In the internet era, "Big data" wave spread rapidly to the economic and social fields. Geography is the natural laboratory in which big data research and application can be seen at work. The written speech focused on collision between geography and big data. It reviewed big data research and application in geography study. We also discussed the opportunities and challenges we would face during this collision. In summary, big data has had a certain influence on the geography research, especially in the human geography domain. Geographic information science will develop rapidly in the internet era of big data. But there are few disturbances in physical geography. Big data can not change the core proposition and the basic paradigm of geography. We should hold an open inclusive attitude to big data theory study and application research in geography.
This paper presents necessity for researching urban ecological problems and eco-city problems, analyses development process and influencing factors of the eco-city using historical analysis and document retrieval methods, and discusses the effect of urban ecological theory, urbanization rate, national macro environment policy and construction of eco-city. This paper introduces basic features of ecological city construction in China and raises the main problems of ecological city construction, through analyzing national macro environment policy since 1989. The results are listed as follows: (1) Beijing City, Tianjin City, Shanghai City and Jiangsu Province are the core areas of eco-city study, and most of researchers have senior professional titles. (2) Most programs on eco-city study are the projects from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, or provincial and ministerial projects. The achievements are mostly focusing on engineering technology, industry guidance and many other projects. (3) The most focused fields are related with eco-city construction, ecological urban planning and design, ecology and sustainable urban development, urban ecology and ecological environment. (4) To strengthen the eco-city study in China, we should place emphasis on some aspects such as urbanization, eco-city development, national environmental management ecology, macro-management policy orientation. (5) There are five basic features of eco-city construction in China, including raising awareness, emphasizing environmental factor construction, integrating residence and production function, coordinating urban and local areas, and assessing qualitatively and quantitatively. (6) This paper summarizes four aspects concentrating on development orientation, regional environmental impact, main function regionalization, planning and management in the construction of eco- city in China.
Based on daily observation climate data and the Universal Thermal Climate Index, thermal comfort and its trend during 1960-2013 in 12 key tourism cities of China were investigated. According to the intra-annual distribution of thermally comfortable days, these cities can be classified into 5 categories: (1) Beijing, Dalian, Harbin, Hohhot, Shanghai, Urumqi and Xi'an are thermally comfortable during spring and autumn; Chongqing and Kunming are comfortable during spring, autumn and winter; Lhasa is comfortable during spring, summer and autumn; Guangzhou is comfortable during winter; Sanya is uncomfortable throughout the year. (2) From 1960 to 2013, annual average UTCI shows significant increasing trends for all the cities except Sanya, among which Harbin and Dalian have the largest increases of 1.73 oC/10a and 1.44 oC/10a. Monthly average UTCI also shows consistent positive trends, with larger increases in winter and smaller increases in summer. (3) The annual frequencies of heat stress and cold stress decrease and increase respectively for most cities. The annual number of thermally comfortable days increases in Harbin, Urumqi, Beijing, Lhasa, Xi'an, Shanghai and Sanya, especially in Lhasa where a large increase of 8.9 d/10a was detected. Hohhot, Dalian, Kunming, Chongqing and Guangzhou exhibit decreasing trends in the annual number of thermally comfortable days. (4) The monthly number of thermally comfortable days decreases from June to September, and increases from November to February in most cities. During March, April, May and October, the number of thermally comfortable days tends to increase in cities with relatively high latitudes or altitudes, and decrease in other cities.
Since the year of 2000, Beijing has promoted industrial structure upgrading, which leads to the spatial reconstruction of economic activity. Concurrently, three factors will result in a new round of urban spatial expansion, which are residential suburbanization, mismatch between workplace and residence, and the construction of transport infrastructure. An urban spatial expansion model was put forward in this paper, in which we take natural factors, neighborhood factors, planning factors and socioeconomic factors into account. What's more, the principal factors and issues that occurred in the development process were analyzed in order to provide scientific basis for well-organized urban expansion in Beijing. This research shows that the static accessibility (a single year) has a significant negative correlation with urban expansion; integrated transportation accessibility has no significant positive effect in guiding the urban expansion in Beijing. Percentage of urban construction within neighborhood is positively correlated with land expansion. However, the smaller proportion of agricultural land, forest land and waters land will reduce the probability of land development. The role of overall urban planning in guiding urban expansion has gained attention increasingly, whose impact on urban expansion is of most significant. The spatial distribution of permanent residents, secondary and tertiary industrial enterprises have no significant effect on the land development. This paper argues that the static accessibility has a significant negative correlation with urban expansion, namely the region with poorer accessibility was unlikely to develop the land, which is in line with the urban sprawl structure of blind expansion and residential suburbanization in Beijing; the negative correlation between dynamic accessibility and land use change was also found, indicating that the higher region's degree of accessibility does not necessarily lead to higher probability of land development, which also implicates that the probability of land development around the existing built-up area is far higher than that along the rail transit. Therefore, this paper points out that more attention should be attached to the dynamic transport accessibility and its key role in leading the reasonable urban land use pattern and the rational urban development, which would be effective in avoiding urban sprawl and optimizing urban expansion.
Frequent fluctuations of rice cropping systems year by year induced by market and agricultural policies in the major rice-producing area (MRPA) in southern China have exerted much challenge in maintaining regional food security. In this study, the MRPA of Poyang Lake Plain (PLP) in northern Jiangxi province was selected as the study area, a total of 682 households' questionnaires that focused on rice cropping systems and the related driving factors were gathered during 2014-2015 in 19 counties within the MRPA of PLP, and the current situation of rice cropping systems and decision behavior of respondent households were analyzed accordingly. Then the driving factors and its related impacts were examined using the Logistic Regression analysis. The results showed that: (1) about 60.4% of the respondent households in the MRPA only cultivated double cropping rice, 26.7% of those respondents just chose to grow single cropping rice, and the last part (10.2 %) of all the respondents preferred to plant both of the rice types. Thus, the double-rice cropping system was still the dominant type. However, 5.4% of the double-rice cropping households had to cultivate a single crop per year, either early rice or late rice, due to the lack of irrigation in the hilly area or water logging lasting a long time during rice plants transplantation in the low-lying area. The total proportion of farming abandonment, farmland transfer and occupation for other purposes reached 3.7%. (2) The net-income per mu (Chinese unit, one hectare equals to 15 mu) for double-rice cropping system was higher than that of single cropping rice, about 323.9 Yuan (RMB). However, the ratio of input-output and the rate of profit for single-rice cropping system were about 15.9% and 115.9%, respectively higher than those of double-rice cropping system. (3) Income level, irrigation condition, labor force, paddy field quality and distance to paddy field were the five major factors which influenced the household decision behavior in rice cropping systems in the MRPA. Among them, income level and irrigation condition were the two key driving factors for the changes in rice cropping systems, with the corresponding effect ratio of 36.6% and 28.5%, respectively.
Understanding the change characteristics of farmers' behavior in land use and its impact on food production is very useful and necessary for us to clearly judge China's food security situation, and has important implications for the formulation of relevant policies to ensure the security of China's food. With a stratified random sample method, we surveyed 23 villages of 4 counties, one city and one district in Xianning, Hubei province, and collected 1252 farmers' behavior data in land use. From the perspective of farmer's labor arrangements, allocation of cultivated land resources, patterns of agricultural land use and factors inputs, this paper analyzed the farmers' behavior changes in land use during the past 30 years and its impact on food production. The results show: (1) In the process of land use, farm households substantially transfer labor force to non-agricultural areas outside the region, the current main agricultural labors characterized by female, middle-aged and low educational degree labor force, especially in the hills. The labor input per unit of land area dropped significantly. In the adjustment of land use structure, farm households enlarged the operation scale of total land area as well as dryland and reduced the sown area of main food crops (paddy), especially in the plains. The patterns of farmers' arable land use such as field plowing, seeding planting, weeding and harvesting have changed profoundly, and labor forces were replaced by agricultural machinery. As for the other factors of production inputs, farmyard manures were reduced, and NPK chemical fertilizers were gradually replaced by compound fertilizers. The consumption of pesticides increased quickly. More and more families used agricultural service in land use, and the level of agricultural mechanization was improved significantly. (2) In the process of farmer behavior changing, the labor productivity, the land productivity and the grain commodity rate significantly increased by 4.61%, 29.69% and 50.56%, respectively. However, the total regional production of the main food crops and the average amount of the main food crops of farmer household decreased by 10.49% and 10.50%, respectively. Regional food security capacity has been weakened. (3) The labor productivity, land productivity and grain commodity rate of the main food production in the hills increased higher than in the plains. The total regional production of paddy and the average amount of farmer household improved a little in the hills, but decreased in the plains. The gravity center of paddy production presented a sloping phenomenon in space from the plains to the hills and mountains, from the high commercial value land to the low value land. (4) In order to combat the challenge of food production decrease because of the farmer's behavior change in land use and to ensure the security of food production, Chinese government should stabilize the main food crops' sown area in the marginalization area, formulate more positive policies to encourage the circulation of land, enlarge the scale of food production of farm household and improve land productivity of major food crops. These farmers who produce paddy rice with a large-scale land use should become the key supporter of national favorable policy and the food security policy.
The relationship between transportation infrastructure construction and regional economic development is the focus of transportation geography. But the current researches about the inner relationship of them are still controversial. Consequently, in order to discuss the influence of accessibility change on towns' economic development from spatial econometric perspective, this paper introduces different concepts of accessibility and embeds them into spatial econometric model and then, creates two-order spatial lag regression model containing the changes of accessibility and economic development. The results show: The transportation construction enlarges the absolute gap between areas north and south of the Yangtze River, reinforces the cohesion of some towns attached to Jiangsu province in the Yangtze River Delta, so that the central part of Jiangsu are smoothly integrated into the Yangtze River Delta. However, during the "11th Five-Year Plan" Period, in Jiangsu province, the areas close to developed cities have less economic development under the background of transportation constructions. Instead, they improve the urban development environment. The transportation constructions have a positive effect on sustainable economic development. It is crucial to focus on the structural benefits of transportation construction to economic development in the upgrade of transportation infrastructure.
At present, the global enters the economic recovery period of international financial crisis, which is also a major adjustment period of international industrial division pattern, trade pattern, the focus of world economy and the contrast of economic power. The overall economic growth of advanced economies is still relatively weak. The change of global demand structure and various forms of trade protectionism have resulted in China's export growth slow down in terms of external demand, which has a great influence on the coastal areas of China, especially the development of marine economy. In the meantime, the rapid growth of China's coastal areas since the reform and opening up has led to high resource environment load, and contradictions among resources, environment and economic development are prominent. At present, the transition of domestic economy into a "new normal" economy has been marked by rapid growth. It not only indicated that the growth rate of economy may slow down, but also showed that the power of economic growth will be converted and the mode of development will change. Marine economy is an export-oriented economy, and coastal areas are the pioneer of China's economic development. Therefore, it is imminent for quality and efficiency improvement, restructuring and development of marine economy. Based on the connotation of marine economic transformation, 11 coastal provinces and municipalities of China (not including Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan) are taken as the research objects in this paper. The index system to measure the effect of China's marine economic transformation is established, including six dimensions. The comprehensive evaluation method of combining rough sets and the Grey theory is used to measure and study the effect of marine economic transformation in China from 2001 to 2011. Then, kernel density estimation model and GIS spatial analysis technology are adopted to analyze temporal and spatial pattern evolution of the results, so as to reveal the inner change rules. The conclusions can be drawn as follows. (1) At the national level, China's overall marine economic transformation was concentrated in the mid-low value area from 2001 to 2010. Since 2010, significant results in terms of transition have been achieved in all the regions, and the gap in transformation of marine economy has narrowed, but an overall gap still exists. (2) As viewed from the dimension, the development degrees of marine economy maintain a steady improvement, but the difference in spatial pattern has not changed significantly; positive spatial trends with rapid change and significant transformation effect are presented in marine economic transformation degrees, development condition support degrees, resource intensive utilization degrees and ecological environment responsivity; the marine industry employment degrees show a reverse spatial trend; it is proven that the transformation has a "squeezing out effect" on marine industry employment, as well as an important impact on marine industry employment. (3) The temporal and spatial pattern evolution of China's marine economic transformation is the result of many factors, including resource endowment, location conditions, industrial foundation and differences in hinterland economy. In the future, national policies, the level of science and technology and marine management system will be major factors affecting the marine economic transformation of coastal provinces and cities in China.
In economic terms, the total growth, spatial correlation and traits of pattern evolution in four temporal phases for the period 1992-2012 were analyzed using Explorative Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) and by selection of both Gross Domestic Product (GDP) average growth quantity and average growth rates from 343 counties and districts in Northeastern China labeled as variables. Our studies revealed the following results: (1) Economic growth in the studied region tended to shift from strong agglomerations to weak ones; this was highlighted by the two facts. One the one hand, there was an evident distribution in those regions in which cold spots and hot spots occurred in the form of circle. On the other hand, distribution of the latter ones changed from southeastern areas to southern and western areas. (2) The average economic growth rates of units decreased gradually, whose uniform tendency is compared with the finding that the distribution of valued regions bears discriminative characteristics. Specifically, high-valued regions changed from a scattered distribution to a concentrated one, with migration from mid-south to west, which was in striking contrast to the finding that low-valued regions displayed a scattered distribution, with migration from southeast to northwest. (3) Average economic growth rates have undergone the process of spatial agglomeration, progressing from weak-strong agglomerations to weak ones, and assume a similarity in the distribution change of regions in which hotspots and cold spots occur. That is, their statuses tended to change from scattered-concentrated areas to scattered areas. Being a different form from the two aforementioned tendency changes, the growth rate of units located in the central-south parts of Liaoning Province and Xilingol League indicated a relatively high level. (4) Units with a weaker basis displayed a higher growth rate, which, to some extent, shows that they have increased potentially and are at an advantage for future development; however, as a whole this finding seems to represent branches of the overall economic pattern in which the rapid and recent development has little effect in this case, so those units with better economic status located near the railway between Harbin and Dalian remain to be core areas of regional development, which has exerted an enormous influence over other regions with resources in ways.
The optimization of land development is a core issue for land planning. A reasonable regionalization program is the foundation of land development and utilization. Based on the sustainable development theory and the multifunctional characteristics of land resource in Henan province, this paper, taking the society, economy, resources and ecological environment as influencing factors, constructed a multifunctional index land use system. Under this system, we divided the 18 cities of Henan into 4 area types using the fuzzy clustering analysis method. Then, entropy method was applied for function evaluation of the 4 types. The results showed that, the functional evaluation values of critical development function area are all in the first place; in the agricultural development function area, the agricultural production function value is the highest, whereas the rest of the function values are relatively weak; all the function values are not prominent in the comprehensive developmental function area; and the economy function, the society function and the resource function in ecological priority function area are mainly influenced by ecological environment function. Finally, the feasibility of the index evaluation system and the zoning method were verified by comparison, indicating that the land planning program can provide technical support for provincial land preparation and the sustainable use of land resources.
Human-induced land use/cover change (LUCC) has significant effects on the climatic and ecological processes at both global and regional scales, especially in the last 300 years. It is an important driving force of global environmental change and has been one of the hot topics of international concerns. Since the modernization started after industrial revolution, the expansion of built-up areas (construction land) profoundly changed the status of LUCC and made the landscape of urban areas become a notable feature of a certain region. Limited by the available data, reconstruction of historical built-up areas confronts with some difficulties. Supported by the data of historical records, modern statistical and natural resources, the method of reconstructing historical construction land (urban land and rural residential land) of the typical time section in the mid-Qing Dynasty was proposed in this paper. We reconstructed the scale and spatial pattern of urban land by using data including the perimeter of ancient city wall, the shape of the city and the points of city location. Meanwhile, the characteristics of livability and continuity of land, rural population, per capita living space requirements, and the points of potential rural settlements were used as the foundation for rural residential land reconstruction. Based on the theoretical analysis, this study took Jiangsu Province as the study case and chose the year of 1820 as the research year for the availability of historical data. A spatial distribution of construction land with a resolution of 100 m×100 m was finally established. The results showed that: (1) Under the circumstances of lacking effective data, it is a viable attempt to reconstruct the spatial pattern of historical construction land by exploring the most potential of historical documents and making proper deduction based on the modern construction land patterns. (2) As for relative factors calculation, the differences in features of combination of towns, the urbanization rate, farming radius and residential patterns should be considered. At the same time, different historical situations of each area should be taken into account in order to determine the scale and spatial pattern of land rationally. (3) The total area of construction land of Jiangsu Province in 1820 was 1006.84 km2, in which urban land was 222.90 km2 and rural residential land was 783.93 km2. Compared with related studies, the main difference came from research assumptions and computation basis of study units.
Through 483 chorographies of the Ming and Qing dynasties and other related historical books, supplemented with contemporary extraction, 3789 notes that recorded storm disaster occurring in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces from 1368 to 1911 were collected. Through a careful scrutiny, 2119 notes of storm surges were sorted out. Based on these historical notes, temporal and spatial distributions of the storm surges from 1368 to 1911 were reconstructed and analyzed.
Analysis of the temporal distribution of the storm surges shows that 80% of the storm surges occurred from July to September. Nearly 68.56% of storm surges occurred monthly, in Chinese Lunar Calendar, either from 13th to 19th, or from 27th to 4th of the next month. Nearly 28.16% of storm surges occurred, either from 5th to 12th, or from 20th to 26th. The facts reflect the lunar influence. The wavelet analysis shows that there are periodic oscillations of 17 years, 30 years, and 54 years.
Most of historical notes recorded the submerged places by transgressions caused by storm surges. With analysis of historical notes and corresponding DEM of the study area, the maximum transgressive extending lines caused by serious storm surges were observed. In Northern Jiangsu Plain, the eastern area of the Fangong Dike was frequently submerged by sea water during storm surges, whose boundary line is almost identical with the 4-m contour above sea level. Along the Yellow River's old watercourse, the transgression caused by storm surges could impact Andong County, and the corresponding sea tide could reach as far as Liuhe.
In the Yangtze River Delta, to the north of Fushan, Meili, Liuhe, Yuepu, east of Qingong Dike, and south of Lihu Dike, the area is almost below the 4-m contour above sea level, which was at a high risk level to transgression. Chongming, Changxing, and Hengsha could be submerged by sea water while serious storm surges happened. Along rivers' watercourses, the sea tide caused by storm surges could reach the eastern bank of Taihu Lake.
In the northern Hangzhou Bay area, to the south of Tangzhen, Haining, Huangwan, Haiyan, Zhapu, Dushan, the area was at a high risk level to transgression. Along rivers' watercourses, sea tide caused by storm surges could reach Tongxiang, Shimen, Jiaxing, Xiushui, Jiashan. In the southern Hangzhou Bay area, to the north of Wenyan, Xiaoshan, Kanshan, Lihaisuo, Xiagaishan, Linshanwei, Sitang, Niniutang, Shitangshan, Zhenhai, the area was at a high risk level to transgression. Along rivers' watercourses, transgression could reach Shaoxing, Shangyu, Ningbo. Along the Qiantang River, the sea tide caused by storm surges could reach as far as Fuyang.
For the eastern coastal area of Zhejiang, the high risk areas threatened by transgressions caused by storm surges were limited to the narrow coastal plain, which was below the 6-m contour above sea level.
In this study, we collected and revised the cultivated land tax data from the Tie Hu List, which recorded the cultivated land tax of the Midstream Yarlung Zangbo River Valley of Tibet in 1830, the data were transformed to modern cropland land area. Then the gridding method was used to reconstruct the cropland spatial pattern with a resolution of 1 km by 1 km in the study area in 1830. The results show that: as a whole, the cropland area of this region in 1830 was 895 km2, among which, 39% was cultivated by the Government, 31% was cultivated by the Nobles, and 29% by Temples. In terms of the distribution pattern, the cultivated land was found in only 27.4% of the grids, and it was distributed dispersedly in the main stream basins of Yarlung Zangbo River Valley and its tributary basins. As for the intensity of land use, the lower level reclamation index reflects the situation of local lower level agricultural production. The average reclamation index of the whole study area was only 0.6%. However, the spatial difference of the reclamation index was obvious. The average reclamation index of Lhasa was 6.3%, which was the greatest in the study area. The average reclamation index of Shigatse, Gyangze, Nedong and Qonggyai is about 3%, while Gongbu and the western counties has the lowest reclamation index, which was less than 1%.
The collective memory of traditional villages carries the villages' traditional culture and people's nostalgia. Against the backdrop of rapid urbanization and mass migration, the rural culture and collective memory are facing the crisis of fading away. Studying the collective memory of traditional villages is of great significance in the aspects of rural planning, tourism development, rural memory project and so on. Taking the documentary Homesickness in Mind as study material, this paper selects the most representative 60 traditional villages, and adopts the literature analysis, content analysis and other research methods to build the three elements of collective memory in traditional villages, namely "subject, object and time" and makes a further discussion on these three elements. The main results are demonstrated as follows: (1) The subject elements are given priority to the middle aged and elderly ones, who has special appeal and emotional characteristics; (2) The object elements to be remembered include the substantial spatial information and figure-event clues, which conforms to the values highly praised by traditional villages; (3) The time element includes the peopl's perception indicator to time, which takes the events of natural cycle and natural environment as references, and also covers the time axis of collective memory, through the characteristic of which we could find that the collective memory of traditional villages mostly prevails in the initial-development, heyday and contemporary phases; (4) With the transition of productivity and people's lifestyle, the three elements of the traditional village collective memory are also in constant evolution. Finally, the application recommendations are proposed with the combination of rural planning practices and rural tourism.
Human geography puts emphasis on the subjectivity of "place". Thus, concepts showing emotional connections between people and place, such as "place identity", are reexamined. In the context of tourism development, all parties scramble for the ownership and presentation of heritages. Therefore, place identity of local people is reconstructed. As the first World Cultural Heritage in Guangdong Province, and the only one World Heritage theming overseas Chinese culture in China, Kaiping Diaolou and Villages is a typical case for the study of "impacts of tourism development on vicissitudes of place identity". Upon literature analysis, observations and interviews, this paper elaborates on the vicissitudes of residents’ place identity under the development of heritage tourism, and analyses the specific connotations that Kaiping -- "home of Diaolou" carries. Findings show that production of landscape in tourism industry makes Diaolou highly symbolic, and obligatorily as an emblem of the place. Besides, image of the "home of Diaolou" is not fully unfolded in the place identity of residents, and that presentation of Diaolou is transforming from inheritance to heritage. For "home of Diaolou", the historic continuity is multiply dissevered, while the spatial boundary is clear and closed.
This paper seeks to find the pattern and influencing factors of tourism efficiency and the decomposition efficiency in Chinese scenic areas, specifically from 1992 to 2012. First, these efficiencies are measured via the integrated methods of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Bootstrap-DEA. Then, we discuss how the tourism decomposition efficiency affects the comprehensive efficiency. Finally, a quantitative analysis and test of the influencing factors are conducted using the System GMM method. The results indicate the following: (1) The tourism efficiency in scenic areas is fluctuating overall; however, most of them have not yet reached the DEA optimal. The correction results show that, compared with the original value, the tourism comprehensive efficiency in scenic areas is smaller on the whole, and the high value area is mainly distributed along the coastal zone, the Guanzhong plain (Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces) as well as the southwest region, more significant especially in the Bohai Rim and the eastern coast. (2) Throughout the entire time node, the number of scattered points close to the diagonal of pure technical efficiency to comprehensive efficiency is significantly higher than that of scale efficiency to comprehensive efficiency. Meanwhile, as time goes on, the increasing trend of pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency deviates from the diagonal in the scatter diagram. This appears to be vertically extended along the diagonal line, showing pure technical efficiency as having more influence on comprehensive efficiency. (3) From the perspective of factors influencing the tourism total factor productivity, economic development level, the degree of marketization, traffic conditions, level of science and technology, and system supply factors have significant positive effects on tourism efficiency. The effect of tourism resource endowment shows a significant reduction and the influence of the industrial structure changes is significantly negative.
It is evident that the tourism efficiency spatial structure presents certain differences among scenic areas. The unbalanced development pattern explains that the eastern region is more likely to get the tourism resources than the other regions. However, with the increasing amount of tourism input, the utilization efficiency of resource factors is decreasing. This is mainly due to the irrational and erratic tourism industry structure, which could give rise to the inefficient allocation of resources. Therefore, the tourism industry structure must be transformed and improved so that the scale effect of tourism economy could be enlarged, so as to make the regional tourism efficiency develop evenly and steadily.
