Prior to the 1980s, the coastal Aeolian research in China was actually nonexistent. The comprehensive investigation of coastal zones and tidal flat resources of the country during the 1980~1986 period initiated and promoted the coastal Aeolian research. Since then, the study in this respect has been continuously conducted and significant progress has been made in the research scope and depth. This paper summarizes the main progress and achievements in coastal Aeolian research in China,which include coastal Aeolian dune types and distribution characteristics in China, formation and evolution models of coastal Aeolian dunes in China, depositional characteristics of modern and ancient coastal Aeolian sediments in China, threshold wind velocity of coastal sand movement and Aeolian sand flow structure in coastal zones of China, migration rates of coastal dunes, and coastal Aeolian disaster and its control in China. Although substantial results of coastal Aeolian research in China have been achieved and the blank in this research field has been filled, there is a certain gap as compared with other countries because our study in this respect was initiated at a comparatively late date, with a short research history. In view of this, special attention should be paid to the following aspects in future study of coastal Aeolian problem in China. First, observation and modeling of coastal Aeolian movement are the foundation and core of coastal Aeolian study. Observations and modeling of coastal Aeolian movement in the representative coastal zones of China using advanced and practical field observation instruments and techniques are quite essential; Second, in the face of increasingly exacerbating global change situation, actively conducting the research of the relation between global changes and coastal Aeolian evolution process is an important subject in the current coastal Aeolian research; Third, for the protection of coastal Aeolian land, the study on the coastal Aeolian control is also essential.

The unbalanced development of regional economy in China has been a ubiquitous socioeconomic phenomenon. Recently, in order to adjust the east-west and south-north polarization patterns on a large scale, the government has put forward some significant strategic decisions, such as the western development and the rejuvenation of old industrial bases in Northeast China. However, due to the less attention paid to the unbalanced economical development in the rapidly developed megalopolises, such as Beijing, Chongqing and Shanghai, the gradually expanded regional economic disparities in megalopolis may affect the sustainable development of economy and the social stability. Understanding the economic disparity in megalopolis and its developing trend is an important precondition to promote the harmonious development of regional economy. This paper aims to study the space-time dynamics of economic development in Beijing during the preparation period of the 2008 Olympic Games (2001-2007), using exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA). ESDA emphasizes the significance of spatial interactions and geographical location in the studies of regional economic development. By identifying spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity, the economic performance can be characterized over time. Therefore, ESDA is a powerful tool for revealing the development of regional economic disparities. Previous studies have been implemented on this issue existing in Europe and the Huaihai Economic Zone of China by using ESDA. However, few of them revealed the space-time dynamics of regional economy in inner megalopolis. This study, combining ESDA with GIS technology, attempts to investigate the development of regional economy in Beijing from 2001 to 2007. Our method is based regional per capita gross domestic product (GDP) at a county level . The results do not show strong evidences of global spatial autocorrelation, but present clear evidences of local spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of regional per capita GDP. From 2001 to 2007, the economic disparity in Beijing was not improved, and even enlarged. Moreover, a new centre-surrounding polarization pattern was gradually replacing the north-south polarization pattern in Beijing.

Rural tourism is such a new industry which combines primary industry with tertiary industry. Rural tourism is based on agriculture, aiming at developing tourism in rural area and serving the urban residents by providing various services. Rural tourism can develop landscape resources in rurban fringe to promote eco-tourism and to realize the coordinated development of the cities and countryside. In China, rural tourism successively experiences three stages, eg. early rising stage, initial development stage and later normative operating stage. This paper, based on the background and the concept of rural tourism, comprehensively discusses the development of rural tourism in China, analyzes the current situations and the main patterns of rural tourism, and puts forward some relevant countermeasures for the current problems. Finally, the paper discusses the prospect of the future sustainable development of rural tourism in China.

More attentions have been attracted to the relationship between vegetation and climate by geographers, ecologists, which has been listed one of core projects of IGBP. In this paper, the main progresses of researches on responses of vegetation to climate change are reflected from the three temporal scales of past, current and future, especially, the basic regimes of impacts of future climate change to vegetation are set forth.

While current projections of climatic change associated with increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases have a high degree uncertainty, the potential effects of climatic change on plant species and their combined units population, community and vegetation are of increasing concern largely due to their huge economic value and ecological service functions. Many researchers have simulated the climatic effects on plants species or vegetation by using various models last decade. In sum, these models are classified into five groups, namely bioclimatic classification approach, ecological response surface approach, stand model approach, plant physiological models, and statistical model approach. In this paper, the author gives a critical review on advantages and disadvantages of the models, and finally indicates the potential trends of these models. In conclusion, various models should be reformulated with perfect tradeoff between robustness and sensibility. Only when these models reflect more accurately realistic relationships between plant species or vegetation and climatic variables, can they be employed to simulate responses of plant species or vegetation to rapid change in climate.

By the data of five hydrological observation stations, the paper analyzes the time-space distribution regulation of annual runoff. That is, for all of the hydrological observation, the annual runoff distributed unevenly. The runoff between July and October accounted for from 59.21%～76.03% of the total annual runoff. Besides, to annual runoff quantity, rich water period was very short, generally, only 1～3years; but low water period was very long, may last 13years. To analysis the variance of more than 40 years annual runoff, two methods are applied. The two results indicate that the variance tendency of the annual runoff show obviously decline.Using the data of the hydrological observation stations, the paper describes the accumulation curve of the annual runoff, which is divided into two parts in the various periods, one is not affected by human activity, and the other is affected by human activity. A correlation is founded between the annual runoff of affected by human activity and that of the stations unaffected by human activity. Through calculating accumulation value of affection by human activity of Daiying, Zhangjiafen, and Suzhuang hydrological observations, it accounts for 53.92%, 67.71%, and 71.23% of the total reduced value. The results demonstrate that human activity was the main factor leading to reduction of annual runoff compared with annual precipitation. Affected by human activity, especially the utilization of water resources, the natural ecology environment and the water recycle system had been deteriorating in recent several decade years. So reasonably utilization and optimal arrangements of water resources basing on systematic analysis are becoming more and more important. It will be urgent task to protect and use water resources rationally in the future.

The water problems in North China plain are very serious, and they hinder the economic development. The reason is that the research of water cycle is not enough. Environmental isotopes have become integral components of hydrological research and applications. They routinely contribute to such investigations, complementing geochemistry and physical hydrology. The environmental isotopic technology is the most powerful tool for hydrological research. For instance, the stable isotopic composition of water is modified by meteoric processes and so the recharge waters in particular environment will have a characteristic isotopic signature. This signature then serves as a nature tracer for the provenance of waters; on other hand, radioisotopes decay provides us with a measure of circulation time, thus groundwater renewability. The source of vapor, which forms precipitation, the mechanism of rainfall and runoff at the slope, the relation among precipitation surface water soil water groundwater, groundwater quality evolution and recharge processes can be understood. In this paper, the stable isotopes (D and O 18) and the radioisotopes (T and C 14) are explained, and their basics, usages and some examples in Japan and China are also introduced. Lastly, the prospect in the research of water cycle at the typical catchments of North China Plain using environmental isotopes is described, including three parts: the system of "atmosphere soil vegetation"at small scale; rainfall and runoff at the slope; water cycle at catchment scale.

Base flow has important implications in water resources allocation, water security, food security, non point pollution assessment and investigation and water resource assessment. Base flow recession curves contain a lot of information related with hydro-settings. The paper first overviews the definitions of base flow. Then, base flow generation and loss mechanism and impact of hydrogeographical factors, rock kinds, climate condition, terrain, hydrologic condition and underlay ground were analyzed systematically. Impact of human activities, such as extraction of ground water, on different hydrogeographic settings, land use cover change(LUCC) and base flow was emphasized. Various kinds of base flow recession simulation methods, such as linear reservoir method, auto-regression simulation method, empirical function and method based on groundwater movement, were presented based on the characteristics of the basin； and the merits, demerits, and applied conditions of these function were illuminated. A series researches show non linear flow recession are more suitable than linear flow recession in recession simulation, which demonsfrates the non linear characteristics of out flow form aquifer. Base flow separation methods were reviewed. Above all, the water balance methods and the run-off simulation methods are sound based； but the graph method is subjective, which precision depends on applier's knowledge on the relation between ground water and river. In addition, some comments on the construction of the recession function are stated.

This paper discussed the distribution of coastal zones and the features of natural disasters that appear in this zone. Through assessing the natural environment, the developing tendency of coastal zones was predicted and the correspondent measures to be taken in the 21st century were pointed out. 1) The coastal zone is the zone where land and water interfere, i.e. the transition area between land and water. Stretching from Yalujiang River Embouchure of Liaoning Province ( in the north) to Beilun River Embouchure of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (in the south), China’s coastal line has a length of 18000km. China also has over 5000 islands with a coast line of about 14000km long. Apart from two main kinds of coasts, plain coast (sandy coast) and mountainous coast (rocky coast), some special coasts formed by living things, e. g. coral reef coast, mangrove coast and reedy coast are also existing. 2) Being a kind of ecotone, coastal zones present the characteristics of obvious weakness, i.e. strong endogenic and exogenic force and low resistance to them, which results in frequent natural disasters. Erosion and accumulation, Typhoon and storms, earthquakes, rainstorms, red tides, sea ice, etc., are the common disasters that often appear in these zones. Coastal zones are very sensitive to climate changes. With the climate warming up in the 21st century, the sea level will rise and the storm tides will increase, coastal zones will be seriously threatened by floods and storm tides, serious measures should be studied and taken in advance. 3) Society and economy are relatively advanced in coastal zones with over 90% of big cities, about 50% of population and 55% or so of national income distributed in this area.. Coastal zones are very rich in natural resources, e.g. oil, natural gas, mineral resources, land, intertidal zone, harbors, sea salt, aquatic resources, tourism, mangrove, reed, marine algae, etc.. Because of unreasonable human activities, natural resources are decreasing and the ecological environment is worsening, which will become the obstacle to the development of society and economy in China. Studying the features of natural disasters, assessing the natural environment of the coastal zones, help us obtain a better understanding of natural disasters, natural resources and environment in this zone, which is very important for the evaluation and exploitation and utilization of natural resources, and for the prevention and treatment of natural disasters.

t receives wide range respond since the philosophy idea of regional sustainable development was put forward in 1980’s. But various groups of people have their own different understanding of what regional sustainable development means. This paper discusses the necessity of constructing an index system of regional sustainable development and basic principles while constructing the system. We designed a gross framework for the system based on its principles, and finally we discuss concisely the relationship between the qualitative and quantitative indexes while selecting them.

In this research, 34 indexes have been selected to build the regional development sub-system and the eco-environment sub-system for quantitative evaluation, which are closely related to the level of regional development and eco-environment. Accordingly, the regional development-eco-environment index system and synergisticity model of the economic belt on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains have been built, with which synthesized evaluation can be done to analyze the coordination degree between regional development and eco-environment and the overall development level. The results show that the level of regional development and the condition of eco-environment in different cities are quite different. What’s more, the coordination level between regional development and eco-environment in different areas are different. Based on the coordination degree, combined with coordinated development degree and the evaluation results of the sub-systems, the 17 cities on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains have be divided into three groups: (1) regional development and eco-environment synchronous coordinate region, including Shihezi, Miquan, Fukang, Kuytun, Changji and Manas; (2) regional development and eco-environment approachable coordinated region, including Urumqi, Karamay, Hutubi, Bole, Qitai and Mori; and (3) ecological dominated region, including Wenquan, Jinghe, Usu, Shawan and Jimsar. Finally, corresponding sustainable development strategys for different regions have been put forward.

The article first introduced and analyzed territorial planning of experiment areas, through such aspects as its features and functions, basic purposes and major tasks, spatial areas and temporal terms, guiding ideas and working thoughts, organizing bodies and working patterns, subject matters and outline contents, special subjects and main products, and regions set off. From this, we can discover that those provinces and cities prompted territorial planning experiment work studiously and overcame difficulties, since the Ministry of Land and Resources arranged to make new round territorial planning experiment in 2001. Although the territorial planning experiments had some flaws, such as having not got consistent on key problems, having paid little attention to implementation, experiments having not carried out according to plans, and social influence needing expansion, they acquired obvious effects, such as department characteristics being evident, foundation being strong and the collectivity being rather good, several attempts having innovations, and experiments having some important contributions. With China attaching more importance to territorial planning, the article put forward such advices as sticking to era topics based on department characteristics, strengthening discussion and establishing guidance, perfecting coordination mechanism to reduce resistance, emphasizing experiments’ typicalness and representativeness, and improving and popularizing experiments’ experience, in the national or regional territorial planning constitution and implementation.

Land consolidation plays an important role in rational re arrangement of land resources, increasing profit of land and keeping dynamic balance of amount of cultivated land. Therefore, it has become the focus of society attention. The denotation of land consolidation is discussed in this paper. According to the differences between eastern, middle and western regions of China, the suggestions of land consolidation are put forward combined with national target. (1)In eastern region with high economic level, high land use ratio, and serious human land contradiction, more attention should be paid to agricultural land consolidation, aiming at improvement of land quality, management and benefit associated with the adjustment of agricultural structure. At the same time, non agricultural land consolidation can be gradually performed in order to mitigate pressure of construction land against cultivate land.(2)In middle region with medium economic level and land use ratio, it is necessary to convert the objectives of land consolidation concentration from increasing quantity of cultivated land to promoting its quality, based on keeping dynamic balance of cultivated land amount.(3)For western region associated with low land use ratio and low economic level, land consolidation should not only combine with return of cultivate land to woodland and grassland as well as control of water and desert to improve environments, but promote scientific and technological input to existing cultivated land to increase its output ratio. In addition, it is urgent to constitute, revise and improve laws and regulations related to land consolidation. In order to achieve multiple collective methods of land consolidation funds, it is helpful to explore establishment of land bank and corporations’ participation in land consolidation process.

As one of the main terrestrial ecosystems, grassland ecosystem has suffered the extensive effects from human activity and global change. These effects not only have an influence on aboveground process such as plant growth and plant community dynamics, but also exert a profound influence on multiple belowground processes simultaneously. Therefore, soil microorganism may be a good indicator to understand the response of the aforementioned belowground biological and biogeochemical processes to the changes of outside disturbances. Soil microbial biomass is an important parameter to character the soil microbe activity and size. Meanwhile, it is also the most active component of the soil organic carbon pool, and plays an important role in indicating the minute changes in soil system and is of great significance in the research of soil bio-chemical processes. Here the effects of natural factors (soil temperature, soil moisture and soil pH), human disturbances (grazing, grassland reclamation and fertilization) and global changes (elevated CO₂ and global warming) on soil microbial biomass of grassland ecosystem are presented. So far, the researches about the effects of natural factors and external disturbance on soil microbial biomass still have a lot of uncertainties, so long-term field studies, multiple factors controlled experimentation and nitrogen input studies should be strengthened in the future studies. Besides, new technologies and methods to determine soil microbial biomass are also expected to be developed.

Based on database technology, GIS technology and software engineering methods, this paper tries to design the database functionality of "China's land-based water system comprehensive simulation and virtual reality platform", which is the core software platform of the CAS Knowledge Innovation Program key project “Trans-basin water transfer and its impact on terrestrial water cycle and water safety". Using GIS software and commercial databases, a "multi-source database for regional water system" is established, with the diversity of spatial distribution, time scales, and data format, based on the integrated spatial-temporal strategy and the multi-database establishment frame, which effectively eliminate the effect of information silos, to achieve comprehensive utilization of data related to trans-basin water resources, and to provide integrated data support services for the platform.

Principal pollutants in the waters were compared between Yili River and Xitiaoxi River located in the west and southwest of Taihu basin, based on field observations at various sampling sites in July and November in 2010. Several factors which might induce the pollutants in these inflows were also analyzed related with the socio-economic, geographical and other aspects in the Taihu basin. Several indicators were selected in this study, including chemical oxygen demand (COD_Mn), total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN) and ammonia-N (NH₃-N). Field observations were carried out at 22 river sections and all selected indicators were monitored. Results show that COD_Mn, TN, NH₃-N and TP of Yili River in non flood season were significantly higher than that in flood season. Water quality of Xitiaoxi River in flood period was worse than that in non flood season. Water quality of Yili River is worse than that of Xitiaoxi River. Because of the spatial distribution of urban areas, population, industrial pollution and other business factors, the spatial variation of water quality of both rivers is very obvious. Yili River is mainly polluted by point source pollution. While the downstream of the river is also affected by non-point source pollution in the flood period. Water pollution of Xitiaoxi River mainly comes from non-point source pollution, which is caused by rainfall and runoff carrying most of the pollutants into Xitiaoxi River in flood season.The pollution of the downstream of Xitiaoxi River is also affected by emissions from point sources.

Wetland is one of the most important ecosystems, and it has high social benefit, economic benefit and scientific research value. Global wetland degraded and its amount decreased in the past several decades. Wetland resources are taking on a heavy pressure, and romote sensing technique plays an important role in real- time monitoring of dynamic changes of wetlands. In this paper, wetland monitoring mainly means classification and recognition of wetland based on remote sensing technique. Current status of researches on wetland monitoring based on remote sensing technique in China and abroad was systematically discussed from multiple aspects, including classification systems of wetland, pre - processing of images, remote sensing data sources of multi - resolution (multi - spatial resolution, multi - spectral resolution,multi - temporal resolution), methods of information extraction for wetlands(visual interpretation and computer auto- interpretation) and so on. Finally, three current shortcomings and six future keys of wetland monitoring based on remote sensing were presented.

Humanistic geography is a genre of geography born in late 1960s. It is the emerging period of humanism in Anglo-America. A series of theories came out which criticize the knowledge system of logic-positivism. Humanistic geography is one of them. The philosophical fundaments of humanistic geography are existentialism and phenomenology. Yi-fu Tuan, Edward Relph, Anne Buttimer, David Ley, Marvyn Samuels and Nicholas Entrikin are the leaders of humanistic geography. Yi-fu Tuan published the first article about humanistic geography, which was collected in Human Geography(1978). It is the first collection work on this field. 　　One of the main aims of humanistic geography is corresponding the following relations: social sciences and human, understanding and wisdom, objectivity and subjectivity, materialism and mentalism。Its task is to develop methodology of human geography, and farther to understand the position of mankind on the earth. These points run through each part of this article. The standpoint of humanistic geography for social criticism is ethic and moral. One characteristic of humanistic geography is to emphasize human ability of sense to the nature and the world. This article discusses that ability from three aspects. Firstly, geography pays attention to differences of places which emerge to different qualities of them. A place can be felt through senses, and the comprehensive senses form the felt qualities of the place. Secondly, when dealing with the relationship between human and the nature, power is often added onto the nature, which distorts the origin form of natural things. To feel the harmony of nature and human can upgrade human morals. Thirdly, imagination is an ability of getting experiences of the world, from which cultures come out. Human may be trapped when running after a better material and/or mental life. At the end of this article, the author states that a humanistic geographer must have a vast command of the facts meanwhile must be skilled and sensitive to the complexities and subtleties of the nature.

Based on the researches on temperature change in China in the Holocene, the characteristics of temperature variability were displayed in this report. The temperature variation in the Holocene could be divided into three stages: ascending in the early Holocene with great fluctuations, Megathermal in the mid-Holocene, and descending in the late Holocene. The temperature in the warmest period of 8.0-6.2 kaBP was 1℃ higher than at present. Ten cold intervals which occurred in 11.0 kaBP, 9.8 kaBP, 9.2 kaBP, 8.9 kaBP, 8.2 kaBP, 6.2 kaBP, 4.0 kaBP, 2.8 kaBP, 1.5 kaBP and 0.4 kaBP were consistent with the eight cold events in the North Atlantic domain. It seems that the most significant cold-events appeared in 4.0 kaBP and 0.4 kaBP. Warm events occurred around 8.6 kaBP, 4.7 kaBP and 3.5 kaBP. The significant periodicities of temperature variation in the Holocene were 1000a and 700a.

Diffuse phosphorus discharge from agricultural nonpoint sources has become one of the main causes of eutrophication of surface water. Agricultural NPS pollution can be widely distributed and there is an uncertainty in temporal and spatial distribution, so it is difficult to control and prevent it. Now the valid way to improve the efficiency of control is identifying high risk areas of P loss and then making corresponding measurements. PI based on GIS is a simple risk assessment tool and can identify the high risk areas effectively. This paper reviews the key techniques of P index, including the P loss factors which are taken into account in P indices and modifications of calculation of PI value, and then analyzes the using extent and scale.

Priestley-Taylor method is developed under the condition of non advection water vapour transport, however, this assumption is hardly satisfied in reality. Some researches introduced the parameter in order to eliminate the error brought by the non-advection assumption. According to many researches, the value of parameter has some uncertainty. This paper tries to introduce an advection coefficient to reflect the influence of advection on evaporation. The case analyses suggest that this method could provide the minimum energy for calculating evaporation in winter. Compared with the original formula, the calculation accuracy of evaporation has been effectively improved, especially in winter and summer.

Since 1990, scientists at home and abroad have been paying attention to researches on land use and land cover change (LUCC), but research is not enough on "space and process" on LUCC. Spatial relationship between variables has not yet been established. So it is important for us to research LUCC in various temporal spatial scales. The Geo information Tupu is a kind of methodology that is brought up by academician Chen Shupeng, supported by such advanced technologies as Remote Sensing(RS), Geographical Information System(GIS), Internet Communication, Virtual Reality and Cartography by computer, etc. Tupu is combination of "carto" of spatial units and "graph" of the beginning and process of events. It can express spatial differences in temporal system and develop data mining methods in spatial differences. Tupu can also show its advantages to integrate various tempo spatial multi dimension features in geo scientific analysis. Based on the theories and methods on Geo information Tupu, the thesis discusses spatial and process integration on land use/land cover change by ERDAS and ARC/INFO software. According to theories on Geo information, spatial geo information cognition, systematic global sciences geographic integration, and tempo spatial integration on fire models, the thesis puts forward land use/land cover models based on Tupu unit, which is integrated by "Spatial·Attribute·Process", and composed by relatively homogeneous geographic unit and temporal unit. It is a piece of powerful tool in tempo spatial analysis.

Summarizing the progress in research on urban spatial expansion, China has made great achievements in researches on the configuration and pattern of urban expansion, the mechanism of urban expansion, the dynamic simulation of urban expansion and the environmental influence of unban expansion. At this stage quantitative research methods are mainly used for research on urban spatial expansion of China. The driving factors of urban spatial expansion are analyzed. By remote sensing (RS) and geographical information system (GIS), accurate information about urban spatial expansion is gained. And the process of urban spatial expansion is simulated on different space-time scales. The environmental influence of unban expansion is also analyzed. At the same time there are a large number of theoretical scientific researches on urban spatial expansion. These are the main characteristics of the study on urban spatial expansion. In the future, with the improvement of research technique and methods, the research  foci on the urban expansion are to investigate the rationality of urban expansion, to build quantitative dynamics model, to harmonize space increment with storage, and to enhance comparative study with foreign countries.

As the core of disaster research, Reviews and evaluations on the works of orisk prediction, loss assessing, effects of disaster reduction and prevention are discussed in this paper. At present, international research in evaluation has made a certain progress. The work on it, however, needs to be enriched and perfected by improving the synthesis of multi subjects because of the universality of disaster evaluation. In this paper, author reviews and summarizes the evolution of disaster research in risk evaluation, loss evaluation, environment evaluation and profits evaluation of disaster prevent engineers, and discusses the connotation, content and study methods in these fields. Results show that focuses of present study in risk evaluation are put to natural attribute of disaster. Synthetic research in risk evaluation of disaster formative factors, volubility of disaster affected bodies advances slowly. Research in loss evaluation of disaster does not put enough attention to direct economy losses, indirect economy losses and other losses. Evaluation in disaster environment is a new task, and profit evaluation of disaster prevent engineer needs to be studied deeply on the basis of the principle and method of cost profit.

GIS Spatial Analysis is widely adopted in the research of land use change, especially in the spatial research of land use change. The data analyzed by GIS is mainly from original land use map and remote sensing. The model foundation includes spatio-temperal data model, attribute data model and principal model for acquiring land use characteristics. The data dealing process involves many functions of GIS, such as data conversion, edit function, spatial analysis, database operating, and statistic function. Taking Beijing area as an example, this paper illustrates GIS spatial analysis and its application in the research of land use change. There are some remarkable advantages using GIS in the land use change. It can integrate all land use information in one system, such as original land use maps, images, statistical data, and land attribute data. Furthermore, the spatial data can be analyzed in the system environment in order to produce information of regional land use change. At last, the spatial change, distribution can be printed with the mapping function of GIS. As the shortage of many analysis functions, the integration of GIS with user models is the main developing direction.

The concept of informal sector was first put forward by Hart in 1971, and then was used in a governmental report of ILO in the next year. Since the 1970s, the research on the informal sector rose rapidly overseas, which focused on the developing countries and regions initially. It was found that the informal sector also existed in the developed countries and regions as the research was carried out deeply. But it was different from the developing countries and regions in the way of existence and the mechanism of forming. The research on the informal sector overseas had formed a set of theory system and achievements, which included the characters, spatial agglomeration and differentiation of the informal sector, the relationship with the formal sector, the impacts, and the policies.
The abroad research showed that the informal sector was marginal, heterogeneous and complicated. This economic activity had different intension and extension under different economic, social and systematic conditions. The spatial distribution of the informal sector took on unbalanced state and concentrated in the urban high intense activity area. Different types of the informal sector had spatial variations due to the suburbanization, the inner city decline, and the immigrants.
The theories of the informal sector mainly included the poverty employment, the dual economy, the regulation, and the embeddedness theory. The poverty employment theory, also called the social marginalization theory, pointed out that the rural people were obliged to take the informal activities because they immigrated into cities more rapidly than the formal sectors could create the employment opportunities. The dual economy theory put forward that the upper circulations and the lower circulations were two opposite sectors of the urban economic activity, and the informal sector was one of the lower circulations. But the dual structure of the urban economy was changing with the urban development. Based on the poverty employment theory, the regulation theory considered that the informal sector attributed to the excessive regulation rather than the labor surplus. From the point view of structuralism, the embeddedness theory argued that the informal sector was not only a form of making a living but also embedded deeply in the modern economic network.
The informal sector was related with the formal sector in the process of production, distribution, and supply. They were competitive and reliant with each other. The informal sector had effect on the GDP, and was the important income source of the urban poverty. However, it would bring on the social polarization. Most researches indicated that the informal sector was still the important part of present urban economic activity, and it was hardly formalized due to lack of the capital, system, technique, and so on. Hence what the government could do was to induce it reasonably.
Although the abroad research had gotten remarkable achievements, it was lack of the spatial characters of the informal practitioners, the comprehensive angle of view, the impacts on the region space, and the comparative and quantitative studies.

With the rapid development of urban agglomerative region and urban agglomerations in China, the demand of networked and modernization of transportation is getting urgent. However, intercity rail transit is the important mode and premise of urban agglomerations development. Development experience in developed countries suggests that intercity rail transit is the best mode of passenger transport of urban agglomerations. There exists close spatial relations between urban agglomerations and intercity rail transit. In views of the above-mentioned relationships, according to the five modes of China's regional spatial structure of urban agglomeration, the article puts forward four types of intercity rail transit layouts, including radiation type, pendulum type, string-bead type and network type, and expounds the characteristics respectively. In the future, the domestic intercity rail transit will flourish. Therefore，we should carry out scientific plannings and rationally select the layouts of intercity rail transit in order to effectively meet the growing demand for large passenger flows and promote the development strategy of urban agglomeration.

Ecological footprint theory and its application achievements in global and regional sustainable development system are studied,finding that the application of ecological footprint theory to regional sustainability evaluation leads to a perplexity that the indicated result is inconsistent with the philosophy of sustainable development theory.It is thought that the reason of the perplexity is that the ecological footprint theory based on global ecosystem is improperly adopted in regional sustainable development system, and the essential one is the faulty of the ecological footprint theory.A modification on this theory is made by introducing consumptive ecological footprint and productive ecological footprint, in which the latter is taken as the indicator of regional sustainability.The development impartiality can be demonstrated by comparison between the globe ecological deficit per capita and regional consumptive ecological deficit per capita.

Environment Impact Assessment of land use planning is important for policy maker to make the relative decision such as the farmland protection, conversion the cultivated land to forest land, land degradation control and so on. Since the research in this scope has just been began in China, to explore the characteristics and content of land use planning in China is the important base. In this paper, the relation of traditional project environment impact assessment and EIA of land use planning, the role of EIA of land use planning in improving land use planning is analyzed. Firstly, EIA of land use planning makes the traditional land use planning’s effect assessment more deep; Secondly, it is an application in regional level of environment effect of land use change, it belongs to planning lay of SEA. When we assess the environmental impact of land use planning, the following aspects should be considered, the environmental problem which land use planning may induce to, to adapt the type and spatial system of land use planning, and take the ecological environmental problem as the main aspect. Then the effect to water environment, soil environment, ecological system and natural disaster of land use planning bring is mainly assessed as the content of EIA of land use planning. Also, The procedures of EIA of land use planning suitable to China is given, including to select the environmental problem which are induced by land use planning, to identify relative environmental factors used for assessment, to assess the environment impact degree of land use planning produces and give the rational advice for land use planning. Finally, Some significant suggestion is given in the end, such as to begin with applied basic research of EIA of land use planning, to set up spatial system of EIA of land use planning, to build basic database special for EIA of land use planning, to set up the indicator and methodology system with Chinese characteristic, to enlarge cooperation of multiple science and enhance the public participation.

This paper employs the viewpoints of philosophy, geography, demography and developmental economics. It not only analyses and evaluates the theories of shift of rural surplus labour both in China and abroad, but also induces and summarizes experiential moulds of shift of rural surplus labour. Its purpose is to provide scientific theoretical bases and practial experiences to solve the problem of shift of rural surplus labour in China.