The man-land relationship is ancient but remains a relatively young research area within geography. As the connotations of this relationship have developed continuously in concert with human society, man-land characteristics tend to exhibit particular time stamps. Studies in this area have performed a basic scientific support role as a component of the development of geography and the formulation of major national development strategies ever since areal system theory for man-land relationships was proposed by Wu Chuanjun. The central status that this field occupies in geographical research has also been gradually strengthened over time. In the context of ever growing conflicts between man and nature and with the aim of furthering our understanding of man-land relationships, this series of papers aims to explore the theoretical foundation that underlies the dynamic evolution of this field based initially on areal system theory. The second aim of this work is to extract and understand evolutionary processes as well as dominant characteristics and mechanisms of change to further discuss feasible methods to coordinate human activities and benefit nature. It is generally the case that the foundation underlying the evolution of man-land relationships is the nature of the game between humans and nature within the development space. The evolution of this relationship within China has been accelerating markedly and a number of combinations are becoming ever clearer. Technological progress has also led to an increase in inputs and resource allocation while the first-generation contradiction characterized by the concept of "amount" in this context has disappeared. At the same time, a second-generation contradiction characterized by the concept of "quality" has also developed; typical characteristics in this case include the fact that food shortages are decreasing while other problems including soil degradation and water pollution caused by food production are intensifying. Although regional resources are no longer in short supply across China, problems such as ecological degeneration and environmental pollution caused by their allocation across multi-regions have increased. It is therefore necessary to enhance our comprehensive understanding of the evolution of man-land relationships as well as our own role in this system.
Resources and environment have not only provided material for the birth and survival of mankind, but also shaped the growth and development of human civilization. No matter how developed the world will become, exploitation degree and possession level of natural resources and environment are the basic premise of the national and regional socio-economic development. This is in particular true for China as only one of the ancient civilized nations without interruption and the most populous developing country today in the world. As the world's second largest economy, China's future sustainable development requires not only an innovative growth capital and technology, but also a secure and stable resources-environmental base. Drawing on an integrated factor analysis of resources and environment combined with geographical conditions for development, the paper shows that: First, resources-environmental base levels and development conditions of the country are the primary factors in determining the overall spatial pattern of human activities, which is made up by three major regions from the southeast to the northwest, respectively, as the appropriate, relatively appropriate and not suitable regions for large-scale development. And these three major regions show a pyramid structure of national natural ecosystem overall development. Second, such a spatial pattern has formed not only as a result of differentiated resources and environment background levels but also the geographical conditions for development of the regions. From the long-term practice of human activities, the geographical conditions are even more important. Finally, the national human activities have not ever crossed the threshold set by the resources and environmental factors and geographical conditions together, whether the country has been in the age of agricaltural or industrialization. With China's modernization transforming to ecological civilization, re-examining the mode of resource-environment exploitation and exploring a more scientific and rational development model for different major regions are essential to human-land coordination and long-term stability. Apparently, the maximum mitigation and containment of tension of national human-land relationship should be the long-term objectives and tasks for China's future sustainable development, with a better understanding of the pattern of resources-environmental base. With the scientific and technological innovation and effective management of resources-environmental base, China should change the production mode from tradition mode dominated by inputs of resource-environment to a new way dominated by inputs of human intelligence.
The evolution of man-land relationship is inheritable. Understanding the evolution process of man-land relationship and its mechanism from the historical perspective can help us to increase the comprehensive cognition about this relationship. According to the core connotation of man-land relationship, this paper points out that resources and environment factors are the chief interaction point between human and "land", and human are in the positive position in man-land relationship. Based on this, the paper focuses on the primary human-needs, the main human activities and their action intensity as well as the cognitive ability on "land" to unfold the evolution process, and then to generalize the evolution characteristics of man-land relationship in China, and further, to extract the dynamic factors. Findings suggest that: with human productivity level rising, the perception of human to "land" has experienced successively the following periods: Almost unconscious, Unity of man and land, Mutual matching of man and land, Superior man than land, Co-exist harmoniously man and land. Accordingly, the man-land relationship in China has gone through from the bud, to the singleness relationship centered on farmland, then to the disordered multielement relationships centered on farmland, freshwater, energy and mineral resources etc. till nowadays to well-organized multielement relationships chased by human again. Historically, the dynamic mechanism of the man-land relationship evolution in China is that, productivity is the most core motivation, which promoted the development of humans' ability to act on "land"; The population is the most active power, since the population demands, and the population size and together quality increasing, enhance the closeness between human and "land"; the production relationship mainly influences the evolution process of man-land relationship indirectly through influencing human's enthusiasm for production and resource ownership; both wars and natural disasters have promoted and hindered effects on the historical evolution process of man-land relationship in China. Taking history as a mirror, the study of man-land relationship cannot be divorced from its varying background, both theoretically and practically. Also, the formation of contradictory between human and "land" in modern China has its inevitability. The basis of long-term harmonies between human and "land" rests on promoting human's scientific cognition about "man -land relationship", and also adjusting human's behaviors under various local conditions. Besides, speeding up the technology development and upgrading the mode of production are also important approaches to relieving the present contradictions between human activities and multiple land elements.
A reasonable utilization of resource and environment is the key to achieve Chinese man-land relationship harmonious evolution in the future. This paper evaluates Chinese provincial resource input and environmental output efficiencies from 2000 to 2015 based on set pair analysis and entropy method. The results show that: (1) In the rank of resources input efficiencies, the efficiency of agricultural land and pesticides and fertilizers input is high, the benefit of water resource input is moderate, and the efficiency of energy input is low, and in the rank of resources input efficiencies, the efficiency of wastewater discharge is the highest, the efficiency of sulfur dioxide emission is moderate, and the efficiency of soot emission is the lowest. (2) From the view of the tendency of the similarities, differences and counters of Chinese provincial resource and environmental efficiencies, most of eastern coastal provinces present high rank, while central and western provinces present low rank, the pattern of decrease from east to west is very clear. (3) The eastern coastal provinces which present high comprehensive efficiencies of resource input and environmental output are distributed in Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan; conversely, the provinces which present low comprehensive efficiencies of resource input and environmental output are mainly distributed in the central and western provinces such as Shanxi, Ningxia, Qinghai, Gansu, Guizhou and Inner Mongolia.
As an important component of social-environmental relationship system, energy elements evolve with the total amount of energy development and utilization, energy using structure and economic growth. Based on elastic decoupling index and the generalized LMDI method, this paper studies the dynamic relationship between China's energy consumption and economic growth and the driving factors of energy consumption growth. Results show that: (1) Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the total energy consumption and GDP growth in China present an exponential growth curve, and their growth shows a high degree of consistency. Coal and oil are still the main body of China's energy consumption. (2) The elastic decoupling between energy consumption and economic growth is featured by obvious periodic characteristics, and the overall relationship between the two is kept in a relatively optimistic status (the weak decoupling). (3) The decoupling status for different types of energy consumption and economic growth show certain differences. In recent years, along with the clean transformation of energy consumption, natural gas, primary electricity and other energy consumption and economic growth are presented in a negative decoupling or extension connection status. (4) Energy intensity effect is the most important factor contributing to reducing energy consumption growth. Investment effect is the leading factor contributing to energy consumption growth, and the land effect is an important factor promoting the growth of energy consumption, with its contribution rate being 35.65%. The overall contribution of industrial structure effect, labor force effect and energy structure effect to promote energy consumption growth is around 15%.
The pattern of industrial resources and environmental pressures have changed before and after China's economy entering the new normal. Summarizing the spatial evolution characteristics and their influencing factors of industrial resources and environmental pressures is the main aim of this paper. To construct the industrial resources pressures and industrial environmental pressure evaluation system, the spatio-temporal characteristics of these two pressures are analyzed based on the sample of 285 Chinese cities. This paper uses spatial econometric models to quantify the influences of industrial resources and environmental pressures at the direction and the intensity. The results show that: (1) The industrial resources pressures in eastern China tend to be higher than those of western China. The coastal industrial agglomeration area is industrial resources pressures hot spot region. As the main affecting factors of the industrial resources pressures, the positive driving effects of industrial assets scale and production benefit have been reduced and increased, while the negative driving effect of industrial labor production level has been reduced. (2) The industrial environmental pressures are higher in western China than in eastern China and higher in northern China than in southern China and this spatial pattern tends to be less efficient. Industrial agglomeration area in northern China is industrial environmental pressures hot spot region. The positive driving effect of industry assets on industrial environmental pressures have been weakened. Environmental regulation has changed from promotion to inhibition, while industrialization from not obvious to positive. The function of industrial opening level and industrial production benefit have been weakened from positive and negative respectively to not obvious. (3) Through comparing the main factors of the two pressures pattern, it is found that the dynamic mechanism of industrial environmental pressure pattern is complex. Under the background of China's economy entering the new normal, the strength and direction of influencing factors have more effect on industrial environmental pressure.
The optimization of the industrial structure and its coordination with the spatial structures are the two present core issues that need to be solved urgently in the restructuring of China's manufacturing industry. Based on the above scale enterprise data, this paper employs the up-grade (UPG) index of industrial structure and GIS tools to investigate the spatial-temporal patterns of UPG index of China's manufacturing from 1998 to 2013 at a multi-scale. Then it further explores the influencing factors of UPG index at the prefecture level by comparing the OLS regression and spatial regression model. The research shows that: on the national scale, with the manufacturing output increasing by 10.67 times, the UPG index increased from 5.987 to 6.225, but declined slightly after the 2008 financial crisis. On the regional scale, the UPG index has decreased successively in accordance with the eastern, the northeastern, the western, the central parts of the country. The UPG index of northeastern region has decreased sharply since 2003, while this index in central and western regions has kept the bottom position during the study period and experienced a slight decline. On the provincial scale, the UPG index in the municipalities and eastern coastal provinces are relatively high and growing faster while that in the central and western regions, especially in most frontier provinces, are relatively low and growing slowly, or even declining. On the prefecture scale, the hot-spot of UPG index is in the transition from the traditional industrial city to the eastern coastal city, which has gradually formed a core-periphery mode orientated by the center of the Yangtze River Delta. The increase of labor wage is the main driving force of the promotion of the UPG index at the prefecture level while the effects of innovation and manufacturing scale decrease gradually. The consumption level and development zones play a significant role in improving the UPG index in the later stage. The agglomeration of FDI has generally restrained the improvement of the UPG index, and the role of the three urban agglomerations in coastal regions is not significant in increasing the UPG index.
The spatial restructuring of industries is usually accompanied with the upgrade of industrial structure. This study analyzes the changes in the industrial composition and the spatial distribution of manufacturing employment in Beijing from 2008 to 2013 based on the economic census data of Beijing. The analysis shows that during the period from 2008 to 2013, the adjustment of manufacturing employment structure of Beijing has speeded up. We categorize the manufacturing industries of Beijing into two groups, namely declining and growing industries, according to the changes in their employment shares to the total manufacturing employment of Beijing. Although the spatial changes of declining industries were more significant than those of growing industries, the redistribution of manufacturing industries from 2008 to 2013 was still mainly driven by growing industries. Since growing industries have become more concentrated, the overall spatial change of manufacturing industries in Beijing was also characterized by the increase of industrial agglomeration. The analysis also shows that growing industries tended to be concentrated in a few sub-districts along the Sixth Ring Road, especially those areas that intersect with major highways. Through analyzing the industrial composition of each sub-district by the Herfindahl index, we find that the areas with more manufacturing industries, especially those with more growing industries, have become more specialized. We identify the specialized industries of each sub-district based on the location quotient of each industry in the sub-district, and the analysis shows that the areas with more declining industries usually have a larger number of specialized industries, while the areas with more growing industries tend to have fewer but more significant specialized industries. This may imply that with the industrial restructuring and the spatial agglomeration of manufacturing activities in Beijing, growing industries are inclined to be specialized in certain areas and form more distinct geographical functional divisions. The south part of Beijing is worthy of attention, since it may face more adjustments and challenges with the dramatic industrial restructuring of Beijing's economy.
As the Chinese population and industrial highly concentrated area, eastern coastal areas accepted a large volume of foreign and domestic investment and became one of the global factories. However, this industrial development process was at the cost of high resources input, environmental pollution, ecological damage and land resource shortage. Taking prefecture-level cities as research units, this paper defined the industrial green transformation coefficient and environmental pressure change coefficient, analyzed the spatial patterns of evolution of industrial structure and efficient and environmental pressure. Further, 114 prefecture-level administrative units were classified into four types of zones with a two-dimensional four-quadrant division method. Also, corresponding suggestions for green transformation routes and environmental regulation were proposed to different zones were proposed.
As for pressure reduction & industries green transformation zones, they are mainly composed of two types of area, one is the core cities of Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta urban agglomerations and the other is the inland cities taking ecological conservation as the regional main function. We should encourage the former to develop smart and high-level manufacturing, and limit the entering and layout of high-pollution industries for the latter. As for pressure reduction & industries non-green transformation zones, they are only located in several core cities of urban agglomeration, such as Beijing, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Dalian, which have some heavy chemical industrial projects, and some cities in eastern Guangdong and eastern Guangxi. We should strengthen the function of "command and control" at the heart of the urban agglomeration for those core cities, develop modern service industries, limit the development of heavy and chemical industries and drop out low-level manufactures based on the strict environmental standard. Given the environmental problems caused by industrial spatial transfer in some cities of western Guangdong and eastern Guangxi, attention should be given to increasing technical level of transferring products producing and pollutants processing. As for pressure intensification & industries green transformation zones, they mainly include some traditional old industrial base cities. Hence, their industrial restructuring should focus on improving industrial technical level, cultivating and developing new materials, energy-saving and environmental protection industries, and cut backward and excessive production capacity based on strict environmental regulation standards. As for pressure intensification & industries non-green transformation zones, they are mainly distributed in the coastal cities with heavy chemical industry projects or the peripheral cities that undertake the industrial spatial transfer, where the environmental criteria of industrial and space access should be upgraded.
With the rapid development of urbanization, the waste of resources in new towns and industrial parks and the frequent environmental pollution incidents such as haze and dust storms have caused great pressure on the resources and environment. It is of great significance to explore the interaction and complex relationship between urbanization and resources-environment. Based on the theory of sustainable urbanization, this paper constructs the urbanization index and resources-environmental pressure index, analyzes the influence of urbanization on resources-environmental pressure from 2003 to 2015 in Beijing, and studies the coupling relationship between urbanization and resources-environmental pressure in the city means of decoupling model. The results show that: (1) The urbanization of Beijing has entered a mature stage, and the population, economic and social urbanization all show a high level and a slow growth rate. The urbanization rate rose from 79.05% to 86.51% in 2003-2015. (2) From the intensity and change characteristics of the pressure caused by urbanization on the resources and environment, the total consumption of resources is still increasing, while the effect of environmental pollution control is relatively obvious. The discharge of pollutants such as industrial waste water and industrial solid waste tends to decrease. The resources-environment pressure of urbanization development is generally at a moderate level and fluctuating upward. Before 2008, the environmental pollution index was greater than the resource consumption index. After 2008, the resource consumption index was larger than the environmental pollution index, and the gap between the two showed an increasing trend year by year. Resource consumption gradually became the main factor affecting the increase of environmental resource pressure. (3) In terms of the correlation and change trend between urbanization and resources- environmental pressure, in the 12-year period, the urbanization and resources-environmental pressure in Beijing were characterized by weak decoupling - strong decoupling - weak decoupling - expansive coupling - expansive negative decoupling - strong decoupling - weak decoupling - strong decoupling. The recurrence of coupling and decoupling reflects the complex relationship and dynamic evolution between urbanization and resources-environment. Reducing the pressure on resources and the environment is very important to realize Beijing's goal of building a world-class harmonious and livable capital.
This paper, using the national land survey and the annual land use change survey, depicts the spatio-temporal patterns of urban-rural construction land expansion and its occupation of cultivated land. It also explores the mechanisms through which the cultivated land was occupied. Results showed that construction land in both urban and rural areas expanded over the period 1996-2006 despite a large number of rural-urban migrants - the major contributor to the rapid urbanization in China. This dual expansion could mainly be attributed to the tendency of these migrants to keep or even enlarge their rural construction land, which also resulted in a severer cultivated land loss than that caused by the expansion of urban construction land. In other words, urbanization in current China has contributed to more construction land per person, rather that the opposite as in many other countries. Within the urban construction land, it was mainly the industrial and mining land used for the development of Economic Development Zones (EDZs) that expanded at the highest rate and that occupied the most cultivated land. By contrast, construction land for cities and towns had a relatively slow growth rate and more diverse sources. In addition, influencing factors for construction land expansion could be better discerned if only the occupation of cultivated land was taken into account. Among the factors that influenced the spatio-temporal patterns of the occupation of cultivated land, it was the inter-regional difference in the stage of development that stood out. Infrastructure development was the leading force that drove construction land expansion in inland regions, while its positive effect on regional economic development and population agglomeration remained limited, leading to inefficient utilization of urban and rural construction land. The establishment of EDZs was conducive to efficient utilization of construction land through facilitating a concentrated spatial model of development in inland regions. By contrast, it has to a great extent become a new form of enclosure movement and led to wasteful usage of urban land resources in coastal regions. It is suggested that the problem of occupying construction land in both rural and urban areas by migrants should be prioritized, the utility of the market should be maximized, and the regional differences should be considered when policies targeted at intensive land use and cultivated land protection are to be formualted.
Based on the domestic and foreign published papers about heavy metal contents of urban surface dust, the spatial variation of heavy metal contents in surface dust in China was explored. Totally, 69 studies on dust Cr, 84 on Cu, 86 on Pb, 79 on Zn and 58 on Cd were collected. Firstly, the abnormal values were picked up and removed, then the spatial distribution was obtained through Kriging method and average values in the provinces were calculated. Meanwhile, compared with the soil background values, the accumulation values of heavy metal contents were calculated. The results showed that the spatial distribution of heavy metal contents was universally high and had obvious regional difference. On the whole, the spatial distribution of Cu, Pb and Zn contents was similar, which was generally dominated by south-north trend from high contents to low contents, while the spatial distribution of Cr contents was high in the central part of the country and low in other parts, and Cd contents had no obvious trends in China. Compared with the corresponding background values of soil heavy metal concentration, nearly all provinces had higher Pb, Cu, Zn and Cd concentrations, except for the fact that Cr had no accumulation in Shandong and Guizhou provinces. The highest enrichment of Cd and Pb was found in Hunan province with 277.95 and 42.82 times of the background values, and the highest enrichment of Cr was in Fujian province with 7.11 times of the background values. The highest Cu enrichment was in Guangdong province with 1.35 times of the background values; and the highest Zn enrichment was in Jiangxi province with 39.13 times of the background values, respectively.
With rapid economic growth and urbanization process of China, and energy consumption becoming huge, it has created a great impact on air pollution. PM2.5 is one of the major pollutants contributing to air quality. In recent years, there are more and more research on PM2.5 in the world. The Yangtze River Delta is a region with serious air pollution in China. It is located in the lower Yangtze River of eastern China, which occupies a crucial regional strategic location. This study employed the real-time monitoring data from 2013 to 2016 to explore the spatio-temporal evolution and pollution characteristics of PM2.5 of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta by using the method of geo-statistics and exploratory spatial data analysis. The results showed that: (1) PM2.5 concentration demonstrated varied annual, monthly and daily characteristics. In detail, the annual average concentrations decreased year by year, and monthly average showed obvious seasonal variations which were higher in winter and lower in summer like a “U-shaped” pattern. Daily average presented a pulse type fluctuation. (2) PM2.5 pollution in the study area significantly improved from 2013 to 2016. But the PM2.5 concentrations were still above the limited value in more than two-thirds of the total area, with a pollution pattern of higher in the northwest and lower in the southeast. (3) The PM2.5 concentrations high value center area moved from Hefei, Yangzhou to northern border area of Jiangsu and Anhui. The low value area gradually expanded to form a low value agglomeration belt within Zhoushan in the east, Huangshan in the west, Shanghai in the north, and Wenzhou in the south. (4) The trend analysis indicated that the differences of PM2.5 annual averages decreased gradually both in the east-west and the north- south, while the difference in the east- west was slightly larger than that in the north-south. Meanwhile, the central ridges in both directions became lower and the urban projection points tended to be linearly fitted. Based on the above conclusions, some policy implications are provided. The government should strengthen the emergency response cooperation of air pollution control, then improve the coordination and joint action of air pollution monitoring, early warning, information sharing, and emergency plans. Lastly, the emergency response system of multi-level linkages at the national, provincial, municipal, and county levels can be well implemented.
Man-land relationship and man-land areal system is the core of theoretical research in geography, the methodology advances of which, can not only promote the further study on man-land relationship, but also effectively solve the comprehensive resource-environment issues during the economic and social development. Based on the extensive literature review on connotation and research progress of man-land relationship and man-land areal system, this paper summarizes various research methods on China's man-land relationship and man-land areal system from four aspects including philosophy and environmental history, sustainable development, research methods on man-land areal system, and integrated characterization methods on man-land relationship, and discusses the future development trend. (1) Along with the connotation evolution of man-land relationship and man-land areal system, its study methods have been developed, which enriches the theoretical connotation and methodological system of man-land relationship. (2) Different research methods on man-land areal system vary with their respective features, and each has its own applicability and limitations. Nevertheless, the synthetic research methods are the main development trend, such as ecological footprint and resources-environmental carrying capacity, which are the useful exploration of integrated study on man-land relationship. (3) The development trends of further research methodologies on man-land areal system include the integrated research methods coupling natural and human factors, the application of new technological means and new research methods, and the theoretical system of comprehensive research on natural endowment and resources and environment carrying capacity.
