The critical issue of eco-compensation is to build mechanisms for protecting environment and ecosystem by adjusting the economical relationship between the stakeholders who damaged and supported ecosystem services. Focusing on the definition, the purpose, the payment terms and the criterion of eco-compensation, many research papera have been published. Up to now, foreign researchers are more interested in the eco-compensation participated with local residents and running by market-based mechanism. Compared to the international progress, based on the traditional knowledge according to theory of "public goods" by Samuelson P and "externality" by Pigou C, domestic practice in natural resources and environment management is currently still in the government-led phase, and also, the hot pot of eco-compensation research is in financial transfer payments by central governments such as returning cropland to forest project, prohabiting over-grazing and natural forest protection. However, with the development of transportation and communication, the rise of the social concept for ecological payments, the growing ecological consumption such as eco-tourism, and the formation of institutional system of ecological property rights, the transaction costs of ecological services trading is gradually reducing and the eco-compensation market is getting matured. According to different types of ecosystems and ecosystem services, based on the "transaction cost" theory by Course R H in the economics of property rights, the feasibility and the patterns of ecosystem services trading were discussed for establishing a market-oriented compensation system. In this system, regional ecosystem was classified into three types according to the major services of the society-nature conservation areas. Meanwhile, the compensation manners were listed and grouped by three principals of developing the existing market for compensating the ecosystem output services, bundling compensation for the intangible services, and seeking diverse operations for ecosystems mainly providing non-material services. In the future research, attentions should be paid to case studies on land management and community participation.
Based on the survey data of 1251 households in Henan Province, this paper builds an indicator system to illustrate the ability in response to external impacts of the households, and finds that the information technology is the most important aspect for the external response capability of households. For the 11 sample villages, the inter-village differences of the external response capability between households are larger than that of farmers. By establishing econometric models, this paper also finds that the factors impacting on the ability of the external response of households include both the characteristics of the households themselves and the external environmental factors such as the geographical environmental factors and the economic factors. The income from non-agricultural industries contributes the most to the external response capability of households and its impact degree will reduce as the income of the household increases. The result indicates that geography still plays a significant role in fostering the abilities of households. The distance to the county town, landforms and telephone per capita significantly affect the external responsiveness of households.
De-farming slope farmland has been an effective measure in recent years for the improvement of the eco-environment and the mitigation of soil and water loss in the Loess Plateau. This paper, taking the Yangou Basin as a case study and using the day-by-day meteorological data from Yan’an station in 2006, simulated and analyzed the quantitative relation between alfalfa straw yield, soil and water loss and topographic condition with the aid of WIN-YIELD software. The results show that: a) Topographic gradient has important influences on straw yield and sediment loss in the Loess Plateau. The bigger the gradient is, the lower the straw yield and the more sediment loss will be. b) The straw yield, when the alfalfa is planted below an elevation of 1000 m, is significantly higher than that over 1000 m. Changes of soil and water losses with topographic height on slope farmland are not significant. c) Topographic slope aspect has little effect on the straw yield and soil and water loss.
Landscape pattern change in Loess Plateau area has an important impact on the structure and function of the whole ecosystem, and even on global change. Based on the exploration of the concept and connotation of landscape pattern and land use pattern, the progress in the researches on landscape pattern change in the Loess Plateau aera is reviewed from the aspects of quantitative analysis, spatial and temporal evolution and scale effect. Although great progress has been made over the last decades, there are still many problems to be explored thoroughly, such as landscape data selection and application, scale dependency analysis, establishment of assessment standards and so on. Finally, the future research trends are prospected in order to provide a scientific basis for the research on landscape pattern and process.
As the contradiction between the growth of human demand and the scarcity and limitation of resource itself is getting more and more prominent, the problems of resources’ exploitation have gradually become one of the key issues in the world. It is inevitable that resources geography and its related disciplines which take resource as the research subject should develop quickly. Compared to the resources use of the world’s average level, the resource use in our country has a characteristic of large total amount and small relative quantity. At present our country is facing with the contradiction between the relatively poor per capita resources and the extensive resource consumption economic growth mode, which leads to the decline of resource carrying capacity and causes a series of eco-environmental problems. Based on the situations of resource use, it is time to construct and develop the research of resources geography in China. In this paper, we firstly introduce the development process of resources geography’s disciplinary position which is originally identified as the branch of geography science and later as the branch of resource science that is now widely accepted in China. This paper also discusses the research object and contents of resources geography based on the views summed up by the predecessors working in this field, and preliminarily establishes the disciplinary system of resources geography by dividing resources geography into natural resources geography and social resources geography from the perspective of the generalized implication of resources. Then, the paper discusses the generation and development history of resources geography at home and abroad, and summarizes the research progress of the main fields of resources geography including the researches on resource carrying capacity, resource sustainable utilization, resource economical and intensive utilization, resource optimized allocation and so on. Finally, the paper puts forward the trends of resources geography from three aspects of research contents, method and technology and disciplinary construction.
Using the technique of remote sensing to monitor the water quality is an advanced tool compared to traditional monitoring methods. This paper reviews the progress of application of remote sensing in inland water environment monitoring. Firstly, the principles of water environment parameters retrieval were addressed. Secondly, the applications of several inland water quality parameters in monitoring by remote sensing were discussed, including Chlorophyll a (Chl-a), Suspended Solids (SS), Colored Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM), Total Phosphorus (TP), Total Nitrogen concentrations , transparency and turbidity of inland water and so on. And then we classified the existing retrieval models into empirical model and bio-optical model. Thirdly, different remote sensing images and their advantages and disadvantages for inner water environment monitoring were introduced. Finally, we discussed the problems of retrieval precision and proposed some suggestions for further research.
The analysis of agricultural drought risk is not only the prerequisite of drought risk management, but also the theoretical basis of risk division and of the damages, and it has become a new research focus in recent years. The connotation, the constituent elements, the analysis system, and the study status of agricultural drought disaster were described in this paper. On this basis, this paper pointed out that, from the agricultural drought hazard and vulnerability point of view, the systematic establishment of a comprehensive drought risk analysis framework, especially the development of dynamic mathematical models and index system for each risk factor, is the research priority in the study of temporal and spatial patterns of agricultural drought risk.
Taking Qiaozidonggou and Qiaozixigou watershed as examples in the loess hilly region, using remote sensing image to obtain land use data, based on the observed rainfall, runoff and sediment data during 1986- 2004, this paper analysed the effects of land use change on runoff-sediment relationship. The results showed that in the loess hilly and gully areas, increasing land use/land cover can reduce effectively the watershed runoff and sediment yield; when rainfall and rainfall intensity were smaller, land-use change was limited and the runoff-sediment relationship had no significant differences. When the rainfall and rainfall intensity and land-use change were significant, the difference of runoff-sediment relationship was obvious. It might be the main reason for sloping land changing into terraced land.
The paper selects slope, aspect, altitude, land use, transportation, water resource and soil quality as evaluation indexes and assesses comprehensively suitability of residental environment in Lushui County of Nujiang Valley by using spatial analysis technical of GIS such as spatial overlay analysis, buffer analysis. Evaluation results: regions suitable for human inhabitance are distributed mainly around rivers in the form of strips, while others are scattered. There is a clear positive correlation between situation of residental environment and economic development, that is, the correlation coefficient between evaluation value of residental environment and township farmers’ per capita net income reaches 0.89, and villages farmers' per capita net income reaches 0.965 in Lushui. The article also analyzes residental environment capacity of all townships in Lushui, result shows the environment is difficult to carry the existing population in Lushui.
A large number of peri-urban areas are fostered due to China's rapid economic development especially in the southeast coastal areas. The human settlements in peri-urban areas have changed drastically and formed unique settlement morphology in the process of rapid urbanization. Taking Jimei district, Xiamen city as an example, and using the qualitative and quantitative combined method, this study aims to probe into the changes of settlement morphology in the process of urbanization, and the impacts of urban expansion on the spatial distribution of settlements and the landscape pattern in their surrounding areas in this region. The innovations in this study include: (1) according to a comprehensive consideration of their physical form and non-material form characteristics, the settlements existing in the study area are classified to five types, i.e. rural settlement, town, suburb village, in-city village and urban settlement; (2) with SPOT-5 panchromatic band image in Dec. 2006 of this area, the spatial distribution characteristics of different settlements are analyzed at both regional scale and selected sample area scale using different landscape metrics; (3) the sample areas are established using different forms of settlements as their cores in order to compare the impact of urbanization on landscape pattern in their surrounding areas. Findings from metric analyses reveal that rural settlements have the largest share and tend to display scattered distribution at the regional scale. The proportion of in-city villages is larger than that of urban settlements within the urban built-up area, and the distribution of the latter in this region is more concentrated than the former. Affected by different degrees of urbanization, the landscape pattern in the surrounding areas of different forms of settlements shows features of the urbanization gradient, following the order of rural settlement→town→suburb village→in-city village→urban settlement, and the higher the degree of urbanization, the higher the level of landscape fragmentation in the sample area.
This article reviewed the research of urban water and soil conservation in China during the period 1995-2008. Firstly, the period of research was divided into the problem-oriented research stage in the years of 1995-1999 and the goal-oriented research stage in the year of 2000-2008. Each stage had its special research focus and characteristic. And then, based on the research framework, this paper summarized the domestic urban water and soil conservation research in four aspects, namely theoretical basic research, urban water and soil loss formation research, urban water and soil loss appraisal and urban water and soil conservation measures research. The progress of relational subjects and theories was also introduced. Finally, some problems were pointed out and function-oriented research was proposed as a main development trend in future.
Research on urban land carrying capacity(ULCC) is not only a progress in traditional land carrying capacity(LCC), but also a useful tool to explore the sustainable development of cities. As it is concerned by an increasing number of experts, this paper reviews the origin, development, contents and methods of ULCC, as well as its application in city management. ULCC focuses on city areas, so its research changes the previous “land-food-population” direction in land carrying capacity, and emphasizes the all-together analysis of population size, economic growth and social development which the city can support. References show that ULCC was talked frequently in fields such as urban development, resources, environment and ecosystem. But, the system of ULCC itself has not been formed yet. Classification of the related literatures shows that the existed studies mainly discussed something related to ULCC independently from three perspectives, such as carriers, objects and influencing factors. They aim at relationship analysis between different kinds of urban land and population, economic growth, social development and eco-environment. Almost all of the existed papers made a lot of quantitative analysis to answer how many citizens, and what kind of economy and lives the urban land can support. Although methods used in these papers cover mainly mathematics, model, and indicator system, they are different for different objects and urban features. So, it destroys the possibility of comparing the evaluation results among different cities. Furthermore, the effects of ULCC used for urban land management were mostly unsatisfactory. In view of the current research shortcomings, it is pointed out in the end that something should be done in the future to improve the research system of ULCC itself, to identify main function zoning of urban land based on ULCC, to strengthen early warning study of ULCC, to set up interactive mechanism between ULCC evaluation and land use policy, and to renew methods and popularize the research results.
As a special location, national border has been paid attention to by scholars extensively in western countries. The study has focused on “Border Effect” ever since the discourse by L?觟sch in economic geography. National border was merely taken as an “impediment line” between two countries in traditional economic geography. In the 1980s to mid-1990s, large quantities of literatures emerged on analyzing the “Impediment Effect” using econometrics. As the progress of globalization and regional economic integration, the “Integration Effect” along the border region and the transformation of border effects have caused in-depth debate among scholars, especially on “borderless”. And these become the major themes in this field. Compared to the progress in border effects study by western geographers, as discoursed in this paper, studies in this field in China are just starting up. Further studies are suggested to focus on the mechanism of industry agglomeration in border regions, the mode of cooperation in cross-border areas, the border zone institutional design and the cross-border governance in the context of “opening of China’s border region”.
On the basis of Chenery’s theory of industrial linkage structure and the input-output analysis method, and from perspective of relative proportions, this article studies the evolution of industrial linkage structure in the economic development of China, Japan and the US, and reveals the reasons of the change in industry linkage structure from the perspective of specific industry. It develops the theory of Chenery for rate of intermediate inputs in overall macro-economy and proportion of intermediate inputs in tertiary industries. This paper proposes the theory of inverted "V" type of intermediate inputs rates in macro-economy and "wild-type" curve progression in the proportion of three industries in time series. China is in the developing phase in the inverted "V"-type and t1~t3 stage in the “wild-type" development curve. Determining the focus of China’s industrial restructuring should be as follows: ① We should maintain the declining proportion of primary industry and continue to strengthen the technology level of it. It is time to raise the industry added value ratio. ② The growth rate of the proportion of intermediate inputs in secondary industry should be appropriately, making it more suitable for the national economy. Investments should be focused on the next stage of capital-intensive and technology-intensive industries and the added value of industrial production should be enhanced. ③ The proportion of intermediate inputs of tertiary industry should be strengthed appropriately to represent a substantial increase in its growth rate. The industrial structure should be adjusted to achieve the unanimous coordination, sophistication and high added value in industrial structure.
Based on the integrated transport network in 1986, 1994 and 2005, choosing weighted mean travel time as the indicator, the temporal and spatial evolution of integrated transport network and its accessibility are elaborated, and some conclusions are drawn as follows. (1) The speedy development of integrated transport network results in the continual improvement of accessibility, which is faster in the second period (1994-2005) than that in the first period (1986-1994). The optimal region of integrated accessibility is Shanghai and the zone along the Taihu Lake in three time section. The sub-optimal region of integrated accessibility was“>- shaped” that consisted of the zone along the Shanghai-Nanjing route and the Shanghai-Hangzhou route in 1986 and 1994, but it had the “Z-shaped” pattern that consisted of the zone along the Shanghai-Nanjing route, the Yangtze River and the Shanghai-Hangzhou route, and the Hangzhou-Ningbo route. (2) The benefits from the improvement of accessibility are different among the nodes. The changing extent of weighted mean travel time is related to the initial value, and the nodes with high initial value decrease more. The changing rate is higher in the central region than that in the north and south regions. Both the changing extent and the changing rate have different patterns in the different periods. (3) Shanghai has the best in integrated accessibility, followed by Jiangsu provinces, and Zhejiang province is the worst, but the dominant position of Shanghai is weakening, and the gap between Jiangsu and Zhejiang is narrowing. (4) The standard deviation of integrated accessibility coefficient decreases in the research period, which shows that the integrated transport network in the Yangtze River Delta is improving, but there are different developmental processes among various transport modes.
Urban morphology research is an important element of urban geography. This paper chooses a railway hub-Huaihua city to carry out the research and analyzes its characteristics with the help of urban land use planning map, 1∶10000 topographic maps, remote sensing images, socio-economic statistical data and other relevant information, using ArcGIS 9.2 and statistical analysis software (SPSS11.5) and some other research methods such as statistical analysis, spatial patterns analysis, fans analysis and fractal theory. The study shows that Huaihua is expanding mainly to the east and the south, representing stage characteristics. In the external city morphology, it presents low compact and fractal dimension but high shape index. In the internal city morphology, residential land and public facilities land are distributed in circle layers, while industrial land is mainly concentrated in a few specific areas. On this basis, to explore the dynamic mechanism of urban morphology evolution, we found that the evolution of urban patterns is the result of economic development, transport infrastructure construction, and natural and geographical conditions.
The period of undergraduate study is a key term for innovative talents cultivation. The Geographical Base of Beijing Normal University has been working hard on the exploration of the mechanism, modes and approaches of training on scientific research for undergraduates at an early stage. According to the new concept of “inquiry teaching” and “teaching and researching interaction”, based on abundant resources in research such as key laboratories at three levels (Beijing Municipality, the Ministry of Education and National Funds), National Key Discipline, national researching and teaching projects, and relied on a high standard team -‘Chief Supervisors + tutors team’-involving members of academicians, “Cheungkong Scholars”, receivers of National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (NSFC), and National Distinguished Teachers, a scheme, supporting researching projects of undergraduate-as-coordinator, has been improved, and a personality-oriented training system on scientific research for undergraduates has been established, which is a “stage-subject-ability” 3-dimensional platform of multi-subjects, multi-patterns, and multi-stages.
