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  • Original Articles
    WEI Dongying, LIU Changming, QIN Dahe,WANG Min
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    In order to protect the geological heritage, the Division of Earth Sciences of UNESCO presented a new concept named UNESCO's"Geoparks Program" to the governing bodies of the organization and the program has been discussed since 1999 and came to its final conclusion in June 2001. The program achieved the full international recognition, and secured their effective political impact, especially from European Union, China and International Geographical Union(IGU) . China is one of the countries which established Geoparks at the earliest stage, and 182 national Geoparks have been established till now, and 24 of them are the members of Global Geopark Network (GGN), and the establishment of the Geoparks made a lot of contribution for the sustainable development of local society and economy. The article introduces the Global Geopark Network (GGN), European Geopark Network(EGN), Commission on Geoparks of International Geographical Union(IGU-CoG) and the status quo of Chinese Geoparks. Connotation of Geopark is explained and the Chinese translation of Geopark is discussed and new translation is suggested by some geographers. Geographers have made a lot of contribution for the development of Geoparks, especially the establishment of Commission on Geoparks of International Geographical Union. The article analyzes the development of Geoparks and the research situation about Geoparks at present and puts forward the research fields that geographers can make more contribution in the future.
  • Original Articles
    GONG Xi, PEI Tao, SUN Jia, LUO Ming
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    A trajectory is a sequence of the location and timestamp of a moving object. It is not only an important type of spatio-temporal data, but also a critical source of information. Extracting patterns from different trajectory data can help people understand the drives and outcomes of individual and collective spatial dynamics, such as human behavior patterns, transport and logistics, emergency evacuation management, animal behavior, and marketing. Recently, a larger number of trajectory data are available for analyzing the temporal and spatial pattern, as the result of the improvements of tracking facilities and sensor networks. Therefore, clustering analysis needs to be used to find the implicit patterns in it. Based on the characteristics and the similarity measurements of trajectory data, this paper reviewed the research progresses in trajectory clustering methods. Firstly, the significance of research on trajectory data and its clustering methods was presented. Then the definition, models as well as several visualization methods of trajectories were summarized. After that, the authors classified the existing trajectory clustering methods into 6 main categories according to the similarity measurement of them, and analyzed each of the trajectory clustering methods, along with their respective pros and cons by category. Finally, some research challenges and future directions were discussed.
  • Original Articles
    CHEN Lajiao, ZHU Axing, QIN Chengzhi, LI Runkui, LIU Jing, LIU Junzhi
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    Eco-hydrological model of watershed scale is an essential tool to assess the impact of environmental change on watershed hydrological and ecological processes. This has made eco-hydrological model a hot research focus, and significant advances have been achieved during recent years. This paper provides a perspective on the current state of the research on eco-hydrological modeling. Firstly we elaborate the characteristics of the interaction between vegetation and hydrological processes and the requirements for watershed eco-hydrological modeling. Then the existing models are classified according to the detail levels of their description of the eco-hydrological interaction. Different types of eco-hydrological models and their respective advantage and disadvantage are summarized. Finally, the key problems and research issues (i.e,eco-hydrological interaction, parameters estimation and the problem of uncertainty) for eco-hydrological modeling are addressed.
  • Original Articles
    WANG Yousheng, YU Xinxiao, HE Kangning, ZHANG Zhengming, XIN Zhongbao, LI Qingyun
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    Based on the hydrologic and area precipitation data during the period of 1962 to 1989, the seasonal and annual changes of runoff and sediment were analyzed, and the influence of precipitation and human activities on the runoff and sediment were estimated. The results showed that the seasonal distribution of runoff and sediment yield was quite uneven. The runoff between July and October accounted for 61.6 percents of the year, and sediment yield from June to September made up 87.9% of the year. The annual distribution of runoff and sediment yield was quite different and the variation coefficients of annual sediment and runoff reached 0.725 and 0.573 respectively. The inter-annual changes of sediment were greater than that of runoff. The trend of runoff and sediment yield in the Jihe watershed declined evidently first and then remained steady during the research period. Soil and water conservation has played an important role in the descending of runoff and sediment discharge since the 1970s.
  • Original Articles
    GUO Qiaoing, YANG Yunsong, CHANG Xiangsheng, CHEN Zhihui
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    Based on the observed monthly streamflow of 2 key hydrological control stations in Heihe River Basin since 1950, by using nonuniformity coefficient and concentration degree (period) ,we studied the intra-annual change. The Mann-Kendall test and the cumulative filter methods were employed to detect the trends of intra- annual runoff. The results indicate that: 1) Generally, the annual runoff distribution reached a maximum in July at Yingluoxia, and the curve of it had a single peak value. At Zhengyixia the annual runoff reached the minimum in May and November and reached the maximum in July and September, and the curve of it had two valleys; 2) the inhomogeneity and concentration degree of the runoff in the 1950s reached the maximum, while those in the 2000s hit the lowest. The maximum runoff appeared in July at Yingluoxia. At Zhengyixia the inhomogeneity and concentration degree of the runoff in the 1990s and 2000s reached the maximum, while those in the 1960s hit the lowest. The maximum runoff appeared in August and December; 3) the monthly runoff at Yingluoxia presented an increasing trend since 1957 except in July, but at Zhengyixia the monthly runoff had a descending trend except in September.
  • Original Articles
    WANG Xinhua, YAN Junping, YANG Jinfei, LIU Xueting
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    In this paper, the response of climate change to global warming and the impacts of meteorological disasters on the social and economic development in Hanzhong are analyzed based on the data of temperature, precipitation, and economy data of the past 59 years. The states of economic development is evaluated by set pair analysis method. The results reveal that the average temperature of the city has an increasing trend. Divided by the time of the early 1990s, the 59 years of climate of Hanzhong might be identified into 2 periods, a cold period and a warm period. The arid climatic disaster becomes severer, and its severe effects on economic development are getting more and more serious in Hanzhong. The connection coefficient of economic development falls 0.5 in Hanzhong in the past 5 years, indicating that the economy is not adaptable.
  • Original Articles
    REN Zhizhong
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    Environmental protection in Yunnan Province is related to local sustainable development, and has a regional or even international significance. During the 11th National Five-Year Plan, positive progresses had been made in the environmental protection in Yunnan Province. However, there are still some critical challenges, including conflicts between economic development and environmental protection, contamination reduction, pollution transferred from the provinces of east China and environmental protection issues arcross nations. Facing serious issues such as execrable water environment, soil pollutions of heavy metals, rural environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, invasion of the alien species and weak environmental supervision ability of the local governments, it is urgent to take active measures to adjust the industrial components from the point of environmental management and improve the economic development styles. It is necessary to strengthen the water pollution control of the drinking water sources and the critical watersheds, the air pollution control especially on reducing the emission of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, and the prevention and control of the pollutions caused by solid wastes focusing on handling with hazardous waste. It is also important to pay special attention to the issues on biodiversity conservation and prevention and control of soil heavy metal pollution, improve the capacity of environmental risk prevention, innovate environmental management policies and mechanisms, enhance the construction of environment supervision capacity and improve the overall level of environmental management.
  • Original Articles
    SSONG Chunqiao, YOU Songcai, LIU Gaohuan, KE Linghong, ZHONG Xinke
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    Using enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and land surface temperature (LST) dataset derived from TERRA/MODIS synthetic products MOD13 A2 (16-day composite, DOY 209 in 2010) and MOD11 A2 (8-day composite, DOY 209 and 217 in 2010), the LST-EVI two-dimensional characteristic space was constructed, and then TVDI (temperature-vegetation drought index) was extracted to indicate the top-soil moisture of northern Tibet. Furthermore, the simulated soil moisture was verified by synchronously measured data in the field. The two groups of data showed a strong relationship and the correlation coefficient got through the 0.05 significance level. Then the spatial pattern and heterogeneity of soil moisture in the studied area were further analyzed, and the results showed: (1) the TVDI values of pixels in northern Tibet proved to have a statistically normal distribution, and the soil moisture in eastern region, central region and western region respectively showed wet, normal and dry situations; (2) evident difference in soil moisture existed in different climatic zones, and the soil moisture in the mountain and valley-in-valley structured Nagqu sub-arctic and sub-humid zone was the highest and that in southern Qinghai sub arctic and semiarid zone was the lowest; (3) the spatial distribution of soil moisture in the area was obviously affected by the altitude. The soil moisture in the region below 4500 m showed a negative correlation with the altitude and the correlation was positive in the region higher than 4500 m.
  • Original Articles
    WANG Dan, CHEN Shuang
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    As the scientific groundwork for the urban general planning and sustainable development, urban carrying capacity (UCC) regionalization can provide spatial directions based on the regional disparities of the natural, social, economic and environmental characteristics. Because the theoretical basis of regionalization comes from geographical features spatial difference, the definition of UCC cannot reflect the inner city spatial difference, and hence cannot accommodate the demand of UCC zoning scale. After looking back and comparing the related concepts of UCC, we define UCC as the population and social economic activities that the natural resource, environment, urban infrastructure and commonality service can sustain within a fixed urban area, in a particular period and according to pertinent criteria of living quality.
    This paper aims at developing an integrated method of zoning by UCC which can guide planning of resource utility, environment protection and infrastructure construction in the city. Firstly we presented the structure of UCC. The UCC is inherently a kind of complex ability consisting of support, pressure and regulation which are respectively associated with resource and environment foundation, population growth and human self-regulation. Secondly we discussed the relationship between traditional geographical regionalization and zoning by UCC. Based on a review about the development of regionalization we further concluded the characteristics of zoning by UCC, which are comprehensiveness, relativity and improvement. Thirdly we divided the process of zoning by UCC into 5 steps: index system and spatial cell for UCC evaluation, spatial database, UCC evaluation, divisions of improvement zones and non-improvement zones and making suggestions. Based on the index system for UCC evaluation, it focuses the discussion on the“state-pressure-response”model of UCC evaluation to get UCC indicator. Furthermore, non-improvement zone and several kinds of improvement zones are divided by the relevant restrictive factors.
    We took Changzhou city as a case study for zoning by UCC. The index system for Changzhou UCC evaluation is composed of 3 parameters. There are 4 secondary indicators in the support parameter, including water quality, air, eco-environment and geological condition which is the only non-improvement factor in the index system. Moreover, population, economy and land-use have been quantified by several tertiary indicators in the press parameter. And the adjustment parameter has industry, traffic and infrastructure. Using GIS grid analysis we divided the study area into 1886 grids of 1 km×1km to get the values of UCC indicator through the evaluation model. Three UCC zones have been identified by the value of UCC indicator. Based on the primary factors we concluded 5 types of zones, such as water environment improvement hot spots, industrial structure adjustment hot spots, and limited development spots. It is found that (1) the index is limited by the scale of study area; (2) the non-improvement factor has inherently historical limitation; (3) the areas which have important ecological functions or historical values in the high capacity zone or the mid capacity zone must be conserved; (4) some other methods of UCC gross estimate can be used for zoning.
  • Original Articles
    CHEN Jian,WANG Shiyan, MAO Zhanpo
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    Based on the landscape ecology principles, remote sensing (RS), geographical information systems (GIS) and other technical means, the remote sensing images of 1976, 1986, 2000 and 2008 are processed and analyzed. The results show that the total area of wetlands decreased by 8.5% in the modern Yellow River Delta from 1976 to 2008. The area of natural wetlands decreased by 44.5% from 1976 to 2008. The area of reed wetland decreased greatly too. From 1976 to 2008 , it decreased to 23.0% . On the contrary, the area of constructed wetlands increased significantly, and from 1976 to 2008 it increased by 70.7 times. The fractal dimensions of wetlands in 1976, 1986, 2000 and 2008 were 1.4636, 1.4858, 1.5046 and 1.4841, respectively. It means that the wetlands in the modern Yellow River dalta were greatly affected by human disturbance. The distribution centroid of reed wetlands has moved towards the estuary direction. It moved farthest from 1976 to 1986, followed by the period from 1986 to 2000. It was basically unchanged from 2000 to 2008.
  • Original Articles
    WANG Hong, TASHPOLAT Tiyip, XIE Xia, FAN Yahui, ZHANG Fei, MAMAT Sawut
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    This paper chose the Ebinur lake region as the study area, and used the Landsat TM remote sensing data in 2007 and support vector machine (SVM) to classify land use types and saline soils. Then, we used the ArcGIS to calculate sensitivity index of soil salinization and built the sensitivity model of regional soil salinization by using sensitivity index of soil salinization and proportion of different land use types. We also used the Ordinary Kriging to get a spatial distribution map of sensitivity degree of regional soil salinization. The following results are obtained. (1) The sensitivity index of soil salinization for different types of land use: unused land > urban and rural construction sites>water>grassland>forest land>farmland. (2) Extremely sensitive lands are mainly distributed in the northwest and the southeast of the Ebinur lake swampland and part of the Ebinur Lake Wetland Nature Reserve. Highly sensitive lands are distributed around the Ebinur Lake and the northeastern and southeastern parts of the desert near the edge of the Ebinur Lake, and most of these areas are unused with the extremely sparse vegetation cover. Moderately sensitive lands are mainly distributed in the Ebinur Lake surface, oasis - desert ecotone and unused areas land of the inner oasis with mostly sparse grasses and unused lands. Slightly sensitive lands are distributed near the lake center and the transitional zone between the oasis and the Ebinur Lake, which is a transitional zone between the soil salinization sensitive areas and non-sensitive areas. The rests of the study areas, which are mainly distributed on the west side of the inner oasis of the Ebinur Lake, are not sensitive in general.
  • Original Articles
    LU Shasha, LIU Yansui
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    Scale operation of farmland favors farmer's income and grain yield rise and development of low-carbon economy. Based on the data collected from 137 rural households in Lijin of Shandong Province, abiding by the theory of risk aversion and appended bonus regressive rule of production, interesting insights are obtained into farmer's willingness to accept scale operation of farmlands. A logistic regressive model, which includes such variables as personal characteristics of the household, family conditions, economic features, and external factors is established. Furthermore Cobb-Douglas' production function is applied to determine the suitable scale when farmers benefit most from optimal allocation of arable land, capital and labor. The results are obtained as follows. Most of the households strongly desire to expand farmland operation, and 64.86% of them make that decision based on the law of risk aversion. Household master's vocational status, land renting experience, land resource potentials and off-farm income level are the dominant influential factors for farmers to carry out scale operation. The conclusion is that households with higher off-farm income and more job opportunities and scarcer land resources are less willing to rent anyway. However, households that have already rented show stronger aspiration for more farmlands. This paper finds that under the current productivity, the appropriate scale of farmland operation is 22.2 mu per capita, and the rural labor transfer index is 65.02%. The key to farmland scale operation is to transfer rural surplus labor to the urbanized areas. It is very important to establish mechanisms and policies for innovation to guarantee farmland scale operation.
  • Original Articles
    ZHANG Li, LEI Jun, LI Xuemei, GAO Chao, ZENGWeiyao
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    China is stepping into the developmental stage of fast urbanization. The important characteristic of urbanization and rapid development of economy is the sharp expansion of urban build-up area. The demand of urban land is getting larger and larger, however, it is impossible to meet the great demand unlimitedly due to the scarcity of land resources. The difficulty of urban land expansion is getting bigger and bigger, so the process of rapid urbanization is restricted by the shortage of land. The conflict between them becomes more and more serious; as a result, the research on the process of rapid urbanization and the regularity of urban expansion is popular in the academic world at present.
    This paper selects 222 municipal cities as samples, examines the general trend of urban land expansion from 1997 to 2007 based on rank-size law and fractal theory, and analyzes its diversity at different land scales and in different regions and provinces by calculating UEI (Urban Expansion Index). The results are shown as follows. (1) The total amount of urban lands is keeping increasing in China, and in the case of 222 cities, the scale difference among cities is getting larger, and the general balance is keeping decreasing. (2) The larger the city scale is, the faster the expansion will be. (3) The expansion speed of eastern cities is greater than that of western cities. (4) The eastern coastal cities are developing faster, such as the municipalities directly under the Central Government, and those in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian. Finally, discussions are made on the mechanism of influencing factors from the viewpoint of physical conditions, administrative division adjustment, economic development and population growth.
  • Original Articles
    ZHU Huiyi, LI Yi
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    In the past decade, farmland expanded remarkably in many regions in the arid Northwest China. These changes occurred in the context of rapid loss of farmland and exacerbated degradation of local environments in China. Therefore, better understanding their causes is helpful for understanding land use changes in China and crucial for developing effective conservation and ecosystem management plans. In literature, it is suggested that local population growth, technological progress in agriculture, and policy prompting are the main causes. However, these suggestions root in statistical correlation without further empirical research. In this paper, we took Xinjiang region as the sample, and evaluated the rationality of these suggestions based on changes in sown area. The results imply that technological progress in agriculture and policy prompting assuredly accelerate the expansion of farmland, as the sown areas of leading crops increase at higher rates in response to the adoption of technologies and policies. Meanwhile, the increasing need of food due to population growth does not consequentially cause the expansion of farmland, as the sown area of food plants decreases in the same period. From the results of sown area changes, the pursuing for scale benefit of crops with higher returns can be inferred as the main cause of farmland expansion.
  • Original Articles
    WU Wenjie, SHI Peiji, HU Wei
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    The level of urbanization is an important sign that can measure a country's economic development and the level of industrialization. Farmland conversion in the process of urbanization is an inevitable phenomenon. The changes of cultivated land can reflect some socio-economic development laws. Studying the relationship between cultivated land resources and urbanization has practical significance, and it can also help local governments to make plans for further development. In the fragile and sensitive oasis environment, significant conflict exists between oasis urban development and land resource protection. The authors analysed the correlation and coordinated index between urbanization and the changes of cultivated land resource in Ganzhou District from 1996 to 2008 based on the statistical data and methods of regression analysis and coordination analysis. Cultivated land resources and the level of urbanization had a positive correlation in the period 1996-2002.The changes of cultivated land resources had some slight fluctuations in the year of 2003 and the arable land was reduced. The changes of cultivated land resources gradually became smooth in the period 2004-2008, and the change of urbanization was always smooth. The overall trend is "basically coordinated or reconciled" with an exception of "not coordinated" in 2004.
  • Original Articles
    LIU Yanhua, XU Yong, LIU Yi
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    Exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) can finely reveal the characteristics of economic growth of a region in relation to its geographical environment, and therefore is a powerful tool to help us better understanding the spatial-temporal dynamics of the distributions of economic factors in each region. The study of the spatial distribution of per capita GDP of 284 counties in the Loess Plateau region since 1990 using ESDA proved its role in investigating the rules of distribution and evolution of social or economic development. And several points can be highlighted.
    First, ESDA reveals significant positive global and local spatial autocorrelation of per capita GDP in the Loess Plateau region throughout the period 1990-2007.
    Second, the analysis of scatter plots and local indicators of spatial association (LISA) over the period indicates that there are four significant regional clusters persisting over time. The first is a significant High-High (HH) type of clustering, located mainly in Inner Mongolia—north Ningxia—north Shaanxi in the Loess Plateau region. The other HH forms of clustering are located in Northwest Henan and Southeast Shanxi. The largest areas of low-low (LL) type of clustering are primarily located in the south of Gansu, the south of Ningxia and east of Gansu.
    Third, the comparative analysis of per capita GDP and average growth rates of per capita GDP suggests that the development of per capita GDP in the Loess Plateau region is mainly in a way of polarized growth in the past 20 years. And it is predictable that this trend will persist, and even get stronger in the near future. Until now there are no characteristics of β-convergence detected in the Loess Plateau region.
    Finally, the stable spatial patterns in Loess Plateau region indicate two kinds of economic growth modes. One is the normal economic growth pushed by industrial agglomeration, and the other is the opportunistic economic growth pulled by energy/resources exploring. The latter is far more powerful in promoting the level of per capita GDP, but always with problems of singleness of industrial type and lack of stability, sustainability and interference immunity during its working process in pulling economic growth.
  • Original Articles
    WANG Lei, CAI Yunlong
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    Population census is based on administrative unit, therefore, the data accuracy can not meet the higher resolution analysis of the spatial structure and is difficult to match the data of physical elements in a comprehensive analysis of geographic features. Thus, spatialization of population density becomes an important research direction in geography. Based on the statistical population data of villages in the Maotiaohe basin, this research first analyzed the relationship between population density and spatial factors, and then established a spatial down-scaling model of population density by means of multiple variables regression analysis and GIS technique. The correlation coefficient between population density and spatial factors is 0.577. For testing and verifying the model, we calculated the population of every village with modeling results and compared it with statistical data. The correlation coefficient almost reached 1. The result shows that the main spatial factors of population density are the built-up area, farmland index and the distance to road.