The South China Sea and its coastal zone are one of the most active and high potential areas for economic development in the Asia-Pacific region. Affected by global changes and human activities, the resources and environment in the South China Sea region were changing drastically, imposing new pressures on the society, economy, ecology and environment. This article reviewed related geographical research of coast zone, marine and coral reef resources from the perspective of geospatial information. It examined various current works of remote sensing monitoring on the shoreline, the geographical difference analysis of oil- gas reserves and fishery catch, and remote sensing monitoring on coral reef landform and coral bleaching. this article also discussed the existing research results and shortcomings and analyzed the possible focus of future research based on development trends. The results show that the geospatial research on resources and environment of the South China Sea had made many achievements in the large scale rapid monitoring and geographical differentiation of resources so far. Meanwhile, research on the internal mechanism of resource distribution, as well as the environmental impact of resource development, is insufficient. Studies that can be expected to achieve breakthroughs in the future include: multi-scale analysis of spatiotemporal feature of the region and their effects, differentiation and pattern analysis of inter-regional natural and social development, improvement of dynamic monitoring accuracy and timeliness of the South China Sea resources based on the integration multiple-source data, and the comprehensive effects of marine ecology and environment in the process of resource change.
The South China Sea region is an important prospective energy supply area and a resource base for China. Although coral reef resources are extremely abundant in the South China Sea, research on coral reef data extraction, and analysis and evaluation of coral reef resources have not attracted enough attention. This article put forward an analytical framework based on the application of geographic information technologies in the South China Sea, and reviewed the main progresses in three aspects: current availability of basic geographic data, methods on the extraction of basic geographic information, and evaluation of coral reefs in the Siuth China Sea. Based on the review and analysis, this article proposed three research directions in the future: (1) promote multi-source remote sensing data acquisition, build massive remote sensing databases; (2) strengthen collaborative technological innovation, improve the accuracy and reliability of information extraction and monitoring results; and (3) promote intelligent remote sensing analysis, establish comprehensive analysis and decision-support systems which will provide theoretical reference for the further development of coral reef research in the South China Sea.
Coral reef geomorphic classification scheme plays an important role in coral reef geomorphic mapping based on remote sensing images. At present, there are various problems in the coral reef geomorphic classification schemes for remote sensing, such as inconsistent construction standards, unreasonable levels of some important geomorphic types, and incomplete geomorphic type coverage, which limit the application of geomorphic mapping for coral reef science and management. This articel advocates a systematic and hierarchical geomorphic classification scheme for reefs in the South China Sea for remote sensing, which concludes three levels and 19 classes from the sea to the lagoon or island. It is constructed based on high-resolution satellite images (WorldView-2, Quickbird) of 46 reefs (atolls, table reefs) and field survey data of 15 reefs in the Xisha Islands. Geomorphic types are derived and described according to the criteria of reef location, hydrodynamic characteristics, exposure degree and sediments. Geomorphic types are placed at the same level when they possess similar scale and importance. Cay and island are placed in the first level to show their importance. The scheme has consistent standardization, the highest hierarchical structure, and the largest number of geomorphic types. In the scheme, biotic sparse zone of the inner reef flat, biotic dense zone of the inner reef flat are named; submerged reef ridge, intertidal sand zone, and shallow reef pond are supplemented. The classification scheme facilitates the intuitive understanding and inference of the processes and importance of marine ecological interaction across different scales. This hierarchical geomorphic classification scheme with multi-scale characteristic is applicable to the coral reef geomorphic mapping from low-resolution to high-resolution satellite images, contributing to the change analysis, management, and protection of China’s coral reefs in the South China Sea.
This article employs the OAG (Official Airline Guide) flight schedule data of 2016 to analyze the spatial pattern and classification of multi-airport regions. The results indicate that: besides European countries and the United States, China, Japan, Thailand, and Brazil occupies important positions in the construction of multi-airport regions in the world. Multi-airport regions in Southern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and West Asia are polarized and lack of secondary airports. The layout of airports in the multi-airport regions of the UK and the United States are more compacted, and people can spend 0.5~1 hour less when driving from the British other primary or secondary airports to the core airport compared with China. Multi-airport regions can be divided into nine categories according to available seats and the Herfindahl-Hirschman indexes (HHI), corresponding to different evolution stages of multi-airport regions. Globally, 22 multi-airport regions have developed into a relatively mature stage. In the future, under the premise of ensuring the overall development of multi-airport regions, China should pay attention to the transformation process of other important airports to secondary airports, improve the ground traffic level in the regions to reduce the access time between airports, and guide a high level competition between airports.
In May 2017, The Belt and Road Initiative First International Cooperation Forum, which once again highlighted China's efforts and contributions in the construction of the "community of human destiny," was held in Beijing. We have drawn up the strategic conception of building the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, thus paving the maritime passage of elements flow in Eastern and Western countries, and expanding the new trade route for China to connect the world economy. Based on the relationship of shipping between the Chinese and international ports and social network analysis (SNA), this study mapped the connection network of Chinese and international ports along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The study also used the SNA method to analyze the overall network spatial structure and its core-periphery structure. We considered the network centrality and the actual shipping capability of the Chinese and international port nodes, thus identifying the functional nodes in the shipping network. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road shipping network presents a spatial pattern of the pickaxe shape, and the close connection between the Chinese and Southeast Asian ports is the core of this pattern. Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, and Port Klang constitute the hub and spoke network structure of the port of high efficiency and low consumption. (2) We derived the backbone network and core network through filtering, and identified special nodes and core nodes of international ports with different breadth and intensity. (3) There are two ways for ports to enter the shipping network. One is the hierarchical embedding mode (breadth, depth, intermediary function), such as China and Southeast Asia, and the other is homogeneous embedding mode, such as Africa, south West Asia-Middle East, South Asia, and Europe. (4) We identified five types of Chinese port nodes: potential composite hub port, export-oriented trunk port, inward direct port, intermediary branch port, and marginal feeder port. Then, the development proposals for these five types of ports are put forward, in order to effectively coordinate the port organization pattern and node functions so that ports can complement each other and enhance the value of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
Coastal ports are the intersections between the Belt and Road sea and land routes and the shipping network is the carrier for the ports' integration into the Maritime Silk Road, therefore their spatial connection and integration level are important indicators of the overall competitiveness of the ports. Using a complex network model to quantitatively depict and analyze the shipping network connection in 2005 and 2015, this article discusses the spatial and regional differences of container ports of China in the past 10 years. The results show that: (1) The container port shipping network of China had a bigger clustering coefficient and a smaller average path length and the whole network follows the small-world model. Differences between network accessibility and transfer function of the ports are relatively smaller, and regional hub ports are more stable. (2) Based on the strongest connection of shipping network from social network analysis (UCINET), from a national perspective three relatively independent regional networks have evolved into an integrative hub-spoke spatial network. From a regional perspective, although a few ports have the strongest connection with non-local hub ports, four regional ports still form relatively complete networks. (3) From the perspective of regional differences, the vertex strength of the connections among the four regional ports has increased, the network accessibility and transfer function of ports in Taiwan have improved, and their strongest connection area changed from the Pearl River Delta to the Yangtze River Delta. It also forms a regional network with Kaohsiung Port as a regional hub. The vertex strength between all ports in Taiwan and ports in China's mainland has increased by 79.46%. The vertex strength between the Hong Kong Port and all ports in China's mainland has decreased by 22.99%. The Hong Kong Port has declined from the national hub port to the Pearl River Delta regional hub port.
The Indian Ocean Passages (IOPs) have been regarded as the lifeline for China's energy and resources access, trade, as well as communication and cooperation with South and West Asian, African, and European countries. With the reshuffle of geopolitical power of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region and the shift of China's geopolitical position with its neighbors, China is in great need of reducing its dependence on the traditional IOPs through the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait and exploring alternative IOPs to leverage its geopolitical risks in these regions, improve domestic economic development pattern, push for further opening-up and development in the border areas in Southwest China provinces, and promote cooperations with Indian Ocean countries. This study offered a preliminary definition and analyzed the characteristics of a passage, summarized current and potential passages in the Indian Ocean, analyzed the strategic value, future prospect, and geopolitical impacts of potential passages for China, and provided novel perspectives and insights for the building of China's Indian Ocean strategy as well as the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative.
China-Africa cooperation is becoming an unavoidable international political and economic event, creating a large number of research topics. This study adopted the method of Endnote analysis to examine the relevant literature from four well-known international and Chinese academic publication databases. Based on a fuzzy keyword search with the key words of China-Africa cooperation, Sino-Africa cooperation, China-Africa collaboration, and Sino-Africa collaboration in Web of Science, Taylor & Francis, and Elsevier and zhongfei hezuo in CNKI, this study collected 241 and 382 publications from the international and Chinese databases, respectively. The two main conclusions are as follows: (1) Both international and Chinese scholars have paid much attention to the political and economic aspects of China-Africa cooperation, situating this theme into the framework of political science and economy for discussion, while the research perspective from other subjects seem to have been underexamined; (2) Although a small number of scholars have explored China-Africa cooperation from the perspective of geography and spatial analysis, such kind of studies seem to have seldom departed from the analytical framework of political science and economics. Human geography studies are also small in number and unsystematic. In this regard, this article proposes potential future research directions to discuss this topic, in particular from the lens of political geography, tourism geography, and social and cultural geography, which may gradually become hotspot topics in the near future. This article advocates for increased human geographer participation in the research of China-Africa cooperation thereby contributing to the study and practice of this cooperation. It also encourages human geographers in China to respond to China's growing intellectual responsibility as a great power "going out."
Hydroclimate process on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is sensitive to global climate change, and its variability and change would directly affect the evolution of regional water resources in the region. However, there is not enough knowledge of the spatial-temporal characteristics of hydroclimate process on TP so far. In this article, based on the precipitation data measured at 80 meteorological stations and the water vapor flux data over the Tibetan Plateau, the quality of 13 types of remotely sensed and reanalysis-based precipitation datasets was analyzed and compared. The IGSNRR (Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research) precipitation dataset performs the best, and it was used to identify the spatial pattern of seasonal distribution of precipitation on the plateau. The results show that the concentration degree (PCD) and concentration period (PCP) of monthly precipitation were relatively small in the southeastern, southwestern, and northwestern parts of the Tibetan Plateau; correspondingly, summer precipitation accounted for less than 50% of annual precipitation in these regions. As going toward the hinterland of the plateau, the PCD and PCP values increased gradually, the rainy season became shorter and delayed, and the ratio between rainy season precipitation and annual precipitation increased. The spatial pattern of seasonal distribution of precipitation on the plateau was clearly consistent with the direction of water vapor transport, which is mainly determined by the Westerlies and the Indian Ocean monsoon. Based on this, it is identified that precipitation process in the areas north of 35°N was mainly influenced by the Westerlies, but that south of 30°N was influenced by the Indian Ocean monsoon; in the central plateau (30°N~35°N), precipitation process was under the control of both the Westerlies and the Indian Ocean monsoon.The study results are helpful for further understanding the spatial difference in hydroclimate variability on the Tibetan Plateau.
Surge-type glaciers are characterized by rapid ice movement in a relatively short phase and mass redistribution after a comparatively long quiescent phase. They are also related to glacier hazard events such as glacier collapse, flood, and landslide that may cause massive losses to humans. Therefore, monitoring surged glacier will not only help us to explore the mechanism of glacier surge, but also further the research in glacier disaster early warning and risk assessment that have important practical significance. In the process of compiling the second Chinese glacier inventory, a glacier coded as 5Y663L0023 in the Kungey Mountain, eastern Pamir Plateau was found to have advanced a long distance during 1963-2009. Thus, the main aim of this study was to investigate this advanced glacier based on ASTER and Landsat data. From 1990 to 1992, the glacier advanced about 81±30 m. Then the glacier continually advanced about 811±30 m during 2007-2011, which may be attributed to surge. The surge initiation and termination took place from 5 August 2007 to 2011. A total volume of glacier ice of about 32.7×106 m3 was transferred from the upstream below the equilibrium line of the glacier in the main phase of surging between 21 August 2007 and 26 October 2008. This led to an increase of the glacier surface maximum thickness (128.17±0.17 m), glacier area (0.34±0.03 km2), and glacier length (704±30 m). To fill the gap in glacier surge period research, we suggest the active phase of the surged glacier was 4 year, the quench phase was likely about 15 years at least. The main reason behind the glacier surge may be the increase in mean annual air temperature and annual precipitation, as was recorded at the Tashkurgan Meteorological Station in recent years. On the one hand, ice and snow meltwater and liquid precipitation were carried through the crevasses from the surface of the glacier down to the glacier bed when temperature rises. Consequently, the high shear stresses along the frozen side walls due to high-pressure water dammed at the bed progressively broke the ice until glacier surge. On the other hand, build-up of ice from snowfall, avalanches, and snowdrift in the reservoir area increased the driving stress, which led to higher ice creep rates. Eventually, part of the glacier bed was raised to the pressure melting point and produced meltwater. The meltwater did not escape from the glacier and raised basal water pressure that led to reduced basal drag and faster sliding.
Using the location data of foreign-affiliated research and development (R&D) institutions in the metropolitan area of the city of shanghai, this study examined the spatial and temporal distribution and influencing factors of these institutions. Since the 1980s, foreign-affiliated R&D institutions in Shanghai have developed rapidly and three stages of development can be identified: the tentative period (1983-2000), the rapid expansion period (2001-2008), and the steady increasing period (2009-2016). Along with the increase in the number of institutions, the spatial layout showed the following characteristics: (1) A global decentralization trend was clear. The R&D institutions were concentrated in the near suburbs 10-20 km from the central city district. They eventually spread to outer suburban districts, which decreased the tendency toward the central city area. The statistical results show a gradually shrinking difference of the spatial heterogeneity between neighborhood-level units and county/district-level units. (2) Local area agglomeration characteristics were also clear. Several clusters of agglomeration are found in different districts in the suburb and outer suburb areas, namely the "Zhangjiang-Jinqiao-Waigaoqiao" eastern agglomeration area, the central agglomeration area dominated by Caohejing, the "Zizhu-Xinzhuang-Minhang Development Zone-Songjiang Industrial Zone" southwestern agglomeration area, and the "Anting-Jiading Industrial Zone" northwestern agglomeration area. During the study period, the multi-polar cluster distribution pattern was relatively stable, and the dominant positions of Zhangjiang, Caohejing, and the Zizhu Park have been further strengthened. The high concentration areas are connected by the main road and subway transportation network, which shows an obvious reliance on transportation. (3) The results of regression show that traditional location factors (rent costs, traffic accessibility, and resources), agglomeration factors, and institutional factors have strong impact on the location decision of foreign-affiliated R&D institutions, but the degree of influence also depends on their stage of development and size of the institutions. To sum up, the spatial evolution of foreign R & D institutions in Shanghai was resulted in market driving and administrative intervention mechanism.
Based on the experiences across the world, industrial clusters are generally divided into two categories—successful industrial clusters that play an important role in the economic growth in North America and Western Europe, known as the high-road and innovation-based clusters; and the low-road and low-cost based-clusters. As a kind of innovative low-tech cluster, cultural creative cluster in the old urban industrial districts can be categorized as the first type and has an important role to play in urban spatial reconstruction and industrial upgrading. The growth mechanism of cultural creative clusters in old urban industrial areas is a newly heated research topic in the field of industrial cluster research. This research chose Ningbo as the case study city and examine and validate the cultivation mechanism of creative spaces in its old industrial districts based on the grounded theory and SEM (structural equation modeling), as well as questionnaire and semi-structured interview data. The results demonstrate that: (1) The cultivation mechanism of creative spaces in the old industrial districts of Ningbo is comprised of three main dimensions—local, capital, and relational spaces; and five cores factors—locational, institutional, social relation network, cultural milieu, and office milieu factors, and ultimately forming a cycle of "recognition of local space→rational constraints of capital space and relational space→local space, capital space, and relational spatial coordination→relational space feedback." (2) A questionnaire was designed and applied to explore the cultivation mechanism of creative spaces in the old industrial districts, and the scale consists of 13 items, which belong to five dimensions, and is well-formed with good reliability and validity. (3) The LOFT-style creative park owned and managed by state-owned capital (1956 Creative Industrial Park) and the office building groups-led creative park owned and managed by state-owned capital (Hefeng Creative Plaza) are all well developed. However, the LOFT-style creative park owned and managed by pure private capital (Qiyun86 Microfilm Industrial Park) is poorly developed. The disparity in the cultivation of creative spaces is inevitable, which can be attributed to the capital attributes of the creative fix of old industrial districts. In addition, office milieu and location have become the key factors in the cultivation of creative space, particularly in the Hefeng Creative Plaza, and the theoretical model is proved as applicable by SEM and the local quantitative index. The renovation and regeneration of the old industrial districts through creative fix is confronted with a divergent path of upgrading, recession, and disappearance. The strength and persistence of the interactive relationship between local space, capital space, and relationship space have become the decisive factors in the direction of its evolution.
There are many kinds of academic writing in human geography in the world, including monographs, companion, handbook, textbook, journal paper, review article, book review, and so on. But in contemporary China too much attention is focus on journal paper, particularly Anglo-American English journal papers. Textbook and popular essay are not taken seriously academic work. Against this background the writings of Dr. Tang Xiaofeng (excluding the monographs) are unique and fascinating. One of Tang's book—Yuedu yu ganzhi: Renwen dili biji—is analyzed according to the content and contribution to college geographic education. We should pay more attention to the diversity of academic works, particularly the textbooks and popular essays.
