This study focused on the Young Scientist Fund in geography supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) from 1987 to 2016. Through the collection and analysis of information including applicants' profile, supporting institution, and follow-up funding, this study revealed the Young Scientist Fund support for the sub-disciplines of geography and their regional distribution characteristics. The gender, age, affiliation, and academic title of the project managers and their abilities to generate further funding from the NSFC were also analyzed. The 30 years' implementation of the Young Scientist Fund helped to bring up a great number of outstanding young scholars in various sub-disciplines of geography, which has laid a solid foundation for the cultivation of talents in geography in China.
Incorporating the research results of the the National Natural Science Foundation supported project "Quantifying the effect of river water temperature on riverbed hydraulic conductivity of broad-shallow rivers in the arid area" (No. 41301025), this article summarizes the basic scientific issues and the current research progress in the field of water exchange between intermittent rivers and aquifers in arid areas of northwestern China. Riverbed at the lower reaches of rivers in the arid regions of northwestern China is shallow, wide, and sandy. Such riverbed experiences several dry/wet alternations and freezing-thawing process each year. Due to the influence of river temperature and river flow conditions, the riverbed as an important interface of river-aquifer systems exerts significant temporal and spatial variability, which has become a key issue in understanding surface water and groundwater exchange. Hyporheic zone hydrology, which focuses on river-aquifer interaction, is facing new opportunities and challenges under the current changing environment and rapidly developing interdisciplinary research.
Soil moisture is an important boundary condition of land-atmosphere interactions and plays a major role in the Earth's water and energy cycles. It directly affects the hydrological processes such as precipitation, runoff, infiltration, and evapotranspiration, and can provide direct information for flood and drought monitoring. Accompanied by the continuous development of space science and technology, especially the successful launching of the first L-band satellite mission of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) using passive microwave interference imaging technology, L-band passive microwave remote sensing has become a key tool in large-scale soil moisture mapping. New issues regarding L-band application including "detection and mitigation of radio frequency interference", "vegetation optical depth retrieval and vegetation effects correction", and "soil roughness parameterization" have been studied extensively. In this article, we summarize the latest research results of the project "Vegetation effects on soil moisture estimation using multi-angle observations at L-band" funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and review the research progress made regarding the above issues. The future development of soil moisture microwave remote sensing is also prospected. The review of the research progress and the prospect of the cutting-edge issues will be helpful for the demonstration and implementation of China's future satellite missions, and promote the microwave remote sensing of soil moisture and application in eco-hydrology studies at the global and regional scales.
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is located in the southwest of China and central Asia, with a mean elevation higher than 4000 m and area of 3×106 km2. It is named "the roof of the world". The TP and surrounding areas together is also called "the Third Pole". The TP has 1200 lakes greater than 1 km2 in area, which accounts for approximately 50% of the total number and area of lakes in China. It is the sources of the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, and the Mekong, and therefor known as "Asia's water tower". In the past several decades, the TP experienced a faster warming than other regions in the world. The climate of the TP is also getting wetting. Lakes are indicators of climate change. The TP has the dense distribution of lakes with little disturbance of human activities. The utilization of multi-sensors’ data has provided a useful tool to monitor lake change in the remote TP. Several studies of lake changes have been conducted focusing on the following scientific questions: (1) how many lakes are on the TP and what are the spatial and temporal changes of the number, area, and abundance of these lakes? (2) the increased mass over the TP from glaciers or lakes? (3) under anthropogenic warming, how did the water and cryosphere cycles change on the two adjacent largest Plateaus in the world, the Tibetan and the Mongolian Plateaus, over the last four decades? and (4) how did the lake water storage and water balance change? These studies are of great significance to the understanding of the third pole of the world, the state of regional water resources and changes, and ecological civilization and ecological security construction. They also provide an important scientific basis for the planning of the third polar national park. The quantitative understanding of lake water balance and mechanisms and driving factors of lake change needs further work in the future.
this article explains the significance of the "Outline of Collaborative Development of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province" for the positioning of the capital city—Beijing. In China, only the capital city Beijing can become one of the largest nodes of the global "flows" and one of the centers of global economic impact and dominance. Beijing as the capital city enjoys the highest status of financial and business center in China, which is an important pillar for the economy and security of the country. The positioning of the capital city and its realization is a fundamental task crucial for generations to come, which cannot be replaced by any other big cities. High-end financial and business district of the capital city needs scientific planning, and some suggestions are put forward in this article. Improper functional orientation and overdevelopment of the Seashore New Area of Tianjin has led to serious waste of resources, and the experience and lessons are worth learning.
Technological relatedness as a key concept at present in evolutionary economic geography (EEG) is of great significance for the development of EEG and studies on economic growth path. This article explores the definition and measurement of technological relatedness and its micro-mechanism, and reviews the literature on how technological relatedness influences product evolution on different scales, including country, regional, and firm level product evolution. Even though the mechanisms differ slightly by scale, most studies confirm the existence of path dependence. In other words, product evolution path is dependent of technological relatedness. However, several studies find that some countries, regions, and firms do not follow their existing technological relatedness but break the path. They investigate the source of path breaking, finding that path breaking derives from some internal or external forces. China's special development path is not only a supplement for Western evolutionary economic geography theories but also an important opportunity for the development of the emerging Chinese evolutionary economic geography.
To summarize the general characteristics of urbanization research in China and abroad, the CiteSpace and HistCite bibliometric methods are used to analyze the quantity, keywords, and research teams of the urbanization research literature selected from the Chinese Core Journals and Web of Science Core Collection. The study shows that the number of articles published in the field of urbanization is on the rise, and urbanization has gradually become one of the most important research directions of human geography. Compared with other countries or regions, China's urbanization research started relatively late, but because of the unique characteristics and complexity of China's urbanization process, such research has become an important part of the urbanization study in the world, and the content is even more abundant and refined, mainly including sustainable development, land use, industrialization, industrial structure, ecological environment, new urbanization, spatial structure, and other directions, while international urbanization research is characterized by decentralization, including environmental science, urban research, physical geography, public administration, regional studies, among others. Each research direction is relatively independent, but there is still a mutual citation relationship.
Using the slack based measure (SBM) model of undesirable outputs, we measured the eco-efficiency of 44 cities in the Bohai Rim area from 2005 to 2015, depicted the spatiotemporal change characteristics, and analyzed the influencing factors with panel threshold regression model for stimulating ecological civilization construction and sustainable development. The results are as follows: (1) Eco-efficiency value is generally overestimated without considering undesirable outputs, indicating that undesirable outputs in the process of economy activities reduced true economy value fairly and considering undesirable outputs is reasonable; (2) From 2005 to 2010, the eco-efficiency types generally improved, but they deteriorated from 2010 to 2015, possibly relating to the transform of economic development mode and driving forces; (3) There exits interprovincial differentiation and imbalance in the number and spatial distribution of eco-efficiency types and a clear spatial aggregation character in regions of same eco-efficiency type; (4) Double threshold character appears in the relation of technology level, city scale, openness to the outside world, and environmental regulation for eco-efficiency. Industrial structure has a vital impact on regional eco-efficiency. Improving the capabilities of technology uptake and re-innovation, joint pollution control, and the quality of population, strengthening the "technical effect" heightening positive influences of threshold variables on ecological efficiency in the Bohai Rim area, and optimizing industrial structure and information system construction are also important methods for improving ecological efficiency.
Medical services are the basic requirement of the public and are closely related to public health. The rationality of the layout and spatial accessibility of medical facilities are closely related to the right of the public to healthcare. Spatial accessibility of medical facilities represents the convenience for residents to obtain medical services. Using GIS and an improved potential model that introduces population scale factor and medical facility grade influence coefficient to traditional potential model, the spatial accessibility of urban medical facilities in Yangpu District of Shanghai was studied. By applying a spatial interpolation method, accessibility of medical facilities of Yangpu District in 2016 was obtained. Moreover, hotspot analysis was used for the cluster analysis of spatial accessibility. The results indicate that the spatial accessibility of urban medical facilities in different community of Yangpu District varies. The spatial accessibility in the central area of Yangpu District is higher than that of other areas. Spatial accessibility is relatively high in Daqiao subdistrict, Dinghai Road subdistrict, and some areas of Yinxing subdistrict. Hospitals of the same grade in the subdistricts of the central area are so closely located that medical resources are of high concentration in these areas. Overall, spatial accessibility of tertiary hospitals is better than secondary and primary hospitals in Yangpu. The improved potential model can evaluate the spatial accessibility of urban medical facilities reasonably by integrating population in demands, travel impedance between residential areas and medical facilities, and the influence of medical facility grade on residents' choice of medical services. By using GIS, the difference of spatial accessibility of urban medical facilities can be visualized. Furthermore, areas with insufficient medical resources can be defined. The results can not only enrich public facility spatial planning theory, but also provide references for the decision making of relevant government departments.
In recent years, China's Internet-based information and communication technology (ICT) has experienced rapid development, influencing the economic activities, lifestyle, and other aspects of daily life of rural and urban residents. In this study we surveyed five typical urban villages in Beijing with questionnaire and WeChat interviews, and used an unordered multi-class logistic regression model to verify the influence of information sources on housing and employment related migration space of residents in urban villages. The results show that due to the informal nature of housing market in urban villages that prevents residents from gathering housing information from the Internet, information source has no significant effect on housing related migration distance of residents in urban villages; due to "employment anchor point," "distance attenuation law," and the informal economy, information source has no significant effect on short-distance employment related migration of residents in urban villages, but in a larger spatial scope, residents in urban villages can get employment information through recruitment websites, social networks, and other online sources. The rapid development of ICT enriches their information source, enlarging employment space choices. This study extended our understanding about the influence of ICT on daily activity space of urban residents and the relationship between technology and equality. It also enriches research on spatial behavior of residents.
Multidimensional urbanization coordination evaluation is an important aspect for measuring the quality of urbanization of a region, and spatial-temporal clustering models are effective means for analyzing features of urbanization. Considering the lack of multidimensional comprehensive spatial-temporal analysis of urbanization coordination degree at present, this article takes Guangdong Province as an example and propose a complex spatial-temporal coordination degree evaluation model based on spatial-temporal weight matrix. This model is used to analyze the urbanization coordination level from 2006 to 2014, and the clustering is analyzed by the spatiotemporal scanning method. The results show that: (1) The coordination level of urbanization in recent years shows three kinds of temporal characteristics: the level of population urbanization shows the "concentrated" characteristics of development with time, while the economy and land show low frequency alternations of "concentrated and scattered " development, and social, ecological, and comprehensive level show a high frequency alternation of "concentrated and scattered" development. The spatial-temporal changes of each dimension and comprehensive system coordination degree show that the stable cities are mainly located in the core area of the Pearl River Delta. (2) The spatial-temporal clustering characteristics of each system are not only differentiated, but also overlapped. Western Guangdong Province forms a spatial-temporal cluster featuring coordination of population urbanization; the economic and land dimensions of the coordination of spatial-temporal clustering coincide in the Pearl River Delta and northern Guangdong; the social and ecological dimensions of coordination of spatial-temporal clustering cross in the Pearl River Delta and eastern Guangdong Province, and system coordination is centered. In addition, the stability of population, economic, and social dimensions in the spatial-temporal clusters is superior to that of land and ecological dimensions. The conclusion of this study is helpful for revealing the spatial-temporal characteristics of urbanization in the region.
As one of the three vital economic regions in China, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has a sound foundation of producer service. Based on the input-output tables of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province in 2007 and 2012, this study applied the multiregional input-output model to complicate an input-output table of 129 sectors in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. By using this table, we then analyzed the regional influence coefficient and induction coefficient, interregional influence coefficient and induction coefficient, and industry connection degree of the region, to reveal the producer service development characteristics and cause of interaction and degree of relevance. The following conclusions were drawn. First, the information service industry and science and technology service industry of Beijing have strong effect on the whole region, while the road and waterway transport industry of Tianjin also has strong effect. But producer service in Hebei is weak and cannot stimulate the economic growth of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Second, the science and technology service industry of Beijing mainly provides local services; likewise, the information service industry of Tianjin is in the same situation. Finally, the division index of the producer services between Beijing and Tianjin is relatively low, and the producer service structures of these cities show a convergence trend. With regard to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development, Beijing should focus on the development of science and technology service industry in order to provide more service to Tianjin and Hebei with the rapid development of information service industry. The industrial structure of Tianjin tends to be high-end, but technology-intensive producer services such as information industry need further development. Hebei needs to enhance the technological level to develop producer services and prepare to undertake the industrial transfer from Beijing and Tianjin.
