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  • Original Articles
    Yi-fu Tuan
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    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.

  • Original Articles
    ZHANG Baiping1, LU Dadao1, MA Xiaoding2, CHENG Xuan2, MA Peng3, SUN Ranhao1
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    This paper outlines for the first time the concept of state special eco-region. Ecological security is one of the most severe challenges facing China's sustainable development in the 21st century. But, it is closely related with manifold factors such as poverty, regional development model and orientation, and simple ecological projects have not much effect owing to inherent shortcomings. Objectively, in West China there exist "three in one" areas with fragile ecology, underdeveloped economy, but outstanding position in national ecology or resources. They should get special policies, including sustained ecological compensation, concentrated investment instead of departmental investment, and integrated planning instead of department-based management. Regional development should be based on special region model and stepwise pattern toward ecological end. Establishment of state special eco-region in these areas accords with national strategies of ecological security, energy security, west development and poverty alleviation. This could facilitate optimizing combination of limited resources, forming ever-lasting mechanism for regional environmental construction and economic development, breaking the spiral of ecological deterioration and poverty, dissolving the sticky problem of ecological migration, getting rid of social unstable factors, undermining the hidden trouble of national ecological security, and finally, lying the ecological foundation for sustainable development of the country. The lower Jinsha river reaches, about 80,000 km2 covering administratively 30 counties (of which 22 are state-level poor counties) with an installed capacity of four planned hydropower stations more than twice that of the Three Gorges station, should be considered as the first state special eco-region.

  • Original Articles
    WANG Fazeng
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    The construction of ecological city conforms to the ecological trend of the world, and it is a necessary way to promote the sustainable development of Chinese cites. The scientific ideas of choosing the construction of ecological city as the only strategy, understanding the purpose and important tasks of the construction, stressing the key factor of city space, and invoking the optimization of city open space system, should be established. The fundamental aim of the construction of ecological city is: urging the city ecosystem's structure and function to be reasonable and coordinated, realizing the city scale expansion and the connotation optimization by the new growth way, adjusting the city spatial structure and building the open space systems by the intensified way, realizing the high fusion of the city primarily nature environment with the artificial environment by the restoring way, and promoting the city to enter the condition of the sustainable development. The construction of ecological city in China should take the scientific principles of optimizing wholly the city-region ecological system, coordinating the relationship between the construction and the economical-social development, taking human beings as the basis,sharing equal profit, and adhering to the regional creativity. Under the condition of extremely arduous urbanization duty and city burden aggravates in China, it is really a grand project with rich times significance and great interest to the country and the people. We should improve the city ecological environment quality and give impetus to ecological city construction by scientific ideas and principles, from the very beginning.

  • Original Articles
    DONG Yuxiang
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    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.

  • Original Articles
    WEI Jianbing1,2, XIAO Duning1, XIE Fuju1,2
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    With the explosion of population and the rapid development of technology and economy, human activities have been a greater and greater effect on the earth. Human unreasonable activities have led to the degradation of ecology and aggravated the occurrence of natural disasters. Therefore, the effects of human activity on ecology and environment have been one of the key points in the study of man-land relationship. This paper firstly reviewed and discussed the deep impact of human activities on ecology and environment. The main impact types include: land use, large-scale engineering constructions, urban expansion and inducing natural disasters. The main impact approaches: land cover change, habitat and species loss, speeding up surface sediment transfer, increasing energy inputted into nature, and new substances (pollutants) generated and transfered in natural environment. The impact is multi-time scale, from day, month, year, century to geological ages and is also multi-space scale, from local, landscape, regional to global sphere. Second, the authors emphasized the importance of exerting the positive role of human activities and carrying out the regional ecological reconstruction in China. Third, in order to evaluate quantitatively human activity intensity and seek the methods to regulate the direction and velocity of human activity, the authors enumerated and commented on some human activity intensity and critical point regulation indexes which are respectively Economic density, Population density index, Human action relative intensity, Ecological footprint, Human activity index, Disturbance degree index, Human effect intensity model, Renewable resource use threshold, Environmental Kuznts Curve, Net primary productivity, and Biodiversity safety threshold. Fourth, the authors brought forward briefly the principles for regulating human activities. At the end of this paper,the authors expressed a preliminary idea on the theory of landscape ecological reconstruction focusing on orderly human activity,which should be a useful theory for evaluating and regulating human activities actively.

  • Original Articles
    CHENG Yang1,2, YANG Linsheng1, LI Hairong1
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    Today's Global Environmental Change caused by massive human pressures on natural systems has significant and wide impacts on human health. There is much contemporary discussion on "global environmental change"(GEC), which is not only "climate change", but refers to human-induced changes in the large-scale biophysical and ecological systems that comprise the earth's life-support systems. Many world organizations and scientists follow the request of the research on "Health and Environment", and have some conclusions on eliminating or alleviating the potential adverse health effects caused by environmental change. This paper introduces the content and the framework of environmental change and human health research within ESSP, composed of WCPR, IGBP, DIVERSITAS and IHDP, and based on the question of how global environmental changes might affect human health. It summarizes the impacts on human health brought by the following seven aspects: climate change, ozone depletion, biodiversity lose, land desertification and drought, environmental pollution, globalization, and urbanization. However, recent research activities are most fully developed in relation to climatic influences on human health. How policymakers should make decisions, which would focus on preventing adverse health effects of the environmental changes without impeding the economic development, is another hot topic, especially in developing countries. The poor, the elder, the ill, and the children are the vulnerable population to the environmental change. Implementation of policies for dealing with any adverse impacts on human health would be helpful to cope with any adverse impacts of environmental change. As an example, the challenge for China on the "Human Health and Environmental Change" is explained at the end of the paper. With global environmental change, there is an urgent need to understand the possible consequences for human societies, and scientific research would be effective against the most of potential adverse effects on health from global environmental change.

  • Original Articles
    HE Canfei, LIU Yang
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    The geographical concentration of employments and establishments is pervasive. Companies and plants are not distributed uniformly in space, but rather agglomerate in some places. Both location theories and trade theories could be applied to explain the geographical concentration of industries. Classical and neoclassical location theories emphasize the role of transportation costs, labor costs, demand and locational interdependence in promoting spatial clustering of industries. Behavioralists stress the importance of uncertainties, information and knowledge. Strategic perspectives highlight the strategic interactions between related economic agents in locational decisions. Structural location theories relate industrial locations to industrial organization and industrial linkages. In the existing theoretical literature, three broad families of trade models are related to geographic concentration: the neoclassical trade models, new trade models and new economic geography models. In the neoclassical trade theories, the spatial pattern is formed through inter-industry specialization with industries settling in locations with comparative advantages. New trade models are characterized by increasing returns to scale, product differentiation and monopolistic competition. Scale economies provide regions with incentives to specialize even in the absence of differences in their technology or resoure endowments, and make firms to concentrate their production in a few locations. In the new economic geography models, the distribution of economic activities becomes entirely endoenous. Geographic concentration is driven by the interaction of transportation costs and scale economies, which creates demand and cost linkages. Empirical studies on geographical concentration of industries confirm a variety of significant variables including resource endowment, market demand, internal scale economies, external economies, industrial linkages and trade liberalization.

  • Original Articles
    ZHANG Dianfa| YANG Xiaoping, TONG Yiqin
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    There are congenital tour cooperative base in Yangtse Rive Delta for tour resources complementary, terrain continuity and culture coherence. Tour economic integration would be achieved beyond concept; mechanism and measure have been innovated. As a good chance of EXPO 2010 Shanghai China, travel cities in the Yangtse Rive Delta must consummate cooperative mechanism, unify tour market, mold unitive image, expand passenger source, and establish tour cooperate plan, so as to build tour economic golden Yangtse Rive delta together.   In the process of tour economic integration of Yangtse Rive delta, the integrated competing power could be advanced by the government cooperation and uniform tour market. The Yangtse Rive delta tour circle is based on tourist resources, is venation on historic culture, and is ligament on traffic, aiming at market divisions, tourist route and product with series; and elaborate works and characteristic will be provided. By recombining and sharing tour resource, renovating and advancing tour product, reforming area tour function, sharing and interchanging passenger source, uniting sales promotion, optimizing tour enterprises, and constructing whole tour image, tour industry will obtain more economic, social and ecological benefit within the Yangtse Rive delta. It is necessary that a series of maneuverability countermeasures and ensured measures are taken to assure the tour cooperation's success.

  • Original Articles
    LI Juan1,2, REN Guozhu1, LU Qi1, ZHANG Junyan1,2
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    Based on the collected data of population census of 1990 and 2000, this paper analyzes the causes,Characteristics, structure and changes of the floating population in Chongqing Municipality. More and more surplus laborers wanted to find jobs in more developed cities and regions and the movement to urban has bolstered the municipality economy, particularly rural economy. This paper holds: 1) Compared with 1990,along with the increasing of attraction to other place, the proportion of floating population from outside of the Municipality increased rapidly in 2000. Among them, the merchandise driving force effected efficiently. 2)The construction industry and the tertiary industry accepted a large number of the immigrants, in the meantime, the main body of the immigrants was working as construction and services in the large city. 3) The home area was convergence while the transfer of migrants didn't correspond to the distance or the regional interactive relationship. Moreover, it's a more important reason that the difference of regional economic development became prodigious in the last 10 years. So, the regional economic has complementally effect each other. 4) The professional structure of the floating population came from rural area was different with the prevenient status. There has great difference between not only present situation and prevenient status but also between inside and outside of the municipality.

  • Original Articles
    SHAO Xiaomei,LIU Qing, ZHANG Yanyu
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    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. Based on the critical review on the development of international intensive land use researches, the developing trend of intensive land use has been carried out in this paper. It is found that studies on following four aspects should be strengthed. (1) On research view, the coupling relationship between the regional industry structure and land use structure should be studied further. (2) On research content, because related research is at preliminary stage, the study of standard system can not meet the demands of economical society. It is urgent to carry out the study of the investigation standard, evaluation standard and auditing standard of intensive land use. (3) At research scales, multilayer and different region intensive land use researches, including medium, small cities and agriculture, should be identified and discussed. (4) On research methodology, the application of GIS technology, systemic dynamic model and Artificial Neural Work should be developed in order to change traditional qualitative analysis and simple quantitative analysis. The results and conclusions in this paper will provide scientific basis for accelerating the study of intensive land use in China.

  • Original Articles
    LIU Aixia,WANG Jing,LV Chunyan
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    This paper presented the research on land cover classification in area to the north-west of Beijing based on MODIS 16-day NDVI and 8-day LST time series datasets in 2002, 1:50000 DEM and some ancillary data. We first selected a land use/land cover classification system suitable to MODIS remote sensing data, the classification system was built based on remote sensing data after comparing and summarizing the features of different remote sensing data. Secondly, in order to improve the classification accuracy, we performed a PCA transform on the MODIS NDVI time series data to remove noises, and selected the first four components as the basic land cover classification data. Finally, combined with MODIS LST data, DEM and other ancillary data of study area, we applied fuzzy K-means non-supervised classifier to get the land cover automatic classification in area to the north-west of Beijing. After post-classification process of the original classification result, the last land cover classification map of area to the north-west of Beijing in 2002 was got. Compared with the manual interpretation classification result based on the ETM+ remote sensing data, we had a classification accuracy evaluation about MODIS data. The final classification result showed that the 250m MODIS NDVI time series data and the classification method used in the paper not only can suit to large-scale land cover classification, but also can have better classification accuracy. Based on the classification result of area to the north-west of Beijing, we had a statistic about the area of seven land cover types and analyzed their geographic distribution.

  • Original Articles
    LI Jingyu1, ZHANG Nan2,WANG Rongbin1
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    Studies on soil erosion and sedimentation have been a very active field of research in geography, water and soil conservation, hydrology and water resources for many years. During the past several years, a great deal of in-depth studies on soil erosion and sedimentation models in the Yellow River basin, especially in Loess Plateau, were carried out, and many good results achieved. With the implementation of “Model Yellow River” during the past years, many soil erosion and sedimentation models including empirical model, conceptual model, and physically-based distributed model have been developed and tested in the Yellow River basin. On the other hand, with the combination of water and soil conservation, water resources allocation and management, and rational allocation and utilization of soil and water resources, some good models developed and tested in abroad countries have been introduced into and used in China recently. From two aspects including the development of new models and the application of old models developed in foreign countries, major results achieved in China from the middle of the 1990s in the field of soil erosion and sedimentation modeling have been reviewed in this paper. Some recommendation and suggestions are given for the future study of soil erosion and sedimentation modeling in the study area. As several of the preliminary conclusions obtained in this study, the field experiment measurement is necessary for any kind of theoretical or empirical models. The application of geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing techniques will greatly improve the performance of any soil erosion and sedimentation model. The development and application of physically-based distributed model will be one of the best choices in the field of research in the future.

  • Original Articles
    LIAN Gang1,2, GUO Xudong1, FU Bojie2,HU Chenxia2
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    Analysis and forecast on the spatial distribution and dynamics of soil properties is an important element of sustainable land management. Spatial variation of soil organic matter was analyzed according to different land use types and different topography conditions, based on data from 254 points of surface soil (0~20cm) in Hengshan county on the Loess Plateau (NW China). Correlation analyses were carried out between the soil organic matter and the terrain attributes and remote sensing indices. Finally, the land use types and the terrain attributes and remote sensing indices were used to predict soil organic matter spatial distribution by multiple-linear regression analysis. Significant differences in soil organic matter among different land use types were found, the highest values in soil organic matter were measured in soils from paddy field, and lower values in the soils from woodland and shrub land. For soil organic matter, the tendency was: paddy field>irrigated farmland>terrace farmland>check-dam farmland>grassland>slope farmland>woodland>shrub land. In different slope gradients, soil organic matter in ‘0~3°’ gradients was significantly higher than other slope gradient classes. There was little difference in soil organic matter among different slope aspects, but there was a tendency that soil organic matter in northern aspects was higher. Different correlations were found between the soil organic matter and the terrain attributes and remote sensing indices. It was found that there are positive correlations between soil organic matter and the COSα, CTI, MSAVI and WI. There is a strong negative correlation between soil organic matter and elevation. Using environmental variables to predict soil organic matter, the regression model explains 34.6% of the variability of the measured soil organic matter. But the variation is rather large and there is a more smoothing effect on the predicted values for soil organic matter.

  • Original Articles
    LI Yuhuan1,2, WANG Jing1, CAO Yingui1
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    Soil moisture monitoring acts as an important role in reasonable water resource utilization and scientific management and decision-making of drought-fight. Soil moisture has relation with vegetation growth index(NDVI) and land surface temperature(LST). The NDVI was derived from the red and the NIR bands and the LST from the one or two thermal bands. The paper adopted LST retrieved from TM/ETM+ by mono-window algorithm and the modified soil adjustment vegetation index(MSAVI) based on ground soil spectrum line parameters and the earth reflection by COST model from the same satellite data. By analyzing the linear relation between LST and MSAVI, soil moisture indicators were put forward in terms of three geometrical expressions based on the two extreme points of the LST-MSAVI scatterplots, and drought discrimination function(DF) which was be used to discriminate the drought years or areas from the wet ones based on the DFij received either positive or negative values or the regress between the DFij values of the respective geometrical index and soil moisture component by Laboratory. a clear trend was exhibited between the drought-year cluster (negative values) and the wet-year cluster (positive values). The crossing point between the regression line and the DF= 0 line could be used to quantify the threshold between wet and drought regions in terms of soil moisture component. The retrieved model was built to illuminate soil moisture spatial distribution depending on linear regression analysis between soil moisture and LST or MSAVI. Results of the discrimination function for each of the drought indicators are presented. The “length” indicator is able to successfully separate the two drought years(1990, 2001) from the wet years(1991, 2002). The drought-land was discriminated by the DFj values as a function of the soil moisture of each region with DFj=0 and soil moisture=10~11%. Therefore the result showed that more information was mined by combining LST and MSAVI; length indicator could present valuable information for drought based on TM/ETM+; It wasn’t remarkable for the retrieved soil moisture to be tested by T-test; and the retrieved model from LST was better and more valuable than that from MSAVI.

  • Original Articles
    WU Jian1,2, HE Ting1, CHENG Penggen2
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    Land degradation, defined as the loss or the reduction of the potential utility or productivity of the land, is a major environmental problem in the world today. The land degradation process is generally divided into three classes: (1) physical degradation; (2) biological degradation, and (3)chemical degradation. The assessment of land degradation requires the identification of indicators such as soil vulnerability to erosion. Generally, the assessment of the state of land degradation can be carried out by using the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation (GLASOD) method. Hoosbeek et al. recommended this qualitative method to classify soil degradation by using remote sensing data. Degradation features can be detected directly or indirectly by using image data. Based on the Hyperion images, this paper brings forward a new mapping algorithm, called Land Degradation Index, aimed at land degradation in Hengshan region of China. It is based on the classified process. We applied the linear spectral unmixing algorithm with the training samples derived from the formerly classified process so as to find out new endmembers in the RMS error imagine. After that, by using neutral net mapping with new training samples, the classified result was gained. In addition, after applying mask processing, the soils were grouped to 3 types (Kappa =0.90): highly degraded soils; moderately degraded soils; and slightly degraded soils. By analyzing 3 mapping methods, i.e. mixture-classification, the spectral angle mapper and mixture-tuned matched filtering, the results suggest that the mixture-classification has the higher accuracy (Kappa=0.7075) than the spectral angle mapper (Kappa=0.5418) and the mixture-tuned matched filter (Kappa=0.6039). As a result, the mixture-classification is selected to carry out Land Degradation Index analysis.