Topographic pattern has important impacts on atmospheric circulation and regional climate.The special terrain of Longitudinal Range-Gorge Region(LRGR) in Southwest China has a "corridor-barrier" effect on monsoons circulation,which led to the redistribution of surface hydrothermal pattern and is the main driving force of the formation and evolution of the ecosystems.Previous studies showed that LRGR was influenced by the combined effect of the Indian monsoon and the Pacific monsoon,which meet at the Ailaoshan mountain ranges.The Ailao Mountains are an important geographical dividing line.In this study,based on proofs of the atmospheric circulation,moisture transport,regional climate,runoff,and plant stable oxygen isotopes compostion,we found that LRGR is affected mainly by the Indian monsoon.The Pacific monsoon only affect this area in August,and the influence is not significant.Under the terrain "corridor-barrier" effect,surface water vapor,precipitation and runoff in LRGR showed significant zonal differences and meridional extension;crowd circulation,moisture transport,regional climate and river runoff.The atmospheric precipitable water,precipitation and stream flow present an apparently different pattern between the west and east sides of Ailao Mountains.The environmental differences are the results of the hydrothermal redistribution by the special terrain,which are the "barrier" and "corridor" effects of the LRGR.These differences are not the results of geographical zonality,but the results of non-zonality.The "corridor-barrier" effects of the longitudial range-gorge on monsoons result in the spatial differences of the geographical elements and the associated ecological effects.

Global climate change has significant impacts on agricultural production.Climate variability adversely impacts crop production and imposes a major constraint on farming planning,mostly on how to enhance the yileds of winter wheat,across the world.Owing to the fundamental importance of food to human welfare and of climate to crop and livestock production,various investigations showed that agriculture has been a focus of research on the impacts of climate change on wheat yield.However,considering the recent investigations in the field of the impacts of climate change on wheat yield,many studies were focused on the climate change in large scale regions.Few studies have been done with respect to the impacts of climate change on wheat yields in small scale regions.Therefore,in order to determine the effects of the climate changes on winter wheat yields in the Central Plains,taking Shangqiu,Henan as a study area,the climate data and wheat yields of observation stations from 1991 to 2010 were used in analyses with principal component analysis,correlation analysis,multiple linear regression analysis and Thornthwaite Memoriae model.The prediction results in the future and possible increase extent of the climate productivity of winter wheat were discovered.The results showed that winter wheat yields increased with fluctuations in recent 20 years.The results of principal component analysis illustrated that the main factors affecting winter wheat yields were temperature,precipitation,evaporation and extreme temperature.Excessive evaporation and extreme low temperature had adverse effects on the winter wheat production.The warm-wet climate was beneficial to wheat production,while the cold-dry climate was detrimental to wheat production.In the future decades,the climate variation will present a warm-wet tendency,which could be favorable to the grain yields in the Central Plains,especially in Shangqiu.

Based on the historical data of floods and droughts collected from local records in Liangshan area of Sichuan Province,archival materials,investigation materials,collections of floods and droughts,atlas and books written by current authors,the article made a statistical analysis of the spatial and temporal distributions of floods and droughts in Liangshan in the Ming and Qing dynasties.Results are shown as follows.(1) Floods and droughts happened frequently and there were more floods than droughts in this area in Ming and Qing dynasties.(2) Most of the floods and droughts were observed in spring and summer.(3) Most of floods and droughts did not happen in the same year.(4) Most of the flood and drought disasters were at normal and severe degrees,and there were relatively few extremely severe disasters.Most of floods and droughts happened in the lower Jinsha River basin and Anning River basin.The studies on the historical floods and droughts in Liangshan might be helpful to prevent and alleviate the damages induced from these disasters in the area at present.More attention should be paid to the following aspects.Flood disasters should be concerned more than drought disasters in this area.All the construction works prepared for the flood and drought disasters should be done before spring.The lower Jinsha River basin and Anning River basin should get priority in funds and personnel arrangement.Some topics related to this article,such as what causes the spatial and temporal distribution of floods and droughts,and what people can do to deal with flood and drought disasters in Liangshan,need to be further studied in the future.

This paper has conducted a short-term national-scale assessment of flood hazards in China based on the theory of natural disaster risks and by means of the powerful spatial analytic tool of GIS,as well as the normalization and analytic hierarchy process.The precipitation of the current day and last three days,topographic elevation,topographic standard deviation,network of rivers and lakes respectively were extracted as assessment factors,the methods of flood hazard factors’computation and the models of flood hazard indexes were advanced,as well as hazard assessment model was built for the national-scale flood hazard.Combined with disasters records,analysis of the minimum and maximum of hazard indexes by statistical method,the flood hazards are divided into four levels:high,medium,low and zero by dividing points of 0.3,0.45 and 0.6,respectively.Then the model of short-term flood hazard assessment was built and used for a flood hazard assessment on September 14,2009.It was applied for real-time flood events from June 18 to September 16,2009 on daily basis.Finally,this paper puts forward the result validation method of flood hazard assessment based on the official report of disaster data.It collects the data from official report of disasters to build the disaster spatial database for the same period of the flood season in 2009,and validates the flood hazard assessment results in the point of view of quantity and area from both county-based and district-based validation unit.And the result shows that the rate of correct assessment(i.e.both the hazards and disasters occurrence) is above 65% for counties as the assessment unit and above 84% for districts as the assessment unit in the point of view of quantity.The validation result reveals that short-term national flood hazard assessment conforms basically to the actual disaster data.This model has been successfully applied to the forecast of flood hazards by the Disaster Alleviation Center under the Ministry of Civil Affairs since August,2009.

The estimation of soil wetness variations is of importance to improve the reliability of flood warning.In this paper,the coarse spatial passive microwave data was used to monitor large area flooding and soil moisture because of the ability of the microwave signal to penetrate through cloud and provide all-day data and because of its sensitivity to surface moisture and wate.It can effetively reveal large-scale soil wetness and flood patterns under cloudy and rainy conditions.Polarization Ratio Variation Index(PRVI) was presented on the basis of polarization ratio index(PRI) calculated by the horizontal and vertical polarization brightness temperature data and Robust AVHRR Techniques(RAT).Nearly 18-year(1988-2005) PRVI serials were calculated from Special Sensor Microwave/Image(SSM / I) data in the Huaihe River Basin.PRVI datasets were obtained in the ten-day periods from June 21 to July 31 in the flood season.Several important flooding events in the Huaihe River Basin from 1988 to 2005 were described,and the flooding events of 1991 and 2003 were especially analyzed.We found that the serious flood and waterlogging disasters could be reflected by the formation of a higher PRVI value zone in the buffer along the Huaihe River mainstream extending 100 km north and basin boundary south.The higher PRVI value zone was consistent with the historical records.Furthermore,the reason for the formation of higher PRVI value zones was analyzed.The zone included many flood detention areas,lakes and bayous and low-lying lands.The higher PRVI value zone may be used as an indicator for flood forecast.Preliminary results confirmed the reliability of the proposed method.It is of great significance to the prevention and mitigation of flood and waterlogging disasters.

There are four major types of soils in Napahai wetland reserve,northwest Yunnan,i.e.,Abandoned Farmland Mesophytic Meadow Soil(AFMMS),Mesophytic Meadow Soil(MMS),Wet Meadow Soil(WMS),and Marsh Soil(MS),correspondingly their degradation degrees from high to low.Soil organic carbon(SOC),labile organic carbon(LOC) and dissolved organic carbon(DOC) contents and their correlation at three layers(1st layer 0~10 cm,2nd layer 10~20 cm,and 3rd layer 20~30 cm) for the 4 types were investigated.Results showed that except that LOC contents at the 2nd and 3rd layers of AFMMS were slightly higher than those at corresponding layers of MMS,the orders of the contents of SOC,LOC and DOC at the other layers of the 4 soils were AFMMS < MMS < WMS < MS,which clearly reflected the degradation conditions of the 4 soils within the wetland region.From up to down in the soil profiles,soil SOC,LOC and DOC contents of AFMMS,MMS and WMS,as well as the DOC contents of MS,declined from top to down layer;the decrease between the 1st and 2nd layers was significantly larger than that between the 2nd and 3rd layers;while the contents of SOC and LOC of MS increased from the 1st to 2nd layer and then declined to the 3rd layer.LOC/SOC(%) of the 4 soils varied from 8.6 % to 16.8 % and LOC/SOC at 3 layers of the 4 soils was AFMMS > MMS > WMS > MS,which indicated dryer soil had a higher turnover rate of the biological activity of SOC.Except extremely human-disturbed AFMMS,LOC contents are significantly positive to SOC contents for the other 3 types of soils;furthermore,the variations of LOC contents and LOC/SOC(%) have correlations with soil types.Compared with SOC and DOC,LOC is more suitable to detect the changes of wetland SOC pool.The study indicated the variation of wetland hydrology and vegetation controlled by topography has significant influence on the variation of wetland SOC and its labile components;high disturbance(e.g.wetland reclamation and drainage) usually causes obvious loss of wetland SOC and its labile components.For the degraded sub-alpine wetlands like Napahai where significant hydrological changes were observed,hydro-ecological regulation measures should be taken to prevent their further degradation.

Mercury(Hg) in paddy soils and rice as well as its translocation and accumulation in Chatian Hg mining area of Fenghuang County,Hunan Province were studied based on field systematic sampling and laboratory analysis.The results showed that Hg concentrations in the paddy soils and rice were significantly enriched,which were primarily due to the high natural geologic background levels and anthropogenic mining activities.The average concentration of Hg in paddy soils,rice root,rice shoots and rice grain in mercury deposit area were,in average,276.6,8.6,5.8 and 2.3 folds of the corresponding parts in the control area,respectively.The concentration of Hg in paddy soils in organic-sulfide form was significant positively correlated with Hg contents in rice roots,rice shoots and rice grain.However,the transfer coefficients of Hg of paddy soils-rice roots and rice roots-rice grain were quite low.The content of Hg in rice grain in Chatian mercury mining area was 0.09±0.04 μg/g,4.5 times of the limited value(0.02 μg/g) of the National Food Sanitary Standard(GB2762-2005).Average daily intake dose(ADD) of Hg of local population ranged from 0.408 to 1.225 μg/(kg·d),mean 0.75 μg/kg body weight per day,exceeding 0.71 μg/(kg·d) of provisional tolerable daily intake(PTDI) recommended by WHO.The local inhabitants faced huge health risk due to high Hg exposure via rice consumption.In addition,Se and Pb were also found to be co-enriched in the rice grain in Chatian mining area,indicating that co-contamination of Hg and Pb may result in great risks to human health in this area.

Artificial vegetation restoration as an effective way to control serious soil erosion and improve environment conditions has taken several positive environmental effects.However,serious soil desiccation as one of negative effects also appears associated with artificial vegetation restoration lack of scientific guidance,especially in deep soil layers.To recover the fragile ecosystem of the Loess Plateau and maintain sustainable development of this region,proper artificial vegetation types should be selected based on local soil water conditions.However,methods to quantitatively evaluate soil water effect based on local rainfall and soil water conditions is urgently needed to improve,which is one of the top priorities in current research.To quantitatively evaluate the soil desiccation degree in vegetation types,14 vegetation types were selected to analyze the eco-hydrological effect in deep soil layers in the typical semi-arid loess hilly region.Compared Soil Water Deficit Index(CSWDI) and Plot Compared Soil Water Deficit Index(PCSWDI) were induced to quantitatively analyze the soil water deficit in different vegetation types.The research showed that high-density artificial vegetation was the main reason of deep soil desiccation.Soil water contents in all vegetation types increased with soil depth except abandoned land and farmland,and had a significant linear relationship with soil depth.The degree of soil water deficit of different vegetation types was Pinus tabulaeformis forestland>Pinus tabulaeformis and Platycladus orientalis mixed forestland>Armeniaca sibirica forestland>Caragana korshinskii shrubland>Medicago sativa grassland>Platycladus orientalis forestland>Amygdalus davidiana shurbland>Armeniaca sibirica and Platycladus orientalis mixed forestland>Populus simonii forestland>Populus simonii and Platycladus orientalis mixed forestland.Soil desiccation various in soil profile cause for transpiration,root system characteristics and tillage management between different vegetation types.Solanum Tuberosum farmland,Zea mays farmland and abandoned land had no soil water deification compared with natural grassland.Comparisons of soil water contents in mixed forestland and pure broadleaved forestland showed that soil water condition in mixed forestland was better than that in pure broadleaved forestland.Results of this study also indicated that the CSWDI and PCSWDI were capable of reflecting conditions of soil water deficit in different soil layers and plots.They could be used as quantitative indices for soil water deficit analysis under different vegetation covers.

Mountain climbing dunes are widely distributed in the Mainling wide valley of Yarlung Zangbo River,southern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.The climbing dunes studied are located on the right bank of Yarlung Zangbo River at an S-shaped meander,west of Wolong town.Samples are collected according to dune climbing height and sites of super-imposed dunes along prevailing wind(NE).As parts of the aeolian sand dune system in the valley,sediments are also sampled on dunes developing on the alluvial flat and terrace.Grain size analysis shows that sediments of the mountain climbing dune are generally characterized by fine and very fine sands(2.07 to 3.71Φ),moderately well sorting(0.20 to 1.41Φ),fine skewness(-0.33 to 0.61) and multi-mode grain size distribution with kurtosis ranging from 0.66 to 3.09,exhibiting some features of both succession and variation from those of sand dunes on the upwind marginal alluvial flat and river terrace.Grain size parameters vary with height in NE-SW wind direction from the toe to the top of the climbing dune with mean grain size getting finer,sorting better,skewness coarser and kurtosis lower.Also,grains on super-imposed dunes grow coarser and sorting poorer from toe to dune top.There are some correlations between grain size and height,which shows a positive correlation for very fine sands with height and a negative relation for fine sands and height.The variation of grain sizes with height reflects different climbing ability for grains with different sizes.There exist differences in grain size characteristics between ridges and inter-ridge grooves of strip-shaped dunes.

Innovation activities in each region not only depend on their own characteristics,but also on those of the regions that form the neighborhood to which it belongs.Regional spillover as a spatial interaction is important in explaining agglomeration,innovation and regional growth.A great deal of literature has deeply dealt with the issue from a spatial perspective since the 1990s,especially in the context of urban and regional studies.Unfortunately,the traditional approaches to regional innovation suppose that each region is independent from others.This paper uses spatial statistical techniques to establish the statistical relations among data according to the geographical locations.It aims to understand the spatial dependence and autocorrelation related to geographical locations.Using the methods of exploratory spatial data analysis(ESDA) and spatial analysis software,this paper analyzes the spatial distribution of innovation outputs,measured by the number of patient applications,throughout 31 Chinese provinces from 1997 to 2008.The visual patent distribution plot has shown the distribution of innovation outputs at the provincial level and its spatial dynamic changes.A significantly high level of spatial concentration of innovation outputs among Chinese provinces has been captured by the computed spatial Gini coefficient and the Concentration Ratio,and the concentration level has increased steadily over the past 10 years.The analysis using the Moran’s I statistics gives the strong evidence of spatial autocorrelation in innovation activities among provinces,while the concentration pattern of innovation activities among provinces and its changes over time have been revealed by using the local Moran’s I and the Moran scatter plot,which indicate the clustering nature of the spatial distribution of provincial innovation activities.Spatial Gini coefficient and Moran’s I index have indicated that innovation activities of Chinese provinces are not randomly distributed.Our findings suggest that innovation activities are spatially differentiated among Chinese provinces over the 10 years,and innovation activities at the provincial level are highly localized.This study can provide a scientific basis for the intuitive expression of the spatial correlation of innovation outputs among provinces,and puts forward that the spatial statistical analysis could present some references valuable for analyzing spatial structure and patterns and policy-making.

Based on the railway passenger transportation network,employing the index of shortest time distance matrix between every two provincial capital cities which are Abstracted nodes in the railway network in 2003 and 2008,the paper analyses the level and spatial pattern of accessibility throughout the country.And then,the distance parameter in the gravity model is modified by the shortest travel time indicator,the strength of interprovincial economic linkage are measured and the spatial orientation are examined on the assumption that the provincial capital cities are the economic barycentre of the whole province.Results are shown as follows.(1) The inter-provincial accessibility level has gained a significant upgrade,especially accessibility promotion in the western provinces is higher than that of the others through the 5th and 6th train-speed network upgradings.But,the disparity of inter-provincial accessibility level is still remarkable throughout the country.The circle-type spatial pattern of the accessibility level that reduces gradually from the eastern coastal provinces to the northwestern provinces has emerged,the scope of the accessibility central zone is expanding,and the primary railway lines are becoming stronger and stronger.(2) The disparity of quantity of economic linkage is remarkable,the quantity of economic linkage in east coastal provinces is much higher than that of the central and western provinces.(3) The predominant axes of inter-provincial economic linkage have formed along the main railway lines from Beijing to Shanghai and from Beijing to Guangzhou.The spatial network pattern of regional economic linkage is forming along with the train-speed upgrading and the promotion of regional economy.The research of inter-provincial accessibility and economic linkage can not only give suggestions to regional economic restructuring,and to the primary spatial orientation of regional economic development,but also provide reference for coordinating inter-provincial economic linkage and cooperation in the process of regional economic integration.

Compared with the population suburbanization,scholars pay less attention to commercial suburbanization in China.Based on the data of retail sales of social consumer goods,the distribution of supermarkets,and leased commercial land lots,the paper describes the characteristics and driving mechanism of commercial suburbanization in Beijing.It states that commercial suburbanization developed rapidly in the inner suburb districts from 1991 to 2000,and since 2001,there has been a tendency of outer suburbs spread.The paper further illustrates that stores and leased commercial land lots mainly diffuse along the ring roads and radial roads from the urban center of Beijing.Besides the traditional commercial center,sub-centers and shopping malls have risen in the suburbs in recent years.As each quadrant has local conditions,there are significant differences of commercial suburbanization in different quadrants.In the northwest of the city,leased commercial land lots diffuse the fastest and expand the farthest.It is on the contrary in the southeast.The annual expansion rate of the lots fluctuates dramatically in the northeast and southwest.In the northeast,commercial development is more complex,due to the fact that besides the trends of suburbanization,there are centralized development patterns,mainly including urban renovation projects in the old town.Finally,the paper discusses four driving factors of commercial suburbanization,including the attraction of population and housing suburbanization,the promotion of rapid development of road transportation and private cars,the extrusion force from the urban center,and the guidance of government plans and policies.

The urban human settlement environment system is a fragile unstable ecosystem.Compared with the natural one,the urban human settlement environment system has many unique characteristics,such as a high consumption of energy and material,serious environmental pollution and a low reserve of natural resources.It is the preferred strategy for many countries,especially for the developing countries,to give energetic support to improve the level of urbanization,while there are still some other things making people anxious,such as the potential eco-environmental problems caused by rapid urbanization.The rapid urbanization process has resulted in urban human settlement environment even worsening.The spatial differences in urban human settlement environment security are getting increasingly conspicuous.This paper analyzes the pros and cons of some causal chain structure models,such as PSR,DSR and DPSIR,and builds a new urban human settlement environment security assessment model—DPSIRM(Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response-Management) model,a causal network model combined with GIS spatial analysis method,which reflects the health state of the urban human settlement environment system in Dalian City.We can draw following conclusions.The network model is proposed by way of studying the characteristics of chain models in the past,in terms of the complexity of urban human settlement environment system.A assessment indicators system of the "Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response-Management" model was built,which presents that human beings play an essential role in urban human settlement environment security.DPSIRM model reveals the intrinsic relations among all indicators and intrinsic relations between the problem of urban human settlement environment security and the indicators.A fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) is applied to indicate weights by a comprehensive and comparative method for results.It is shown that the state of ecological health and spatial differences of urban human settlement environment security with GIS spatial analysis method,as well as the urban management play the essential role in the urban human settlement environment security.

Based on the satellite image of northern Jiangsu in 2008,by using spatial metric models such as spatial interpolation,spatial correlation index,and semivarigram,the paper analyzed the spatial pattern characteristics of rural settlements in the northern Jiangsu region.Some conclusions are drawn as follows.(1) The number of rural settlements distributed in the southern part is larger than that of the northern part in the northern Jiangsu region in terms of spatial distribution,espacially they are distributed most densely in central and southern parts of the region,then exhibits a stepwise decrease.(2) Scale distribution of rural settlements shows a strong spatial autocorrelation,and similar areas are respectively characterized by aggregation distributions in space.The high-value clusters of rural settlement scale are distributed mainly in Xuzhou,Lianyungang,and Suqian.The scale of rural settlement distributed in the north is much larger than that of the south in northern Jiangsu in spatial distribution.(3) The shape distribution of rural settlements shows good continuity and stability,the random of the spatial differential pattern is much lower than the mechanism of the structural differentiation caused by natural correlation in space.Spatial difference of rural settlement distribution is much larger,but it shows some concentration.In terms of different orientations,spatial difference of rural settlement distribution is much larger in the southeast-northwest,rural settlement distribution enveloped from ribbon,long rectangle,and rectangle to sugariness or irregular conglomeration.Above all,the formation and development of rural settlements in northern Jiangsu always has strong correlation with natural conditions such as terrain and river,which is less sensitive to social economy,so the distribution of rural settlements in northern Jiangsu shows obvious spatial dependence.

This study was based on 2500 questionnaires gathered from urban residents from 15 cities during January to March in 2010.First,the three core variables,including tourism motivations,tourism involvement,and destination choice factors,are used for exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis.Second,based on these variables,we extract the domestic tourism consumption modes of urban residents in China by cluster analysis.Finally,this paper summarizes the tourism consumption and demographic characteristics of different typical modes by using variance and interaction analysis.The results are shown as follows.(1) Domestic tourism consumption behavior of urban residents in China has three typical modes.Active-type—Characterized by strong tourism motivations,deep involvement,and more emphasis on the destination choice factors.Intermediate-type—Affected by the factors including tourism motivations,involvement,and the destination choice,which show an average score.Negative-type-Featured by weak tourism motivations,low tourism involvement,and less focus on the destination choice factors.(2) There are significant differences among the three consumption modes in tourism behaviors.Compared with intermediate-type and negative-type,active-type shows more positive tourism attitude,stronger landscape preferences,higher frequency of travel,longer average length of stay,higher per capita consumption,more inclined to free travel way,etc.(3) Different tourism consumption patterns have significant differences in the demographic characteristics.In active-type,the majority of the residents are female aged below 25 or 45-54 years old.Generally speaking,they are well-educated,high income level,and most of them are in good health,and they are scientific researchers and teachers,students,and civil servants.In intermediate-type,the majority of the residents are aged 25-44 with medium education and income levels.As for negative-type,the residents are generally male-dominated,poorly educated and low-income,aged over 55 years,as well as retired or self-employed,and most of them are in poor health.

Cultural tourism is the mainstream of modern tourism development.Since the interrelationship between tourism and culture is increasingly close,how to improve cultural meaning of tourism product is of vital importance to the long-term development of tourism industry all over the world.International Tourism and Culture Demonstration Zone of Southern Anhui Province consists of six cities of Huangshan,Chizhou,Xuancheng,Wuhu,Ma’anshan and Tongling,as well as Qianshan county of Anqing city,and covers an area of 38220 square kilometers with a population of 106.96 million.It is listed as the one of the most potential tourism areas in Anhui for its abundance and high-quality in cultural tourism resources.However,many problems have emerged in the zone,to name but just a few,development at a lower level,weak industry chain,unclear tourism images and lack of typical cultural products.By analyzing the present situation and problems in the development of cultural tourism resources in this demonstration zone,the authors put forward patterns for the integration of cultural tourism resources,which involve regional integration pattern centered on space,product integration pattern based on market,image integration pattern on the basis of marketing,and interaction and development pattern between culture and tourism on the basis of industry.

What on earth is the size of China’s land area in total? No person can answer this question.Indeed,this paper tries to discuss the scale dependency of geographical area measurement rather than the total area of Chinese land.In theory,a country bordering on oceans can be divided into two parts.The main land can be modeled with Koch’s island,and the islands and islets in the marginal seas can be described with the Pareto distribution.The Koch island model suggests that the boundary line of the land area is a fractal line,while Pareto’s law suggests that the size distribution of islands and islets in an ocean is of scaling invariance.A coastline,consisting of bays and headlands,has irregularity at a certain degree,which was discussed by B.B.Mandelbrot in his fractal works.On the other hand,an archipelago is made up of many islands and islets.Zoom in on a smaller portion and it,in turn,will be composed of smaller islands and islets.The distribution of islands and islets does not change with distance.In technical terms,the archipelago is said to be of self-similarity at different scales,that is,it is a fractal set of random phenomena.
A fractal is based on a form of symmetry with scale invariance under contraction or dilation.The scale invariance is known as dilation symmetry or scaling symmetry.Symmetry implies some kind of immeasurable quantity.Because of scaling symmetry,the length of coastline,the area of a country’s land,and so on,cannot be well and truly measured.Measuring the area of a country from space will give a lower total than measuring it from 100 meters away,because of the extra detail at a larger scale.As the scale gets finer,more details(smaller islands or islets) can be picked up.The inevitable conclusion is that the total area of the country appears to increase indefinitely.This is just the scale-dependency of geographical measurements.The essence of land area is similar to that of the coastline length.The result(area or length) depends on the scale at which you make the measurement.Therefore,the land area data of different sources is not always comparable due to different sizes of yard measure,different scales of digital maps and different resolutions of geographical images.

Aeronautical information is an important type of geospatial data to ensure the safety and efficiency for air traffic.Currently,aeronautical information service(AIS) provide these data to users by the medium of aeronautical chart,aeronautical information public(AIP),notice to airman(NOTA M),and so on.We are in the age of the Internet,satellite navigation and computer networks,yet our approach to aeronautical geospatial data distribution is still based on paper charts,paper documentation and telex-based text messages.Systems exist in isolation.Many of the data is entered more than twice in different computers using a keyboard rather than via file transfer or database transactions. To satisfy new requirements for the Global Air Traffic Management Operational Concept,aeronautical information services should be transferred to support a digital,real-time,accredited and secure aeronautical information environment.As an open geospatial data standard,GML gives aeronautical information feature coding method and interchanging format.Much has been done in air traffic community,and the technology has become more mature and is widely used.EUROCONTROL and FAA have developed AIXM(Aeronautical Information Exchange Model) based on GML.In Europe,the European AIS Database(EAD) provide unique reference database of aeronautical information on behalf of AIXM. In Chinese air traffic community,unique aeronautical geospatial data model has been considered as the key to ensure quality,integrity and interoperation of the aeronautical information.But there is little material progress on the data modeling.Based on studies on the characteristic of aeronautical information,the paper analyzed the mapping aeronautical data between and GML.Taking the basic aeronautical information database in Airline Management System as an example,an aeronautical geographic data model has been brought forward in this paper.Studies have shown that obstacle data,as special geographic points,can be described by GML model.Terrain data and basic geographic data can be converted in Open GML format.Based on GML,the aeronautical geospatial data model can not only be applied to aeronautic information,but also to obstacle data and terrain data. Based on the data model,aeronautic geospatial data can be progressed regularly,maintained centrally,and used in network.This work explores the approach of information technology on developing the future central aeronautical information database.

Chinese geographers believe that the synthetic studies on man-land relationship should be strengthened.However, no research has been done yet in China on technical design in terms of man-land relationship.Therefore, TRIZ has been introduced to deal with issues related with technological system, technique contradictions, innovation level and ideal situation.The theoretical basis of TRIZ for overcoming the system contradictions is based on eight laws of technical system evolution.The methods are mainly used as analysis tools and repository.The analysis tools include contradiction matrix, substance-field model, standard solution, ARIZ and demand function analysis.The repository includes 40 innovation theories, contradiction solving principles, 76standard solutions and an effect database.The procedure of TRIZ includes problem identification, tool and method selection and solving programme evaluation.This study, with Qingshan District of Wuhan as a case, probes into the approach, the theory, the method and the powerful function of TRIZ in solving contradictions of areal man-land relationship, and establishes a logic paradigm as well.The conclusion shows that TRIZ, applicable to both technology field and non-technical field, offers a new vision, new theory and new method for studying man-land relationship in the future.

Debates about geographical theories reflected the different backgrounds in geographical practice, and they explained, demonstrated, and contributed to the development of geographical theories.The debate about Tobler's First Law of Geography(TFL hereafter) is a typical case.According to Waldo Tobler, everything is related to something else, but close things are more related to each other than distant things.However, along with the development of GIS and GISscience since the 1960s, whether TFL was still right, especially as the First Law of Geography, was one main subject under discussion in the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in 2003.In this meeting, some geographers demonstrated the rationality of TFL in homogeneity space, strengthened the time dimension, and the transformation of dimensions of space and scale in time and space. Some geographers also demonstrated the rationality of TFL in heterogeneity space.At the same time, there were other debates such as criticism on exceptionalism, quantitative revolution and theoretical revolution, which emerged in the background of the development of GIS and GISscience.On the other hand, these debates were useful to construct geographical theories from new perspectives that showed concern on dimension, scale and time geography. What's more, there emerged a new scientific view about geographical theories construction, i.e.the view of sociology of science, which is different from the conventional philosophy of science.With these two interweaving perspectives, the views about the construction of geographical theories became more complex.This paper is not only a comment or an introduction to TFL, but the dialogues between those who follow closely to this question, including scholars and authors, which are also emphasized in order to make the debate go further.The purpose of this paper is to reveal the TFL debate and the relationship among this debate and the previous debates on geographical theories, with the current focus on the reconstruction of geographical theories.On the basis of the above, with“proximity” as the core, this paper constructs the relationship among dimension, scale and scale transformation, time geography, namely the relationship system of“dimension- scale-areas”.

Wetlands provide a host of goods and services, including water quality maintenance, agricultural production, fisheries, and recreation.However, they are also under an increasing threat in many parts of the world.Inventory and monitoring of wetlands is fundamental to conservation efforts.At watershed scale, a credible quantitative inventory of wetland resources can support baseline assessment of the status of watershed wetland resources, and monitoring of long term trends in ecological characteristics of wetlands.In this paper, Beijing-1micro-satellite remote sensing data of 2006 were used to investigate the wetlands distribution in the Yellow River Basin(YRB).Results showed that the total wetland area is 2 513 481 ha.Palustrine and riverine wetlands comprise the bulk of the basin wetlands, accounting for 45.0% and 36.2%, respectively.The wetlands are mainly distributed in the plateau valley of the source area, river floodplains in the middle and lower reaches and the coastal wetlands in the Yellow River Delta.For lacustrine and riverine wetlands, physiognomy is the main factor affecting the wetland formation, while climate, represented by the ratio of dryness to wetness, has direct relation with local hydrological conditions, and is more important in influencing palustrine wetlands pattern.Since most part of the basin belongs to arid and semi-arid climate, most wetlands, except those in the source area, mainly depend on the Yellow River supply since local precipitation can only partly satisfy the ecological water requirement.In addition, conflicts for water resources arise not only between wetlands and life and production, but also in different parts of the basin, for example, the upper and lower reaches.It is concluded that management of the limited water resources should involve rational allocation of water resources.For the basin managers, it is very important to realize the ecological values of different wetlands.Considering the water resources availability in the future, wetlands in each subregion should be given different priorities for restoration and conservation.

Ecosystem services evaluation has attracted much attention for its role in guiding agreen strategic decision and public action.Because of its easy application, Xie G D's equivalent value per unit area of Chinese ecosystem services(ESV)has been widely used. However, aprecise revision is the precondition of accurate assessment result.The phenomenon of researchers not paying close attention to equivalent revision as much as the assessment result analysis makes the authors probe into a high resolution revision method of ESV, so that it can be more widely used in other regions and accurate in detecting changes. The revision method can be summarized as follows:(1)region revision, revise the average ecosystem service equivalent value of the whole country into that of the study area, by using the data of per unit area value of food products.In consideration of the complexity of forest ecosystems, biomass of each type of forest ecosystems are used to revise the equivalent value in quality.(2)grid revision, apply vegetation coverages based on vegetation index(NDVI)to correct the equivalent in quantity, which shows the variance of ecosystem service among units in the same land use type under different vegetation coverage at the grid cell of 1km².These intersected multi-scale revision downscales ESV from national to local to grid cell, which not only keeps ESV comparable at different scales, but also detects the spatial heterogeneity in details.This method was applied in counties along the Bohai Bay to study the distribution and changes of ecosystem services between 2000 and 2008.The approach is more practicable and suitable in comparable analysis between different years and distinguishing the intensity of ecosystem services at inner-regional scale.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationships between the spatial distribution of villages and the morphological structure of micro-topography in Jianghan Plain using spatial analysis and geo-statistics methods.Based on the morphological characteristics of the study area, a local topographic analysis method for the extraction of the convex micro-topography structure was developed.Then the spatial relationships between village locations and the convex micro-topography structure were analyzed using spatial overlay analysis techniques in GIS.The results show that the extracted convex structures are effective to describe the spatial morphological characteristics of the micro-topography.Some 75.40% of the villages in the study area coincide spatially with the extracted micro-topography convex structures, and 83.94% of the villages are located within a distance of 50 meters away from the nearest extracted convex micro-topography structures.On the whole, the villages show a cluster trend to the convex topography structure.From the relevance analysis and the micro-topography process analysis, it is found that the spatial patterns of the villages in Jianghan Plain are mainly affected by micro-topography structures.

Based on the soil depth data from 533 soil profiles in the Three-River Headwaters Region of Qinghai Province, with the help of GIS technology, this paper attempted to predict the spatial distribution of soil depth by using deterministic interpolation methods(Inverse Distance Weighted, Global Polynomial Interpolation, Local Polynomial Interpolation and Radial Basis Function)and geostatistics interpolation methods(Oridnary Kriging, Simple Kriging, Universal Kriging and Co-Kriging).Then it compared the prediction errors, statistical characteristics and interpolation results of different interpolation methods. Some important conclusions were obtained from this research, which mainly contained three aspects as follows.(1)The spatial distribution of soil depth using the first order surface trend of Ordinary Kriging was better than that using the second order surface trend.The spherical model in the Ordinary Kriging(first order)was better than the exponential model and Gaussian model.The Ordinary Kriging was the best of the four geostatistics interpolation methods because of its minimum error and accurately predicted result. (2)The Inverse Distance Weighted(exponent 1)method was the best in deterministic interpolation methods from the prediction errors and comprehensive reflection in general and local trends.(3)In comparison of the prediction errors and spatial distribution in general and local trends, the Ordinary Kriging(first order)of spherical method, which had anisotropy, could be best to reflect the spatial distribution of soil depth in the Three-River Headwaters Region of Qinghai Province.

Urban landscape areas which provide amenities for people are generally recreational places in life and have great impact on the life quality in cities.However, the benefit of urban landscape is implicit, which makes it difficult to estimate the value of the view amenity in monetary form.The hedonic price methods are widely used in empirical research by domestic and foreign scholars.In this paper, 25 explanatory variables are selected to build a hedonic price model in four dimensions of building, neighborhood, location, and landscape.This paper assesses the external effects of various types of landscape on housing price.The sample is made up of 2795 valid house data in Hangzhou.The results indicate that there is an inverse relationship between the house price and its distance from the West Lake and the park, and the park size is positively correlated to house price.Increasing the distance of 1% to the West Lake or to the park decreased the house price by 0. 240% or 0.036%, and increasing the size of the nearest park by 1% leads to a 0.012% price increase.What's more, the plazas, mountain views and the Qiantang River also have apositive effect on the house price within a certain distance.

Using the latest land survey data in Beijing and GIS, we have described the situation, distribution and characteristics of rural residential areas in Tongzhou District of Beijing. According to the planning boundaries, the villages in Tongzhou can be classified into three categories:villages within circle(VWC), villages inside the ring(VIR)and villages outside the ring(VOR).There is an area of 50.30km² in residential section and 121villages within VWC, which takes up 30.62% of the total area.The rural residential area within VIR is 19.35km² and there are 57villages over there.VIR is the smallest among these three categories and accounts for only 11.78%of the total area.For VOR, there is an area of 94.63km² and 277 villages, accounting for 57.60% of the total area, more than half of the total quantity and area.There are 4types of dynamics to promote the land use transformation:economic dynamics, social dynamics, ecological dynamics and political dynamics. Economic and social dynamics promote land consolidation for VWC.Political and ecological dynamics are the main factors that drive land consolidation for VIR.VOR is influenced by the social and ecological dynamics.Based on different characteristics and dynamics of villages in Tongzhou, we have proposed three models of land consolidation, namely first-level land development model, comprehensive development models and the village renovation model.For VWC, the rural land will be taken for the urban development, so the first-level land development model is suitable for these villages.For VIR, comprehensive development models can be adopted to improve the ecological environment. For VOR, the purpose of land consolidation is to increase agricultural land and avoid land expropriation, so the village renovation model can be used for these villages.It is concluded that different models should be adopted to promote land consolidation, since villages at different locations have different characteristics and dynamics.

For a given point embedded in grid DEMs, its comprehensive quantification model of terrain information content representing its significance in approximating the true terrain surface is constructed on the basis of information theory after its terrain syntactic information content is measured with differential geometry algorithm, and its terrain semantic information content is determined according to the terrain feature type and the global terrain structure.Then, choosing a study area of 70km² in the loess gully region with a resolution of 5m, the paper discusses the extraction procedure of the terrain information content for a grid point based on grid DEMs and an application in multi-scale terrain generalization based on grid point's terrain information content.Experimental results show that the terrain information measurement model for a grid point is feasible and the multi-scale DEMs reconstruction method is not only easy to implement but also effective in reducing terrain distortion by preferentially keeping a set of“surface-specific”structural points located in global terrain skeletons.The application example proved that the multi-scale DEMs constructed by selecting critical points based on their terrain information content values could meet the demands of digital terrain modeling in different terrain scales. Therefore, the research could be helpful in deepening our understanding of DEM terrain information characteristics and offering a theoretical and methodological support for multiscale digital terrain modeling.

On the basis of field investigations along the Jinghe River valley, a typical Holocene loess-soil profile with interbedded palaeoflood slackwater deposits was found at the Neolithic Yangshao Culture site near Yangguanzhai village, Gaoling county.OSL ages for the quarts grains at a size of 40-63μm were measured by using the single aliquot regenerative- dose(SAR)protocol.The optical ages of these samples ranged from 2.27±0.06ka BP to 14.26±0.58ka BP, showing agood relation with the depth in the YGZ profile.According to the age-depth function, the archaeological ages, grain-size distribution and the magnetic susceptibility in the YGZ profile, a Holocene chronological framework is established. The first episode of palaeoflood events is therefore dated to 4.20-4.00ka BP, and the second episode is dated to 3.20-2.80ka BP on the Jinghe River.These extraordinary floods occurred during the global abrupt climatic events.They represent a regional response of river system to global change.

Taking prefecture cities of Chinese mainland as examples, and changing the model of urban flows into the model of urban extrovert service function, this paper quantifies freight extrovert service function of central cities based on different transport models with the aid of ArcGIS.The comparison of the calculation of related data in 1989 and 2008 reveals a spatial distribution law and a hierarchical structure of freight extrovert service function of central cities, with which the position and function of each city in the national and astride regional freight spatial connection is investigated.The results are shown as follows. First, the freight extrovert service function of central cities in China is distributed widely in north and intensively in south, and the advantage of urban agglomeration is obvious. Second, the proportion of the extrovert service value distinctly decreased in eastern coastal provinces in recent 20 years, while that of freight increased, which indicates that the mass freight had a larger proportion in the country.Third, there are significant differences in the extrovert service pattern of central cities'freight based on different transportation modes.As a result, different central cities formed the function division in the different spatial transportation connection.Fourth, this research divides the freight extrovert service ability of central cities into four functional levels, which are the national, the astride regional, the provincial and the civic.
As a conclusion, the freight extrovert service function of central cities has been affected by various factors in China.It is directly proportional to urban GDP and freight scale, and it is greatly affected by economic location and transportation location.Also it has a close relationship with the structure and distance of different types of freight transportation.

As a leading sector, electronic information industries in Beijing have strong strength and good prospects.The present studies focus on the analysis of the spatial distribution of high technology industries and electronic information industries.There have been relatively few studies on the spatial distribution of electronic information industries from the perspective of enterprises, especially on the spatial distribution of main value chain parts.
This paper selected 30 large electronic information enterprises to do study based on the research on spatial distribution of electronic information industries.We collected its information about spatial distribution in Beijing by reading 2011 Report of Transnational Corporations in China, browsing official websites and so on.This article analyzed the spatial distribution of headquarters, research departments, production departments, sales and marketing departments in Beijing.The conclusions are as follows.The electronic information industries were obviously suburbanized and agglomerated in suburban areas.The main value chain parts of large electronic information enterprises were also agglomerated and the suburbanization of production departments most obvious.The spatial distribution of electronic information industries and enterprises exhibited a polycentric spatial structure. The functional division among main electronic information industries agglomeration areas and the regional division based on value chain of large electronic information enterprises had emerged.

Enterprises migrations research is an essential topic in economic geography, which provide us a unique perspective to understand the evolution and formation mechanisms of industrial spatial pattern.In this paper, we will use some information about scales, forms, distances and length of span to examine the characteristics of manufacturing enterprises migrations in larges cities of western China.To a certain extent, it can reveal the models, paths and mechanisms of enterprises migrations since 1949.The results show that the models of manufacturing enterprises migrations of large cities in western China have changed from “Gradient” pattern (government-oriented) to combinations of “Progressive” pattern (enterprises-oriented) and “Leapfrog” pattern (government-oriented), which goes through three stages, namely, “Inward concentration”, “Both inward concentration and outward disperse” and “great-leap-outward dispersion and concentration in some regions”.The factors including politics, economy and enterprises have effectively promoted the relocation of the manufacturing enterprises in different modes during different periods, which led to more complicated and diversified migration models.

Based on the review of the related literature, this paper builds a conceptual model to describe the meaning of urban economies of scale.On this basis, it uses the quantitative analysis to explore the relationship of urban scale economy, urban population size and urban spatial scale.The results are shown as follows.1)Nowadays, the main driving force of scale expansion of urban space is population growth.2)In the cities with a population of 10-20 million, the space occupied by per unit population growth is relatively large, which should be given priority to the development.3)In the cities with a population of over 20 million, the space occupied by per unit economic growth is relatively large, which should be developed on a moderate scale, and in regional development, one of the fundamental tasks is to build a rational urban system.Based on theoretical analysis, this study puts forward some proposals for the urban and regional planning.

The adjustment of the administrative division can lead to the change in the spatial structure of the urban area, which exerts great influence on the regional social, economic, political and cultural development.In July, 2011, the State Council approved to annul Chaohu city and divided it into three parts which was respectively incorporated into the jurisdiction of Hefei, Wuhu and Ma'anshan.The adjustment of the administrative division provides the development space of Hefei, and eliminates the barrier of integration of Wuhu south and north of the Yangtze River.Thus the two core cities of Hefei and Wuhu are adjacent to each other.There exists an obvious dual core structure in regional space, and the economic regions are more directly connected.Dual core structure of Hefei and Wuhu is the typical regional spatial structure in Anhui.Dual core development mode, driven by Hefei economic circle with Hefei as its core, and Wanjiang city belt with Wuhu as its core, is an inevitable requirement of Anhui economic development, its spatial integration has some favorable conditions, including adjacent endpoints of urban space, advantages of integration strength, increasingly great leading role, advantageous internal and external environment of“sector of Hefei, Ma'anshan, Wuhu and Tongling” and Nanjing metropolis circle.It is faced with new development opportunities, different development modes and routes are chosen for different periods.With employment of the city space interaction theory and methods and dual core structure principle, the paper analyzes the dual core spatial integration of Hefei-Wuhu after the adjustment of the administrative division, and presents the following measures including adopting axis mode, dual core mode, “T” mode, sector mode in different periods, removal of rigid restraint of the administrative districts, strengthening integrated planning of dual core axis, enlarging industrial integration, bringing into full play the comparative advantages of the city between dual cores, and overall advancement of development axis construction of Hefei-Wuhu.According to central place theory, strengthening the dual core spatial integration of Hefei-Wuhu and cultivating a core growth pole leading the development of Anhui play a critical role in Anhui economic development, especially for Chaohu economic valley in Wanjiang city belt.

Regionalization is the important research content in geography.This paper explores the functional regionalization of tourism space in the unit of county administrative division, in a study of Changshu, proceeding from the analysis of tourism development potential. In order to determine the basic unit of functional regions, the paper first makes a comprehensive analysis as well as overlay and merging analysis of all existing divisions. Then it constructs an evaluation system of tourism economy development potential involving four indexes of the urban influence, socio-economy, transport accessibility, and resource implication.By evaluating the tourism development potential of county units, it is found that Changshu presents a spatial circle structure with the county centered and the greatest potential in the south and can be divided into four kinds of functional regions which refer to key development area, guiding development area, limited development area and unfavorable development area.It comes to the conclusion that key development area and guiding development area express the characteristics of a centralized distribution relying on the superior infrastructure and service of the county, whereas limited development area and unfavorable development area, which have the largest number and coverage area, have more difficulty in tourism development due to their distribution outside the county and a relatively far distance.

Residents in the destination are the key elements that influence tourism development. As the rural residents are increasingly integrated into the tourism development, the research on residents' perception on tourism development impact would have more and more significance.Sense of place reflects the special emotional relationship between human and environment, providing new perspectives and in-depth explanations for research on residents'perception on tourism development impact.Taking sense of place as the starting point, and development expectations as the intermediary variable, we build a new theoretical model based on the relationship among sense of place, development expectations and impact perception.In this article, we take Tiantangzhai in Anhui Province as an example. The results are obtained as follows.1)Both sense of place and development expectation have important influences on residents'perception on tourism development impact, however different dimensions have different influence levels.It is suggested that the stronger the residents'sense of place and development expectation is, the more attention they will pay to the positive and negative impacts tourism brings, hoping for the better development of their community.2)Development expectation plays a positive intermediary influence in the “Sense of place-development expectation-impacts perception” theory model, especially on the cost perception level, development expectation strengthens the function of sense of place on residents'perception of tourism development impact.3)Compared with earlier researches, we can conclude that the overall tourism development level is the key element that works upon residents`perception and attitude.The divisions among different stages that reflect residents`perception on tourism impact are very significant.Sense of place, development expectation, impact perception are all closely related to the key element of tourism destination, community residents, and they all have great effect on the quality of tourism destination development.With these three elements, we build the theoretical model with important application values.Besides, this research is of significance to tourism destination planning and development.

Sustainable development is a widely accepted developing mode all over the world, but its vogue concept and simplified measure model hinder the practice of this idea.It is urgent to present a clear definition of this significant thought and propose a better assessment model.The concept of watershed sustainability and its ideal region are presented based on the relationship among the economic, social and aquatic ecological subsystems confined by each threshold.Besides, temporal scale, spatial scale, cognitive level, game relationship between different subsystems, and feasible interval are reckoned as the main factors in defining watershed sustainability.Considering the relationship between inside and outside watershed, an assessment model of sustainability on account of optimum programming is suggested to measure the gap between real status of an ideal region.The result indicates that the method is more effective and practical than in watershed scale, which provides a new idea and method for sustainability assessment.

Aquatic ecoregions have been used as spatial units for aquatic ecosystem management at the watershed scale.According to the protection requirements and characteristics of aquatic ecosystems in the Taihu Lake basin, the main purpose and the principles of level Ⅲ aquatic ecological function regionalization delineation in this basin were proposed.Then the indicators for delineating level Ⅲ aquatic ecological function regionalization were established based on regionalization objective and principles.The indicators for delineating level Ⅲ aquatic ecological function regionalization in the non-Taihu Lake area included benthic Shannon-Wiener diversity index, chlorophyll content, water habitat types and benthic indicator species types (including Ephemera, Bivalvia, snail, Chironomidae and Oligochaeta), and the regionalization indicators for delineating level Ⅲ aquatic ecological function regionalization in the Taihu Lake area included benthic Shannon-Wiener diversity index, chlorophyll content, water flow velocity and benthic indicator species (including Oligochaeta, Chironomidae class, Bivalvia, snail and others) ratio.With the aid of GIS technology, the spatial distribution of the indicators for level Ⅲ aquatic ecological function regionalization delineation was identified based on the raster data from 1106 aquatic ecoregion function units in the non-Taihu Lake area and 3568 aquatic ecoregion function units in the Taihu Lake area, respectively.Two-step spatial clustering analysis approach and manual-assisted method were used to delineate level Ⅲ aquatic ecological function zones.Then the Taihu Lake basin was divided into 21 level Ⅲ aquatic ecological function zones.Moreover, the characteristics of the 21 zones were summarized, showing that there were significant differences in the aspects such as topography, soil type, water quality and aquatic ecology. The results of quantitative comparison of aquatic life also indicated that the benthic dominant species, Shannon-Wiener diversity index, chlorophyll a concentration and aquatic habitat types showed great spatial variability among the 21 zones.There existed spatial heterogeneities and the uneven features of aquatic ecosystems in the Taihu Lake basin.