservoirs construction on the changes of sediment load entering the Poyang Lake is 5 times of that of water and soil erosion.
Wetland is the highly disturbed area among the types of landscape. The urban wetland is the ecosystem prone to be disturbed because of large population and human activities. These disturbances were coming from not only the inner but also the surrounding areas of wetland. The relationships between water quality and disturbance (land use change) obtained in the previous studies are usually analyzed in terms of the inner of wetland landscape. Obviously, fewer studies have focused on the fact that the spatially varying impact is caused by some factors outside the study area and the water quality of the inner of the study area in the previous studies, and that higher land use intensity and population density around the wetland park may change the ecological process. As the most vulnerable ecological system, water environment will be impacted first. The spatial diversity of disturbance from the surroundings of the wetland park will be identified, and the relationship between the disturbance and water environment can be quantitatively analyzed. In order to capture disturbance from land use changes, we used SPOT5 images of the study area in the years of 2003 and 2009. The NDVI index was used to analyze the vegetation disturbance and its dynamics. In our study, differences of NDVI between two periods at the same location were considered as disturbances, in which they refer to detectable change in land use and land cover. Then to analyze the effect of disturbance from outside the wetland Park, we measured the proportion of disturbance adjacency (pdd) of landscape using a moving window algorithm to quantify the spatial distribution of disturbance. We also used water quality data to developed water environmental health index. And the purpose of this paper was to find how human disturbance surrounding the wetland affects the water quality and its health. The results show that (1) about 37.7% of the surrounding area was disturbed. The disturbing regions were mainly located in the northern surrounding and less in the eastern surrounding of the wetland; (2) about 64% of park area was influenced by disturbance around the wetland, the influence of interference decreased sharply from the park edge to the center; (3) water environmental health index had obvious difference under different influence degrees. TN, TP and Chla concentrations were the highest and water environmental health index was the lowest in strongly-affected areas. TN, TP and Chla concentrations were the lowest and water environmental health index was the highest in non-affected and weakly affected areas. This study could help us get a better understanding of the influence of the planning and building around the wetland park on the sustainability of the wetland park.
Recent lake sediments (last 50-100 years) are essential for quantitative paleoclimate research. However, there is less research on oxbow lake sediments at preasent. This paper describes grain size and magnetic parameters data from the 210Pb-aged sediment cores TE(85-cm long) and ZZ-2(89-cm long) recovered from two oxbow lakes, located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, China. Combined with statistical methods and local chronicles, the basic sediment sequence of the oxbow lake sediments was established. Two cores disclosed the sedimentary characteristic and evolution process of oxbow lakes. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) By the analyses of grain-size parameters and magnetic parameters of cores TE and ZZ-2, two stages of oxbow lake sediments have been distinguished. They were lower (layer A) which reflected fluvial facies, and upper (layer B) which reflected lacustrine facies. According to the grain-size parameters, two sediment cores could be divided into three types: TypeⅠ(lake sediments) corresponding to layer B, Type Ⅱ (fluvial sediments) and Type Ⅲ (fluvial-lake sediments) corresponding to layer A. Vertically, they are coarse-fine-coarse gradations in the grain sizes of the oxbow lake sediments from bottom to top. (2) For modern oxbow lake, age models based on radioisotope analysis is still the effective means of the short-core sediments, but the average sedimentary rate will produce larger errors, which need to be checked by environmental change events through the identification of sediments in a specific event. (3) Modern oxbow lake sediments have good response to the river basin flood events, but the mechanism still needs to be studied further. Thus, it is of great significance to reveal the ancient flood event information in the ancient oxbow lake sediments.
Emamectin benzoate is one of the most efficiently semi-synthetic antibiotic pesticides. However, little is known about the responses of composition, structure and biodiversity of soil animal community to the application of emamectin benzoate. In order to reveal the effects of emamectin benzoate on soil animal community, a field experiment was carried out in a typical black soil farmland area of Hulan district, Harbin city, Northeast China. Based on fixing-plot investigation in 2012, the plots were treated by different concentrations of emamectin benzoate, and then the soil samples were collected from different stratification (i.e. 0-5 cm, 5-10 cm, 10-15 cm and 15-20 cm) in May, July and September. In total, 5772 individuals belonging to 4 classes, 11 orders were captured, and all of them were divided into 31 groups. The results showed that under emamectin benzoate treatment (1) individual densities and group numbers of soil animal decreased significantly, and the decreasing trends of individual densities and group numbers were more obviously with increasing concentrations of emamectin benzoate; (2) the vertical distribution structures of soil animal communities were changed obviously, and most individuals and groups of soil animals preferred to gather in the 5-15 cm soil layer rather than in the 0-5 cm soil layer; (3) the diversities of soil animal communities were changed, but the contributions of different groups to community diversity were different, in which contributions of soil mites and springtails were relatively large than those of other groups; (4) the soil chemical properties of topsoil were changed significantly. However, responses of soil animal groups to soil environmental change were groups-specific, in which soil mites and springtails exhibited a stronger adaptive ability than those of the others. In a word, emamectin benzoate treatment can significantly change the community structure, vertical pattern and diversity of soil animal community in a typical black soil farmland area. It is emphasized that the concentration of emamectin benzoate might be an important indicator when we assess the influence of emamectin benzoate on soil animal community. It is suggested that we should prudently assess the ecological consequences when using the emamectin benzoate in farmland ecosystems.
This paper regards rural residential land patch as a research unit. According to the analysis of comprehensive influence on rural residential land patch in the Haitang country, we design different optimal spatial distribution strategies based on different landforms, and provide migration direction for guiding rural residential land parch by employing the method of Voronoi. The results of this study show the following aspects: (1) the area of 183 rural residential land patches with village-level influence is 183.57 hm2, and the area of 391 rural residential land patches with group-level influence is 183.57 hm2, and the area of 118 scattered settlements is 31.49 hm2; rural residential land patch with greater influence is mainly distributed in the central-eastern part of Haitang county where the terrain is comparably flat. (2) Through layout optimization, the total area of rural residential land patch in the whole county has decreased from 421.92 hm2 to 353.73 hm2 after optimization, or a reduction of 16.16%; and the density of rural residential land patch has decreased by 39.35%, from 14.74 per km2 to 8.84 per km2, and the average area of rural residential land has decreased from 0.61 hm2 to 0.84 hm2, or a reduction of 37.70%. From the above analysis, the scattered spatial distribution of rural residential land in Haitang county has been improved to a certain extent.
The change of cultivated land use intensity has influenced food security, ecological environment and cultivated land protection. Using 972 valid samples through household survey of 12 typical villages in Youyang county, Wulong county, Wushan county of Chongqing as study cases, we comparatively analyze cultivated land use intensity of households of different livelihood strategies based on the cost of production. And we also compare its internal structure considering comprehensive form of value index and physical form indicators. Then, we analyze the influencing factors of cultivated land use intensity of households of different livelihood strategies by adopting multivariate linear regression model. Finally, the purpose of the study is to provide scientific basis for the governments at all levels to formulate policies for agricultural development. The results are shown in the following aspects. (1) There are great differences in cultivated land use intensity and its internal structure of households of different livelihood strategies, as well as labor intensive degree, capital intensive degree and land use intensity. Ⅲ-1 (natural assets type household)>Ⅲ-2 (human assets type household)>Ⅱ (basic type household)>Ⅰ (missing type household). (2) The study area is experiencing rapid rural labor transfer process and livelihood diversification of farmers is significant. But the livelihood diversification does not necessarily mean the reduction of cultivated land use intensity. (3) Agricultural production subsidies and the proportion of cash crops planting area have significant positive effects on Ⅲ-1. Hence, government policies for agricultural development in the future should focus on the improvement of agricultural production subsidies and the adjustment of the agricultural structure, but the premise is to continue to take effective measures to improve rural infrastructure and create a good platform for agricultural development.
To understand the influences of terrain factors on the landscape pattern of land use in hilly areas, this paper, taking Huailai county, Hebei province as a case, studied the distribution characteristics of land use types on different terrains. The correlation between landscape pattern of land use and terrain environment was also qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. The results showed that there was a significant terrain gradient in landscape pattern of land use. High terrain level of the zones was mainly distributed with woodland and grassland, and their distribution index was dominant, whereas, low terrain level was distributed with such types as urban and rural construction land, mining land, cultivated land, garden plot and water areas, which were affected and interfered strongly, and their distribution indexes were dominant. The landscape indices obtained by the moving window method qualitatively indicated a terrain gradient characteristic in landscape pattern, whereas the accumulative value of the first four axes of sort Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) could explain 96.98% of variability. There existed a significant correlation between landscape pattern indices and terrain factors, and the correlation coefficient between terrain factors of the first axe and its indices features of the first axe reached 0.671. Therefore, terrain factors, including elevation, slope and relief strongly influenced the structure and spatial distribution of land use types in hilly areas.
There have always been kinds of livelihood risks in the environment, which will lower the level of the person or the family welfare, and restrict the region sustainable development. Shiyang River basin is located in the arid area of northwest China, and belongs to the typical arid inland basin. As the major economic activity unit in the downstream of the Shiyang River, the farmers are faced with the serious livelihood risk, which has aggravated the farmers’ livelihood vulnerability. It is extremely urgent now to distinguish the key livelihood risk which the farmers are facing, explore the potential factors which has hindered the farmers to resist the risk and seek the effective risk coping strategy. Through stratified random sampling survey, participatory rural appraisal and investigation of plot, 484 households are investigated and sampled. Farmers are divided into four types: pure agriculture households, agriculture-dependent households, off-farm dependent households and off-farm households. Based on the investigation data, we identify the main livelihood risk which the farmers are faced with and their risk coping strategies, and analyze the factors which influence the farmers′ risk strategy choice using the multi-logistic model. The results show: (1) The market risk, education risk and nature risk have been the main livelihood risks which the farmers are facing in the downstream of Shiyang River, but there are differences among different types of farmers. The top three livelihood risks facing the pure agriculture households and agriculture-dependent households are from market, education and nature; the risks facing the off-farm dependent households are from market, health and education; the risks facing the off-farm households are education, health and pension risk in sequence. (2) The main risk coping strategies include reducing consumption, going out to work, dissaving, asking relatives and friends for help and getting bank loans. However, there are some differences in the risk coping strategy choices among the different types of farmers. The first choice of off-farm households is going out to work, but the other three types of farmers would choose reducing consumption; (3) The most important factors which influence the choices of risk coping strategies are human capital, financial capital and social capital; material capital comes second; nature capital has the weakest influence. Finally, we present the risk control measures to reduce the livelihood risk possibility and give the suggestions to promote the farmers’ risk coping ability.
Climate change caused by increasing CO2 emissions has been a common problem faced by governments, among which, "carbon leakage" created in international trades cannot be ignored. The phenomenon also exists in domestic regional trades. In this paper we use Multi-Regional Input-Output Analysis (MIOA) to estimate CO2 emissions of Beijing, both as producer and consumer, and to calculate the embodied CO2 emissions of each sector. Based on location quotient theory, we construct the embodied CO2 emissions location quotient and analyze the export embodied CO2 emissions location quotient. We found that, Beijing′s total CO2 emissions in consumption and production activities are 142.79 Mt and 116.80Mt, respectively. The embodied CO2 emissions in export and import are 28.15 Mt and 54.15 Mt, respectively. Therefore, Beijing is a net CO2 emissions importer. The three sectors with the largest embodied CO2 emissions in import are construction, electric power and heat power production and supply, and petroleum processing, coking and nuclear fuel processing. The three sectors with the largest embodied CO2 emissions in export are petroleum processing, coking and nuclear fuel processing, metals smelting and pressing, and transport, storage and post. The construction sector′s embodied CO2 emissions in import are mainly from Hebei while the embodied CO2 emissions in import of electric power and heat power production and supply are mainly from Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. The embodied CO2 emissions in import of petroleum processing, coking and nuclear fuel processing are mainly from abroad.
Globalization and regional development is a hot topic in contemporary economic geography. As the main bodies of modern logistics industry, local comprehensive third-party logistics (3PL) companies take an active part in Global Production Networks (GPNs). However, the organization of the spatial network of 3PL was often neglected by researchers. This study uses the case study method to analyze the spatial network of local 3PL companies. Both the first-hand and second-hand data are collected by field work and deeply interview survey with the managers of Tengbang Logistics Company. It is found that the institutes framework of local 3PL is constituted by headquarter-branch company-office agency. And location choices of different institutes have different considerations. The headquarters of comprehensive 3PL companies preferred the capital cities, which gathered much information, capital, labors with high education level. Their location choices of the branch agencies showed the customer oriented, local policy oriented and cost oriented characteristics. The spatial network of local 3PLs, combined with some characteristics of core-periphery model, is different from the spatial network of Express Logistics Company. The expanding process of its spatial network can be divided into four phases: the regional expanding phase, the national expanding phase, the international expanding phase and the global expanding phase. The local logistics companies developed their domestic spatial networks before their internatinalization process. Characteristics of contagious diffusion and jump diffusion could be found during the global expansion process. Finally, we argue that the internationalization of some local 3PLs is inevitable under the process of globalization.
This paper reviewed and evaluated the mobility level and the allocation efficiency of China′s regional factors. Based on the revised global reference price analysis method, this paper applied nonparametric DEA-Hybrid model to evaluate the segmentation level of factor market and factors allocation efficiency in 29 provinces of China. Furthermore, the panel data of each province from 1998 to 2012 was used to construct the comprehensive weight matrix of geography distance and economy scale, and then empirical analysis through spatial Durbin model was carried out to analyze the influence of regional factor market segmentation on factors allocation efficiency. The study figured out the segmentation of factor market in China′s three major economic regions, which experienced a drastic fluctuation from 1998 to 2012, and the segmentation level of factor market is lower in the eastern region compared with that in the central and western regions. The segmentation of regional factor market has negative distortion impact on the factors allocation efficiency with significant spatial spillover effect, which could be inhibited by moderate fiscal decentralization. The "beggar-thy-neighbor" strategy will not only lead to the drop of their own efficiency, but also gradually widen the gap of regional factor allocation efficiency and even degenerate the region to the "Economic Basin" in the national economic development. Moreover, the high proportion of state-owned economy, the optimization of industrial structure, the transportation infrastructure and the foreign direct investment could improve the allocative efficiency of regional factors significantly, while it remains obscure to judge the impact on the promotion of efficiency of opening. Researches on factor market segmentation and efficiency distortion of factors allocation provide great policy enlightenment for deepening the reform in a comprehensive way. It is critical to release a new round of reform dividend so as to accelerate the integration process of domestic factor market and promote trans-regional free flow of different factors. Therefore, emphasis should be placed to remove the barriers among regional factor markets and to give full play to the decisive role of market in allocating resources to improve the allocation efficiency of regional factors.
Based on a detailed description on the conception of human-sea economic system vulnerability (MESV) and the object of Dalian city, the paper establishes an MESV assessment model for the analysis of Dalian city, a typical coastal city, from the aspects of sensitivity and response capacity. Then it uses the entropy method to evaluate the indicators and to calculate their weights, combined with the methods of set pair analysis and vulnerability assessment. This paper aims to examine the evolution trends and major factors influencing vulnerability in the human-sea economic system from 1998 to 2012. At last, it puts forward some concrete development countermeasures. On the whole, the results indicate that vulnerability shows a declining trend in the human-sea economic system of Dalian city during the past 15 years, and the sensitivity to adverse disturbance exhibits a declining trend and the response capacity presents a generally stable, frequent fluctuations for internal and external shocks. The MESV can be divided into two stages: the MESV declines with fluctuation year by year from 1998 to 2005, and shows an inverted U-shaped curve from 2006 to 2012. The evolution of sensitivity can be divided into three stages: decreased obviously form 1998 to 2006; increased slightly from 2007 to 2008, then declined slowly year by year from 2009 to 2012. The evolution of response capacity fluctuation emerged from 1998 to 2002 and then went up steadily from 2002 to 2012. The influence of sensitivity to the vulnerability is significant in human-sea economic system of Dalian city among the sensitivity, response capacity and vulnerability by using regression analysis. The results of obstacle analysis indicate that over-exploitation of marine resources, unreasonable industrial structure and environmental pollution are the most important factors affecting the regional vulnerability degree. It is suggested that to improve response capacity and mitigate the vulnerability in the human-sea economic system of Dalian city, we should change the style of economic growth, reduce over-exploitation and rational utilization of marine resources, develop science and technology and cultivate talents, as well as prevent marine pollution and strengthen environmental protection.
The study of human-environment interactions in rural tourism needs a novel perspective. In this paper, we take the rural area as a local social-ecological system which is based on tourism development and incorporates the environmental and social - economic system with tourism development. This study aims to build a framework of ′panorama′ analysis and thus to study human-environment interactions in rural areas. By reviewing the related theories of social-ecological systems, we choose Shangwang village in Shaanxi province as the study area and then build a local tourism-based social-ecological system. Specifically, based on the tourist classification, we conduct multiple social surveys and interviews in the Shangwang village, which enabled us to identify the key variables of stable state in the local tourism-based social-ecological system and thus analyzed the internal mechanism and internal dynamics of this system. The main conclusions include (1) the tourists can be classified into two categories, i.e., eco-tourists and mass tourists; we build a four-indicator model by analyzing the tourism preference, the quality of ecosystem products and services, and capital variables, and then clarify the key variables. (2) the results of model calculation indicate that the degradation coefficient ω ranges between 0.2587 and 0.3605, and the key variables of each sub-system include: entertainment, the integrity of internal road repairs, the perfection of tourist facilities, and the domination of the whole world by humans which are closely associated with eco-tourists; accommodations, human need for harmonious coexistence with environment, and perfect tourist facilities which are closely associated with mass tourists; the development of tourism conditions which is related to environment; and the degree of degradation of the scenic infrastructure which is the key variable of capital; (3) the local administrators including the policy makers should make adjustments by considering the characteristics and feedbacks of tourist behaviors, so as to alleviate the negative effects of tourism on the local social-ecological system, thereby promoting the sustainable development of rural tourism.
Expressing a series of factors such as human settlements, rural scenery, production mode and lifestyle, rural world heritage sites comprehensively embody "a joint work of human and nature". However, a lack of connotation on rural world heritage sites from World Heritage Center has resulted in an ambiguity in its implicit meaning and understanding deviation in academia. Owing to a frequent trend of tourism utilization in rural world heritage sites, it is necessary to tease out the connotation of rural world heritage sites for examining their tourism resources characteristics and building a relationship between tourism utilization and heritage management. This paper firstly suggests that two sub-categories in which historical village sites from category of World Culture Heritage and industrial landscape sites from category of World Culture Landscape Heritage should be included in the scope of rural world heritage sites. Based on an analysis of connotation, the tourism resources characteristic and development approaches are proposed. First of all, the tourism resources in rural world heritage sites are featured by country landscape and unique world heritage value. Although tourism development exert impact on rural world heritage sites, it would be of positive value in heritage conservation and local community development. Hence, emphasis should be placed on heritage conservation in utilizing tourism resources in addition to sustainable development, market orientation and multi-stakeholders participation. Besides, it is imperative to effectively and reasonably make tourism planning for rural world heritage sites to guarantee authenticity and integrity of heritage value, which depends on both the coordination between heritage protection and tourism utilization, and an efficient heritage management system. In addition, sustainable tourism is widely recommended by experts and scholars since it can satisfy the needs of cultural integrity, ecological processes and biological diversity for both tourists and heritage sites and can fulfil multiple aims of popularity and education, exhibition and presentation, ecological experience and environmental protection. Although common features of world heritage value and rural characteristics are both reflected in rural world heritage sites, two sub-categories of historic village heritage sites and industrial landscape heritage sites globally represent their own unique values and inspire different tourist motives. Thus, the tourism utilization mode should meet diverse tourists′ demand on a basis of exploring the heritage value under different regional contexts. Moreover, local community that is the dynamic motive power and protective object of rural world heritage sites should be involved in an overall coordination of management and development system in order to strengthen initiatives of community participation and create opportunities for their independent tourism operation and world heritage protection. Besides the local community, other stakeholders including foreign investment firms, local governments and NGOs are of great necessity in building an effective coordinated model in heritage management and sustainable tourism development. Three models are concluded for reference according to respective developing stage and need.
