Urbanization can be referred to as a process by which human activities and productive factors are concentrated from rural areas to city areas. As a result，modern cities and towns play as the central places of wealth accumulation for human- being，not only in the ways of settlement and material consumption，but also in the ways of social production and environmental pollution. In terms of the law of ecological evolution，the behaviors of cities and towns in consumption of water resources are also composed of three types, namely, the direct one，the indirect one and the induced one. More importantly，however，such behaviors are proved in a general pattern formatted by the direct < the indirect < the induced according to the material and environmental input for city- ecological system, and it can be labeled as an inversed- Pyramid Structure compared with the Pyramid Structure for the natural eco- system. Under this circumstance, the water- resource base for the development of modern cities and towns is far beyond the boundaries of the cities themselves， and it covers，in the point view of city- ecology system，the region and the country where the cities and towns are located，and or even the whole world.
Watershed ecosystem is a social- economic- natural complex ecosystem. Watershed eco-health assessment can help watershed layout, protection and comprehensive management, and can provide basis for decision- making. In this paper, the concept and characteristics of watershed eco- health are introduced, and the history, current condition and research scale of watershed ecohealth assessment are put forward. The assessment should be carried out from broad temporal-spatial scales. This research summarizes methods of watershed eco- health assessment in the past years both at home and abroad. There are two main methods: one is biological assessment and the other is indices assessment. It should be careful in selecting bio- indicator species because the sensitivity and reliability of species need to be considered simultaneously. The indices should include six categories: bio- assessment, water condition assessment, hydrological assessment, habitat assessment, social- economic assessment and human health assessment. Every category has some relative indices. Because of the complexity of watershed ecosystem, the measures of watershed eco- health indices are difficult sometimes. The measurement methods should be further developed. Ecosystem restoration is needed for those unhealthy watershed ecosystems and methods of it are introduced. Watershed eco- health assessment is a developing theory system and there are some problems that should be further discussed in this field. Last, these problems and research trends in future are pointed out.
Landscape is a heterogeneity region formed by a lot of ecosystems or mosaic constituted by different land uses. Landscape patterns are the concrete embodiment of landscape heterogeneity and the result of functions of various ecological processes. The formation of landscape patterns reflects different ecological processes; at the same time, landscape patterns affect landscape succession and variation processes in a certain degree. The relationship between spatial patterns, ecological processes and scales is the core research contents of landscape ecology. This article reviews the domestic and foreign research progress in research methods of landscape patterns and ecological processes and the relationship between landscape patterns and ecological processes. Finally the authors analyze the problems and insufficiency of the present studies, hot research spots, and the tendency of the relationship between landscape patterns and ecological processes in the future.
Sustainable rural development and rural landscape (including structures, functions and spatial- temporal modes) presented close relationships karst mountainous areas, southwestern China. For a long time, rural unreasonable development and utilization resulted in some ecological problems, such as serious land desertification, soil erosion and degradation of forest ecosystems. Moreover, they took on the stacks and combinations of various ecological problems, thus restricting rural sustainable ecological - economic development. Therefore, understanding of comprehensive controlling of rock desertification in karst mountainous areas, southwestern China, is important for improving the service functions of karst ecosystem through reasonably distributing rural landscape patterns and optimizing human land use activities. Presently, researches on rock desertification background, drivers and future scenario simulation of rural landscape have already obtained some achievements. Moreover, some successful models have restored/ restructured rock desertification ecosystem. But the information of ecological ideals on rural landscape rock desertification should be applied back to ecological controlling practices. Faced with the demand at national level for providing a scientific understanding of controlling rock desertification through optimizing rural landscape patterns, the studies will aim at the following priority aspects in karst mountainous areas: （1）identifying transformation, modification and maintaining of rural landscape patterns, and measuring the contribution weights of rural landscape types and their spatial patterns at different scales; （2）understanding the ecological ideas of different rural landscape patterns and their effects on rural rock desertification, and recognizing the rock desertification effects of rural landscape patterns; （3）analyzing interaction between the high strength human activities as well as their corresponding rural landscape patterns and the rock desertification, and building the framework of rural landscape rock desertification drivers; and （4）discussing rural landscape patterns prone to rock desertification restoration, and improving people's understanding and identification of the process of rural rock desertification effects. Based on these understandings, future research, with the target of reducing rural rock desertification, will pay more attention to two aspects: controlling total areas and spatial patterns of rural rock desertification, in order to optimize rural landscape patterns. Through these means, we can conscientiously do these works for the optimum of rural landscape patterns and the restoration and controlling of rock desertification in karst mountain.
Carbon and water cycles absorbed much attention in the global change researches. There were many observations indicating that they were robustly coupled in the terrestrial ecosys-tems. Here we reviewed the correlations between carbon and water cycles from leaf to canopy and to larger scales. Moreover, we discussed the general mechanisms of the coupling relationships between carbon and water cycles. The chain between carbon and water cycles was analyzed into four links: soil- plant link, plant- atmosphere link (stomata link), soil- atmosphere link and biochemical link. The causes for the strong correlations between carbon and water could be generalized as three fundamental functions: 1) the chemosynthesis between carbon and water; 2) the stomatal controls on gas exchange and its optimal function; and 3) the common driving forces and similar controls for carbon and water cycles in the terrestrial ecosystems. Water use efficiency defined as the ratio of carbon assimilation to water use also was discussed as a suitable term indicating the quantity relationship between carbon and water.
China's 11th Five - Year Plan calls for the Principal Function zoning in the whole country, which is to distinguish four kinds of principal function sections from the whole country according to the Ecological Carrying Capacity, the Exploitation Density and the Development Potential. Now, the principal Function zoning is started up throughout the country and some provinces have attempted to organize the advance study of zoning. However, for this task is still in its infancy, there is not a complete range of techniques to recourse to. From transition of the quantitive revolution to the ecological trends and the logical relations between the Exploitation and the Protection, this paper attempts to put forward an ecologically based technique for the principal function zoning and mainly discusses the basic flow, the index system and the distinguishing techniques of the zoning. "Protection first and development follow" is our basic way of thinking in this paper. In other words, the basic ecological frame of the area should be laid off before its development rank is determined. The index system is also put forward which is made up of three characteristic indexes including the Ecological Footprint, the Ecological Carrying Capacity and the exploitation density, and the ordinal distinguishing system of the principal function is established. The purpose of the research is to stimulate public discussion on a topic that will have major impact on the development of our country and thus provide methods and theory system for the Principal Function zoning of our country.
Cargo flow reflects the economic ties and spatial interaction among different region unites, which helps to probe the economic networks. Based on comment on research progress of railway cargo, we constructed the GIS data base of railway cargo flow in China since 1950s, and analyzed its spatial regularity (including the distribution and flow configuration), its evolution and flowing path. We drew these conclusions: (1)With more and more cities tied by railway, the covering scope and interaction density of railway cargo has been expanded, urging interregional economic ties to expand from interior to exterior and develop the cooperating networks. (2)There is a zoning character of cargo distribution with different scales in East, Middle and West Regions or in North and South Regions, but with weakening trend. North China became their central region. Additionally, resource regions and several transport hubs became the main outflow region of cargo, but industrial regions and many transport hubs became the main inflow region.(3)Due to concentrative transportation of cargoes, trunk railways have the great amount of cargo flow and density which developed into transportation way and compete the interregional economic ties and their adjacent regions with a great scale of railway cargoes which developed into the cargo belt.(4)Cargo flow occurred largely in East and Middle Regions or North Regions, and most are lognitudinal and some are transmeridional but with increasing trend.(5)There occurred the polarization of cargo flow, and some urban clusters (especially capital regions) became the concentrative regions of railway cargo and flow, but some cities or regions, due to the resource distribution and transport location, became the flowing hub, and (6)Cargo flow between resource cities and ports or industrial regions became increasingly important, but container flow occurred among the regional central cities. Those discussions help to probe the interregional economic ties and urban spatial interaction.
There is extensive literature about the spatial structure and evolution feature of tourist flow in China, but little has focused on the flow diffusion. Taking Sichuan province as a case study, this paper studies the spatial diffusion laws of tourist flow that has entered into regional center city (Chengdu) and lays stress on the diffusion direction and path. Tourists from other provinces or foreign countries often flow into Chengdu, the regional tourism center city, when they enter into Sichuan province, then diffuse to other districts or scenic spots. For tourists from Sichuan province, some of them may diffuse from Chengdu to other tourism cities or scenic spots, others often flow directly from the source market out of Chengdu or their temporary residence to the tourism cities or scenic spots. This paper studies the tourist flows diffusing from Chengdu but does not include those flows from other regions. Altogether 21 districts, cities and prefectures in Sichuan province have been selected as samples in this study. The paper firstly analyzes the tourism economic relationships among these administrative districts, then concludes the main spatial diffusion direction as northwest (Chengdu- Dujiangyan), southwest (Chengdu- Leshan) and northeast (Chengdu- Deyang-Mianyang). On this basis and the sampling research data, the spatial diffusion is induced into 14 paths. The spatial diffusion paths of sub- determined tourist flows were also analyzed in details in this paper. The re sult shows that age, sex, job, income and travelling purpose of different tourists may affect the decisions of tourism circuit, of which age, income and travelling purpose often play an important role.
Based on the geographic information system (GIS) technology, this paper tries to measure and analyze the changing trend of regional development equilibrium of Jiangsu Province since 1990. Firstly, we use the regional barycenter model, take a visible measurement on the temporalspatial distribution and movement tendency of geometric centroid, population centroid, GDP centroid, foreign capital (FDI) centroid, and then combine them with related statistics indexes under the different dimensions to analyze the temporal- spatial characteristic of economic equilibrium in Jiangsu. The conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) Compared to the population centroid, Jiangsu's GDP centroid and the FDI centroid show a marked deviation. The population centroid moves from southeast to northwest, to southwest, and again back to northwest, showing a converse “U”moving trend. The GDP centroid shifts toward southeast. But the FDI centroid takes 2003 as an inflection point, moving towards the south before that and toward the northeast after that gradually. (2) The economic disequilibrium is mostly turning worse in Jiangsu. The relative development rates present south- north unbalance and county downtown unbalance. And the internal unbalance of the south, middle, north of Jiangsu also have their own characteristics. (3)The counties, which have an accelerating relative development rate in this century is mainly located in the four corners of the southern and middle of Jiangsu, showing a " 口" shaped pattern, while those with a descending relative development rate mainly in the northern of Jiangsu. and (4) The convergence among the three spatial regions of Jiangsu and within every spatial unit is increasingly stregthened. Southeast Region of Jiangsu demonstrated a highly developed convergence zone at the core of Suzhou & Wuxi, while Northern Regions of Jiangsu shows a rapidly developing convergence zone, which is represented by Yancheng municipality, and a slowly developing convergence zone, which is represented by Lianyungang municipality.
Currently,intensive land use has not only become one of the important contents of circular economy and economical society，but also is a key work in country land resource management departments. In order to improve land use level and scientific land planning of urban development zones, based on the land use characteristics and land use data of urban development zones of small towns in Cixi, the appraise indictors of intensive land use for urban development zones of small towns were established in this paper. By using the general evaluation method and four evaluating grades, choosing a model of assessment and confirming weight of indictors, the condition of intensive land use for urban development zones of small towns were calculated. The results showed that only one urban development zone in shape of intensive land use, others all attributed to fringe or not intensive. Further analysis indicated that there were clear differences in land investment, land use degree and persistency between different level urban development zones, and in land use efficiency between different industries. It can be concluded that land use policy has an important role in intensive land use for urban development zones. The results and conclusions in this paper will provide scientific basis for accelerating the study of intensive land use of urban development zones.
Land use patterns are governed by a broad variety of potential driving forces and constraints which act over a large range of scales. It has been recognized that the types and effects of land use drivers may vary with spatial scale, and multi- scale investigation of land use patterns is essential for full understanding of its complexity. The main purpose of this paper was to perform a multi- scale analysis of land use patterns of Luoyuan County in Fujian province by means of statistical analysis on the basis of bio- geophysical, socio- economic and infrastructural conditions. 20 variables were selected as the candidate land use drivers and 9 main land use types were considered. Land use data was derived from the 1:1 0000 survey map, terrain data from the 1:50000 DEM, and accessibility data, i.e. distance to the nearest rural road, from 1:10000 distribution map of rural road, river, residential area, and etc. But socio- economic data such as population census data was collected on the basis of administration areas. As a result, the spatial distribution of population data on cells was conducted based on the analysis of the relationship between population density and its influencing factors. The basic spatial organization in the analysis was a 100×100 meter geographical grid. Through aggregations of these cells, a total of 20 artificial aggregation levels were obtained. 9 independent main land use types, namely paddy land, dry land, garden plot, woodland, town land, agricultural residential area, industry land, water body and unused land, were constructed at multiple scales respectively. The results showed that: (1) Land use models varied with aggregation level indicating spatial scale effects. Independent variables explained more of the variance for the explanation of land use type at higher aggregation levels. Relationships obtained at a certain scale of analysis may not be directly applied at other scales. The variables included in the models and their relative importance also varied between land use types. (2) The distribution of paddy land was mainly restricted by slope, distance to the nearest rural road or city, aspect, agricultural population density, whose in-fluence increases with scale, elevation and distance to nearest cover river, whose influence occur only in medium or small aggregation levels. For garden plot, the elevation and the distance to nearest coast or fresh water sea- route are the highest ranking variables and their contributions increase with aggregation levels. The slope and the distance to nearest town or line- river or city are the second ranking variables. For woodland, the slope and the distance to city or town are the most leading variables at almost all aggregation levels. Important variable also includes elevation at lower aggregation levels. Variables of distance to nearest highroad or low road or residential contribute to the models to a certain extent and their contributions increase with aggregation levels. Industry land is mainly related with distance to nearest fresh water sea- route, total population density, distance to nearest coast or road, slope and distance to nearest city, whose influences all increase with aggregation levels. Most land use types in Luoyuan County were restricted by topographic factors while topography changes little along with time. It is argued that these types of analyses can support the quantitative multi- scale understanding of land use, needed for the spatially explicit land use change models.
It is very important both to theories and practices to study the inherent mechanism of relations between cultivated land change and socio- economic development, because the serious loss of cultivated land during the stage of rapid economic development has been paid more and more attention to by government and society. Based on the brief review of study on the impact of economic development on cultivated land area reduction, the impact of economic development on cultivated land quality change, the socio- economic driving forces of cultivated change, and the impact of cultivated land change on food security, and combined with China's special conditions that too many people have too little land and with the actual situation of China's current study, this paper analyzed the problems in study on the relations between cultivated land change and socio- economic development, such as the accuracy of data, the problems of spatial and temporal scales, the uniformity of index system, the research model and etc. This paper also discussed the research trends in future, such as making a through study on the inherent mechanism of cultivated land conversion, strengthening the innovation and breakthrough of research methods, making more research on the social and ecological values of cultivated land, and developing applied research.
Based on analysis on structure change of modern planting in Luancheng county, the paper discussed the local dynamic efficiency of energy input in planting system from 1984 to 2006 and draw some conclusions as follows: the organic energy input with the majority of straw directly returned to field has been the leading part of energy input since the middle of 1990s, and the tendency of enlarged gap between organic energy and industrial energy input began to have a little turn because the industrial energy subsidies increased rapidly in the later period. We further analyzed the energy flow structure of grain production, finding that the general energy efficiency was not down dramatically from 1.78 in 1993 to 1.67 now, which indicates that increasing organic energy input required more energy engineering and chemical fertilizer input, and they coordinated to form a steady and high- productivity system. But a problem which has been raised at the same time is that the most part of industrial energy is machine fuels and electricity consumed by irrigation. That indicates the farming system of combination of agriculture and animal husbandry, the water- saving irrigation and the corresponding crop structure distribution are three important tasks to improve the agricultural production construction and energy and resource- efficiency.
Analysis on land criteria price's time- space pattern of inner cities is helpful for macroscopic control over land market and optimized configuration of land resource. Taking Hohhot as a study area, the research analyzes time- space character of residential land price 2001~2007 based on land price investigation and dynamic monitoring. The result shows that: the hierarchy and land criteria prices of main zones in the city reduces from inner to outer orderly. But the hierarchy boundary is influenced by the city road directly; they are of distinct negative relation, and the price difference between high- low levels is getting large with the development of city; and during the research period, the change of land criteria price takes on staggered character with time and, spatially, land criteria price in the city center and urban fringe is increasing quickly, but little slowly in hinterland and most slowly in near suburb.the formation of the scale ineconomic land, the loss of land - use efficiency, decrease in productivity of the adjacent land, and violation of the farmers'neighboring rights. Land is the base for the farmers to survive, multiply and develop from generation to generation. At the same time, land is the basic livelihood guarantee of farmers and the basic sources of livelihood. The farmers losing lands means losing the basis of survival and development and losing their rights to survival and development. Attributes of the land resources indicate that land acquisition must involve the change of land use and the ecological environment factors and guarantee the farmers’ environmental rights. Therefore, we must improve the land acquisition system and establish an effective means of market operation in order to achieve social justice and harmony through the correct assessment of ecological value of agricultural lands to compensate for the loss of landless farmers fairly and reasonably.
In this paper, data analysis and theoretical analysis were used to summarize some issues on loss of ecological compensation in the land acquisition compensation both in China and abroad, and especially the obvious deficiencies of the compensation system of China, such as inadequacy support for compensation theory, the small scope of compensation, lower compensation, amount of compensation which is not in place, and so on. Such system defects cause not only the loss of large amount of farmland, but also the influence to the ecological environment of agriculture, and directly violate the land use rights of farmers, such as land division resulted from land acquisition,the formation of the scale ineconomic land, the loss of land - use efficiency, decrease in productivity of the adjacent land, and violation of the farmers'neighboring rights. Land is the base for the farmers to survive, multiply and develop from generation to generation. At the same time, land is the basic livelihood guarantee of farmers and the basic sources of livelihood. The farmers losing lands means losing the basis of survival and development and losing their rights to survival and development. Attributes of the land resources indicate that land acquisition must involve the change of land use and the ecological environment factors and guarantee the farmers' environmental rights. Therefore, we must improve the land acquisition system and establish an effective means of market operation in order to achieve social justice and harmony through the correct assessment of ecological value of agricultural lands to compensate for the loss of landless farmers fairly and reasonably.
With rapid development of the modern information technology, it is not a problem to extract waterlines automatically based on DEM products. However, there exist many problems to be solved whether on the current automatic water streamline extracting methods or on the current classifying methods based on DEM. The singularity of the classifying parameters leads to a lower precision of the water - streamline classifying order result, as well as a lack of interknit between waterlines. On this background, this paper analyzes the progresses on the study of automatic basin streamline extracting & classifying methods. At the same time, this paper concludes the current problems with the waterline auto- extracting methods based on DEM, such as the problems for disposal of the sink and plateau areas, as well as the problems with the waterline auto- classifying methods, such as mis- match between the newly produced results and the traditional maps. Last, the paper puts up the idea of constructing the waterline auto- classifying model based on FBGIS in order to solve the problems of current waterline auto- classifying methods.
