Recently, domestic and international economic situations have changed significantly. The Pearl River Delta (PRD) area in this period of transition is facing unprecedented challenges, and development strategies for the PRD need to be reconsidered. This article reviews the development process of the PRD and analyzes its development situation. Then, the PRD is compared with the urban agglomerations at home and abroad. The results show that in 2000-2013, the economic development and the population growth of the PRD have slowed down; the disparity of regional economic development has gradually narrowed; the industrial development tends to be more advanced; and economic globalization has decreased. At present, the level of development and competitiveness of the PRD is much weaker than world-class urban agglomerations. Compared with the Yangtze River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Uban Agglomerations, the speed of development in the Pearl River Delta area has decreased. The PRD should attach greater importance to technology innovation of industries, intensification of land-use, innovation of population policy, regional cooperation, and humanistic concerns under the new conditions.

Simulation and quantitative analysis of urban land-use change dynamics are an effective way to understand the evolution of spatial structure in urban systems. Cellular automata (CA) has drawn continuous and increasing interest of researchers in the field of land use and land cover change simulation. Neighborhood rules are a core component of the urban CA model, with varied neighborhood effects among different land use combinations. Most urban CA models constructed with neighborhood rules consider only a small neighborhood scope under a specific spatial resolution. However, the extended enrichment factor indicates that there are still obvious neighborhood effects in large neighborhoods with a particularly long distance to the central cell. Based on a measured extended enrichment factor for a large neighborhood, we applied particle swarm optimization (PSO) to obtain the parameter settings of neighborhood rules, including various sub-neighborhoods at different distances within the large neighborhood. The extracted neighborhood rules were integrated into a widely used logistic regression urban CA model, Logistic-CA (LNCA), and a large neighborhood urban land use model, PSO-LNCA, was developed. Using Xiamen City as a study case, the PSO-LNCA model was implemented to simulate urban growth during the period between 1995 and 2010. The accuracy of simulated results by the model was evaluated with confusion matrix and Kappa coefficient. Accuracies for built-up land and non-built land and overall accuracy for 2010 are 83.9%, 91.7%, and 89.6%, respectively, and the Kappa coefficient for 2010 is 74.5%. The results show that the PSO-LNCA model achieved significantly higher simulation accuracy for built-up land and Kappa coefficient than the traditional urban CA model with a 3×3 kernel neighborhood (3.2% higher accuracy for built-up land and 4.5% higher for Kappa coefficient, respectively), and also generated relatively higher overall accuracy (1.8% higher). By integrating the extended neighborhood module, the simulation result generated by the PSO-LNCA model is closer to the actual space morphology and structure, compared with the traditional 3×3 kernel Logistic-CA model.

Using space syntax, kernel density estimation, and Pearson correlation analysis methods, this research combines the segment lines model of space syntax and Baidu POI data to explore the traffic network point of services location choice in the central city area of Beijing. The results indicate that (1) the traffic network is well connected, accessible, and dense in east and north, relatively poorly connected and sparse in west and south, and most poorly connected in southwest. The overall network shows the spatial pattern of annular agglomeration in the inner city and polycentric distribution in the periphery. (2) Compared to traffic network with high connectivity NACH(Normalised Angular Choice), traffic network with high level of integration NAIN (Normalised Angular Integration) has stronger level of point of services location choice and is more likely to induce agglomeration of services.(3) Traffic network point of services location choice is clear but the point levels of different services are remarkably different at different scales. Therefore, the services are divided into four types, including point at the neighborhood scale; point at the street scale; point at both scales, and nonpoint. This research provides some reference that facilities the understanding of services agglomeration and helps to improve services and traffic network planning and decision-making for optimizing urban structure of the central city area of Beijing.

This research measured road transport superiority degree of the 680 counties (county-level cities and districts) in the 14 concentrated contiguous severe poverty areas of China in 2012 by integrating the indices of road network density, city proximity, and weighted average travel time, and made a comprehensive evaluation of their spatial patterns. It then chose the optimal model of SEM to explore the impact of road transport superiority degree on economic growth. The results show that: (1) With regard to road network density, city proximity, and weighted average travel time, there is a large difference among the 680 counties (county-level cities and districts) in the 14 concentrated contiguous severe poverty areas. Road transport superiority degree of the 680 counties (county-level cities and districts) presents a right-skewed normal distribution. (2) Road transport superiority degree is divided into four classes from good to bad. The first (best) class includes the Dabie Mountain area, Luoxiao Mountain area, Lvliang Mountain area, and Yanshan-Taihang Mountain area; the second class includes the Qinba Mountain area, Liupan Mountain area, Wuling Mountain area, Wumeng Mountain area, Dian-Gui-Qian Rocky Desertification area; the third class contains the western Yunnan border mountain areas, the Great Khingan South Mountain area, and the Tibetan area in four provinces; the rest of the 14 concentrated contiguous severe poverty areas belong to the fourth (worse) class, which includes Tibet and three prefectures of southern Xinjiang. (3) The fitness of the SEM model is superior compared to the OLS model and the SLM model. The impact of road transport superiority degree on economic growth is clearly significant: every increase of one percentage point in road transport superiority degree has a contribution of 0.193% on economic growth. Therefore improving road network density can enhance road transport superiority degree and promote local and regional economic growth.

Using the 3S (RS, GIS, GPS) technologies, quantitative analysis method of landscape patterns, and the 30 m resolution land use/land cover data, this study examines the spatiotemporal characteristics of land use/land cover change in the grassland restoration areas in China from 2000 to 2010. We apply two parameters land use transfer matrix and land use dynamic degree to explore the speed and regional differentiation of land use change. This study analyzes the characteristics of landscape patterns at the class and landscape levels in the study area and explores the ecological effect of land use pattern and regional ecological processes. The results show that: (1) Grassland, woodland, wetland, farmland, tificial surface, and others were the main landscape types in the study area in the past decade. The ecosystem structure was stable. About 0.37% of the total grassland area in 2000 experienced change in land use/land cover types. The area of woodlands, wetlands, farmlands, and tificial surface expanded. The area of "others" has declined. (2) The dynamic degree of regional land use was less than one percent in the recent ten years. The speed of land use and land cover change was low, and regional differentiation of change between the provinces was small. (3) The matrix of the landscape did not change in the study area. Landscape fragmentation index values decreased progressively; landscape diversity rose continuously; landscape aggregation and continuity decreased slightly; the landscape maintained relative integrity. The grassland restoration program implementation evidently improved the structure and stability of the land use / land cover.

Landscape ecological corridor planning is an important method to protect biodiversity. Land use type is not the only index to describe landscape forms. Taking the estimation of ecological service value as well as terrain index into account helps better reflect the spatial variations of landscapes. In this paper, based on ecological service value and terrain factors, the layout of ecological landscape corridors in Guan-Tian economic region is analyzed with a grid resolution of 1 km. The results are shown as follows: (1) Correlation analysis shows that terrain factors have a significant impact on the distribution of ecological value. When the ridges and valleys are extracted using the unified threshold, it is found that the areas with high or low ecological values are ridges or valleys of the terrain as well; the transition zones superimpose very well. (2) The ridges with high ecological value are extracted as habitat patches, then the layout of ecological corridors is modeled in space by choosing the direction through the areas with the biggest ecological resistance. Since the corridor width can be adjusted based on the species types, the relatively short length of the corridors makes it easier to construct, and adding or removing nodes and patches doesn’t affect the topological relationship between each corridor and the surrounding network, the applicability of the modeling results is relatively high. (3) As mentioned above, using ecological service value and terrain factors help better reflect the similarities and differences of the landscape functions of the pixel unit, and also helps avoid the problems such as land use classifications being too broadly defined, identifications of habitat patches being too difficult, and the paths with similar ecological resistance being too many, etc. All in all, the work presented in this paper is an effective supplement to the design of ecological corridors in a kilometer scale, and at the same time, demonstrates the necessity to develop the methods for the studies of ecological aspects of the landscapes in specific regions, under the background of dramatic differences of the geographic features between the east and the west of China.

Policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bond are the focus of international cooperation of the "Belt and Road Initiative". Exports of the provinces in China to the "Belt and Road Initiative" area is the main content of the "Unimpeded trade and Financial integration," but research on trade between China and countries in the "Belt and Road Initiative" area are relatively rare, and trade interdependence remains unclear. According to the latest data from the International Trade Center, Chinese customs statistics in 2014, and Multi-regional Input-Output Table of China's 30 provinces in 2010, we analyzed the trade interdependence between China and countries of the "Belt and Road Initiative" area, and the contribution of provincial export to the GDP of each province. The results show that: trade interdependence had deepen between China and countries of the "Belt and Road Initiative" area, but the interdependence was asymmetrical; at the provincial level, the relatively high GDP contribution of exports in coastal provinces shows that these provinces are more export-dependent. Xinjiang has the highest GDP contribution of export (to Central Asia)and is thus strongly export dependent.

The Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road policy document was issued by the Chinese government on 28 March 2015. How to implement the overall national strategy becomes a major topic of theoretical discussion with much practical significance, namely, to promote the international competitiveness and upgrading of Chinese industries, and achieve common prosperity among countries in the Belt and Road Initiative area through Chinese outward direct investment (ODI). Existing literature on ODI originated largely from developed countries, and thus cannot satisfactorily explain the booming ODI from emerging countries such as China. Moreover, the research on Chinese foreign direct investment focused more on the natural resources and market factors in analyzing motivations and driving forces, mainly based on historical data. There is little discussion on large scale, national demand-oriented Chinese ODI strategy, for example, in the Belt and Road Initiative area. Against this background, this article investigates the spatial strategy of Chinese outward direct investment (ODI) in the Belt and Road Initiative area, using statistical data and results from fieldwork and interviews. It first develops a theoretical framework to investigate Chinese outward direct investment in the Belt and Road Initiative area based on a review of existing research on foreign direct investment. It then analyzes the basic characteristics of Chinese ODI in this region with regard to its spatial distribution and choice of sectors. Third, the article explores difficulties and challenges that Chinese enterprises will face when they implement the “going global” strategy. Finally, it investigates the spatially differentiated investment guiding strategy for Chinese ODI in the Belt and Road Initiative area.

Cellular automata (CA) has been frequently used to investigate the logical nature of self-reproducible systems and simulate the evolution of complex geographical phenomena such as urban expansion. The core of cellular automata is to define transition rules. Traditionally, approaches for defining the transition rules of cellular automata had difficulty to balance the interpretability, accuracy, and convenience. This article presents a new cellular automata model for simulating urban expansion based on random forest algorithm. The proposed model extracts CA transition rules of urban expansion by introducing random factors in training samples and candidate spatial variables that split nodes during the multiple decision trees building process. One significant advantage of our approach is that it can be easily adopted for parallel implementation and has high prediction accuracy and tolerance to random factors in urban expansion. Another strength of the proposed approach is that it can estimate out-of-bag errors to obtain model parameters quickly and measure the importance of spatial variables and explain the contribution of each variable in urban expansion. The model was applied to simulate urban expansion in Foshan City, Guangdong Province. We used the urban land change of 1988 and 2000 as the dependent variable and the spatial variables as the independent variables to construct the CA model based on random forests, then simulate and predict urban expansion of 2000 and 2012. The results show that random forest model can improve the simulation and prediction accuracies by 1.7% and 2.6%, respectively, when compared to the logistic regression model commonly used in CA simulation. This suggests that random forest model is superior for modeling complex nonlinear urban evolution. Urban expansion of Foshan City in 2024 was also predicted according to its urban development trend. Through measuring the importance of some spatial variables that affect urban expansion, we found that distance to national roads and to the city center are the two most important spatial variables for urban expansion simulation in Foshan City.

Economic cooperation is one of the priority areas in the "Belt and Road Initiative" proposed by China. It is important to examine the characteristics and patterns of development of trade between China and countries in the "Belt and Road Initiative" area, for achieving "unimpeded trade" and promoting economic prosperity and regional cooperation. Under this background, this article reviews the changing trend of commodity structure of trade between China and countries in the "Belt and Road Initiative" area, and analyzes the commodity structure and pattern, based on the revealed comparative advantage index (RCA), sensitive industry identification method, and k-medium value clustering. The results show that the commodity structure of China's export to these countries has improved, while import has been more centralized with increasing share of energy. Second, the main products that China exports to these countries are mechanical equipment and textiles and garments, while the main products that China imports are mostly energy, textiles and garments, and mechanical equipment. Third, sensitive industries involved in China's exports include clothing and shoes, nonmetallic minerals, transportation equipment and so on, and those involved in China's imports are mainly ores, energy, and some primary processed products. Fourth, at the provincial level, eastern, central, and some western provinces that do not share border with other countries, are mainly connected to Southeast Asia, West Asia, and Middle East, while western and northern border provinces are mainly dependent on trade with neighboring countries in the area, and have more ties with Central Asia, South Asia, and Mongolia-Russia. Most eastern provinces, central provinces, and several fast-growing western provinces are mainly exporting mechanical equipment, while most northwestern provinces are mainly exporting clothing. On the other hand, energy is the main product imported to Qinghai, Xinjiang, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and other eastern provinces, while ores and metal products are main imported to most western provinces.

The exploitation of the reserved cultivated land in Northern China plays an important role in relaxing the tension between people and land, and in balancing gross cultivated land, but the question of ecological environment is also serious, especially in interlace zones of agriculture and stockbreeding. The paper analyzes space time characteristics of the reserved cultivated land exploitation in Northern China in the whole, and the data of typical investigation region is also used, which come from TM satellite image processing (1∶10000) of America done by Agriculture Ministry. Then, the countermeasure and propose is put forward on the basis of synthetic evaluation.

Rapid urban expansion in China has led to the plowland reduction, energy consumption and pollution discharge increase. The concept of compact city prevailing in western countries since the 1960s has become the choice for China's urban development with the character of high density of industrial sectors and population in limited space. However, the route and characters of Chinese urbanization are rather different from those of western countries. It is necessary to study the feasibility on whether compact city could lead to the decrease of traffic energy consumption and pollution, and increasing economic efficiency of urban land infrastructure. Based on the analysis of compact cities, this paper built the urban compactness evaluation indicators of Chinese cities, evaluated the urban compactness of 120 cities above prefecture level, and studied its correlation matrix with urban size, resource consumption and pollution factors. The results show that many cities were in the low degree of compactness in China, and there is a weak correlation between urban compactness with the size of urban population and economy. And it is the same to the resource consumption and pollution release. There are three factors which lead to this dilemma, including rapid urbanization process, characters of urban industrial structure and low investment on public infrastructure. Finally, this paper discussed several questions: (1) what is the ultimate aim of city development? (2) what compact cities does China need? (3) how could China build compact cities?

Geographical differences in latitude, topography, and distance to the sea lead to a variety of summer comfortable climate types in China. Using daily data from 756 national basic stations and 122 radiation stations in China during 1993-2012, human-perceived temperature is calculated using the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). Combined with cluster analysis method, this study analyzed summer comfortable climate types as well as their spatial distribution, temporal variation, and characteristics of comfort. The results show that summer comfortable climate types in China include Southwest Plateau type, Central-Eastern Mountain type, Bohai Hilly type, Northeast Mountain-Plain type, and Northwest Mountain-Plateau type. On the Southwest Plateau, with a low latitude and high altitude, solar radiation is strong; the Central-Eastern Mountain area is comfortable and slightly cold in the summer due to high elevation and wind speed; the Bohai Hilly area is influenced distinctly by the sea breeze and is slightly hot with high humidity; the Northwest Mountain-Plateau has a pleasant temperature and sunny weather although slightly dry. Comparatively, conditions in the Northeast Mountain-Plain are the most favorable because of the cool climate and low wind speed, weak solar radiation, and moderate humidity. Based on the temporal variation of human-perceived temperature during the summer, the comfortable period of the Bohai Hilly is short but the others are relatively long. The human-perceived temperature curves of the Northeast Mountain-Plain and the Northwest Mountain-Plateau areas show a single peak with symmetric distribution while the others present a roughly single peak with asymmetrical shape. The result of this study has further enriched the results of summer comfortable climate research and provides a scientific basis for the development and planning of summer tourist resources. It can also serve as a guide to summer tourism activities.

The new normal of China's economic growth has profound impact on the development of regional tourism in china. Based on an analysis of the characteristics of the development of China's tourism industry, this article addresses the general trend of regional tourism development in the future, and puts forward a new approach to realize innovative regional tourism development. It shows that the tourism industry presents six main characteristics: (1) the tourism industry in China is expanding in scale but at the same time, services are becoming increasingly personalized. Characteristics and effects of a country of strong tourism attraction begin to appear; (2) cross-border, cross-industry enterprises gradually lead the development of tourism and plan the development at the global scale; (3) tourism is becoming an important industry and a comprehensive, coordinated development of regional tourism industry has become an important goal of regional economic development; (4) a high-quality workforce begins to form and the overall quality of services has gradually enhanced; (5) the Internet is transforming the tourism markets, enterprises, and business models, and changing the territory of traditional tourism industry; (6) "people-oriented" green development supports the construction of an "ecological culture." Correspondingly, tourism development is facilitating and being integrated into regional development strategies of China, including the development of tourism industry in central and western China, urban vacation and tourism development, the overall development of ecological cultural areas, regional tourism network development, and the development of innovative regional tourism management models. Under the "new normal" of China's economic growth, new strategies for China's regional tourism development should include constructing trans-regional tourism destinations, improving investment and innovation, realizing regional integrated governance, fostering the internationalization of business entities, and achieving integrated tourism risk prevention.

Urban agglomeration is an important carrier of China's new urbanization strategy, but also a new geographical unit for participating in global competition and international division of labor. At present, the mode of China's regional spatial governance is undergoing a major shift from the original spatial split according to the administrative divisions to govern in accordance with the type of area. Based on the significant extension of the characteristics of urban agglomerations, we divide the 23 Chinese urban agglomerations at four levels and analyze the spatial variation, aiming to provide a scientific basis for the implementation of China's urban agglomerations spatial pattern optimization and planning. First, the 23 areas are divided into national, regional, sub-regional and local levels of urban agglomerations with reference to the development status of more mature urban agglomerations worldwide, resulting in a "3-5-6-9" pyramid structure for the four levels. Then, based on the five essential characteristics of urban agglomerations, we build an index system for the classification of urban agglomerations that consists of 10 factors and 22 indicators, and a Q-type cluster analysis is employed to quantitatively group five kinds of the urban agglomerations: mature export-oriented type, dual-core catch-up type, environment-friendly type, single nuclear radiation type, and inland extensive type. Finally, by synthesizing the classification results of different levels and quantitative clustering, China's urban agglomerations are divided into 10 subgenera: National mature export-oriented genre, national dual-core catch-up genre, regional dual-core catch-up genre, sub-regional environment-friendly genre, local environment-friendly genre, regional single nuclear radiation genre, local single nuclear radiation genre, regional inland extensive genre, subregional inland extensive genre, and local inland extensive genre.

The Belt and Road Initiative—where the "Belt" stands for the Silk Road Economic Belt and the "Road" stands for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road—is a call of China for new modes of regional economic cooperation under the trend of development of economic globalization. It targets at promoting orderly and free flow of economic factors, efficient allocation of resources, and deep integration of markets; enabling the countries along the Belt and Road to achieve economic policy coordination and carry out broader, deeper, and more efficient economic cooperation; and jointly building an open, inclusive, and balanced regional economic cooperation architecture. Thus the Belt and Road Initiative is an alternative road to further economic globalization, but contains ideas that are different from the past, that is, the spirit of the Silk Road—"peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and win-win." Based on such an understanding, this article first analyzes the general background of the Belt and Road Initiative against economic globalization and the changing configurations of the world, and then discusses the Initiative's spatial connotation by revealing its multi-scalar and trans-scalar characteristics. The article points out that the Belt and Road Initiative is a national strategy, rather than a regional strategy, to coordinate all-around opening of China to the world and promote further integration of the country into the global economy. Last, the article suggests several research themes in geography that are brought about by the Belt and Road Initiative, including geopolitical studies, geography of countries of the region to explore cooperation opportunities, foreign direct investment theories advanced by the Belt and Road Initiative, and optimization of transcontinental transportation.

The most fundamental obstacle to progress in the understanding and prediction of human impacts on environmental changes lies in the lack of a comprehensive and integrative theory of human land relationships. The recent growth of research into land use and land cover change has revealed the inadequacy of current theories. On the other hand, specific land use issues have been effectively addressed by different disciplines, such as economic geography, regional and urban economics, and law. This paper reviews the land use theories and system models that indirectly or exclusively touch the dynamics of land use in time and space. A comprehensive framework for the explanation of land use changes is proposed. The author argues that a multi disciplinary approach into land use change studies, as an alternative to a new integrative theory of human land relationships, help the establishment of a holistic understanding of the process. Analyses of land user’s economic behavior and land manager’s institutional behavior constitute the major components of the framework. Thunen and Alonso’s bid rent curve approach provides a foundation for the former analysis, while Platt’s interaction loop among land use system, environment system and institution system provides theoretical base for the latter. With the bid rent curve approach, understanding of land use change lies in an analysis of conditions for change of transference margins in the micro perspective and an analysis of conditions for change of the slope of bid rent curve in the macro perspective. All these changes will break the spatial equilibrium of land use and then constitute the driving forces of land use change. With Platt’s interaction loop approach, attention should be paid to strength of the signals from both the nature side and the society side. The author claims that changes on land use policies in China after the ’who will feed China’ debate in the mid 1990s, the large flooding on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the strong dust storms in North China in early 2000, reflect the impact of strong signals. The paper also discusses the intrinsic properties of land that make unique of the dynamic mechanism of land use. Of these properties, multiple suitability, constraint in area and quality, and immovability are imperative to land use changes. Trend in land use specialization and the implicative shrinking of land’s natural functions is a cue for the understanding of land use changes, and that of the overall human environment relationships as well.

：Spatial patterns of logistics industry is formed by the spatial distribution and structure of logistics facilities and enterprises. In order to examine the current situation and change of spatial patterns of logistics industry in China, we put forward the concepts of "logistics hotness degree "and "primacy index of cities." In August 2014, we obtained 80507 samples of logistics hotness degree data at the prefecture level or above in China based on "logistics" key word search using Baidu maps (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan). Through establishing an index of logistics hotness degree, the correlation between logistics hotness degree and indicators were analyzed. This article presents the construction of the logistics hotness degree index and demonstrates the effectiveness and validity of Internet-based data on logistics industry. Spatial patterns of logistics industry are analyzed in terms of capacity, level of service, and spatial influence at the prefecture,provincial, metropolitan area, and economic zone scales. We explored the impact of economic development and logistics park construction on the evolution of the spatial patterns of logistics industry. Logistics centers were identified and compared to the national and regional logistics hub cities designated in the "Logistics Industry Restructuring and Revitalization Plan" issued by the State Council and the "National Logistics Park Development Planning" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and 11 other ministries. Some conclusions can be drawn as follows: the logistics hotness degree information is a comprehensive representation of logistics facilities and logistics enterprises.It is highly correlated with GDP, number of primary industry corporation units in transportation, warehousing, and postal services. Economic development level is highly correlated with logistics industry development. The spatial layout of logistics facilities and enterprises is significant correlated with industrial demand and their locations in the transport system; and it increasingly influenced by the of consumption demand and distribution and socioeconomic conditions of population. In the eastern coastal region of China, logistics industry distribution shows the spatial characteristics of "single-center and multiple sub-centers" or "multiple-centers and multiple sub-centers." In the central and western regions, however, the spatial pattern of distribution is characterized by "single -centers," which shows a clear regional difference from the coastal region. The result of this research may provide some guidance for logistics plann ing and logistics industrial policy of the central and regional governments for the thirteenth Five-Year Plan period and beyond.

旅游业的社会影响可涉及三个方面:旅客、旅游地居民、游客与旅游地居民的关系。本文着重于后两个方面。对旅游业的早期研究一般都集中在它对旅游地的经济影响。对社会影响的研究始于近几年。旅游业的社会影响指的是旅游业带来的表现在价值观、个人行为、家庭关系、生活方式、道德观念等方面的变化。

“Urban regeneration”is a re-development process which is an inevitable experience at certain urbanization stage, and urban regeneration under different backgrounds and geographical environments has different motivation mechanism, development mode and power relations, and has different economic, environmental and social effects. Based on the English literature in recent years about "urban regeneration" and the literature about urban renewal in China in the past 30 years, this paper summed up the studies on urban regeneration from the perspectives of geography, including the research scope, the study characteristics and the theories related to urban regeneration, to explain the formation mechanism of urban regeneration, the regeneration policy, the regeneration mode, the regeneration tools and the methodologies, as well as the developers in the regeneration project and the regeneration effects in different regions at different developing stages. Urban renewal movement originated the massive urban renewal activities in the West after World War II. Because this kind of physical renewal destructed the previous social fabric and the integrity of the internal space, it was widely questioned. The term “urban regeneration”originally referred to an urban renaissance strategy which responded to the decline of old industrial cities after the transfer of the global industrial chain in the West, especially in Britain. Then it gradually evolved to a city's comprehensive urban redevelopment activities, including other improvement areas within the city, to stimulate economic growth, to enhance urban vitality and to improve the competitiveness. With the “globalization”and“localization”, the researchers in the world began to show concern on various types of urban renewal movement and re-urbanization strategy. This paper summed up three future research directions of urban regeneration, including the internal mechanism between urban regeneration, city construction and economic development, the micro-study of the individual behavior in urban regeneration and integrated urban redevelopment under the concept of sustainable development, and gave some suggestions to studies on future urban redevelopment in China.

Rural tourism is such a new industry which combines primary industry with tertiary industry. Rural tourism is based on agriculture, aiming at developing tourism in rural area and serving the urban residents by providing various services. Rural tourism can develop landscape resources in rurban fringe to promote eco-tourism and to realize the coordinated development of the cities and countryside. In China, rural tourism successively experiences three stages, eg. early rising stage, initial development stage and later normative operating stage. This paper, based on the background and the concept of rural tourism, comprehensively discusses the development of rural tourism in China, analyzes the current situations and the main patterns of rural tourism, and puts forward some relevant countermeasures for the current problems. Finally, the paper discusses the prospect of the future sustainable development of rural tourism in China.

This article takes the general principles and application values of the discrete choice model system as a departure point and summarizes the classical model forms with respect to their basic theories and typical applications. Important latest developments are also introduced. Multinomial logit (MNL) model is the basis of the discrete choice model system, with the advantages of simplicity, reliability, and easy implementation. However, it also has some inherent theoretic defects, which led to the need for more refined models. Nested logit model is usually used to deal with problems of correlation among alternatives, no-choice alternative, and data enrichment. Its more general form is the generalized extreme value (GEV) model system; mixed logit model is suitable for handling random preference and some kinds of correlation problems, such as correlation among alternatives, panel data, random coefficients, and data for enrichment. A similar model form named latent class model is also widely used. Multinomial probit (MNP) model is highly flexible. However, its application is limited due to the complexity of model specification and very high computation demands. With regard to the new development of discrete choice model system, four important areas are introduced. These include complex new models derived from the combination of classical models; models suitable for dealing with revealed preference/stated preference (RP/SP), ordered, ranked, and multiple choice data; models based on bounded rationality choice which is more close to reality; and models considering the spatiotemporal background of choice.

Siberia is an important sensitive area with regard to global environmental change. Due to the limited availability of high resolution remote sensing data, previously there was a general lack of in-depth understanding of land cover and change in Siberia. Based on the land cover classification of China's 30 m global land cover (GLC) data product (GlobeLand30) in 2000 and 2010, this study analyzed the progress of land cover change in Siberia between 2000 and 2010 using spatial statistical method and land cover type transition matrix. Land cover changes in Siberia showed significant spatial and temporal variations between 2000 and 2010. Overall, the area that experienced most clear land cover change was west Siberia. The area of forests and grasslands decreased substantially and the change mainly took place in the traditional forest industry regions. The total area of wetland significantly increased and this change occurred mainly in the River Ob and Yenisei in west Siberia. Cultivated land decreased slightly mainly in the traditional agricultural region of the southwest. Built-up areas expanded rapidly, which mainly distributed in cities along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Land cover change in Siberia showed distinct temporal and spatial disparities primarily due to two reasons: industrial development and climate warming..

Land-use change is a dynamic process through which human and natural systems interact and the link between social economic activities and ecological processes, and plays an important role in the understanding of human-environment relationship. It has important implications for land management, therefore exploring the many factors influencing land use and land cover has been the focus of scientific study across multiple disciplines, locations, and scales. Simulation of land use spatial pattern under different scenarios may reveal the driving factors of regional land-use change spatially, which is an important way to analyze future land-use demand. In this study, using Beijing as an example we examined characteristics of land-use change and simulated future land-use demand by a CLUE-S model, and identified related driving factors using a Logistic model combine with land use data extracted from remote sensing images in 1985, 2000, and 2010. We simulated the land use requirements of Beijing in 2020 under different scenarios based on economic and social development, land use planning, resources and ecological protection and other conditions. The results are as follows: (1) different driving factors resulted in some different changes in various land-use types. Transportation and socioeconomic factors may have played an important role in the conversion of land-use types especially through affecting accessibility to the administrative center and level of urbanization. The effect of topographic factors, slope in particular, on land-use types is clear, with higher slope conducive to forest land and lower slope for other land-use types.(2) Consistency between the projected and actual land-use situations is high—the kappa index is 0.87. (3) Comparison of simulated land-use changes under various scenarios shows that future land use differs under different scenarios. Spatial pattern of land use in Beijing is optimized to a certain degree under the ecological protection and water resources conservation scenario, which promotes rational expansion of construction land. Under the natural development scenario land use should be based on the Land Use Plan to ensure the sustainability of land resources by setting urban growth boundary and so on.

Urban ecological space is a main part of urban space, which is the interdisciplinary research topic in the urban planning, ecology and geography domain. Based on the analysis of literature related to urban ecological space(UES) home and abroad, the paper defined the urban ecological space and summarized the advance and limitations of domestic studies, pointed out that the foreign studies made important progresses in the effects of UES on residents' well-being and its mechanism, the UES perception, use behaviors and its influencing factors, economic and socio-cultural impacts of UES, UES governance methods and principles, UES pattern and optimization guided by social justice concept. In addition, humanistic approaches were applied widely. Accordingly, the paper proposed that future researches should focus on residents' well-being and pay more attention to social-ecological interaction and its mechanism, and the governance of public available UES, promote UES pattern and planning research guided by the concept of justice. At the same time, the application of multidisciplinary cross methods (such as humanism and behaviorism methods) should be strengthened.

Topographic wetness index, which takes into account the integrated effects of topography and soil hydraulic characters on soil moisture, plays important theoretical and applied potentials in the studies of spatial distribution of soil moisture. Considering the spatial-temporal variation in upslope contributing area, topographic wetness indexes were divided into three types, e.g. static, quasi-dynamic and full dynamic. The effects of computing methods of topographic wetness index and resolution of DEMs as well as the universality of the index should be analyzed discreetly in application of topographic wetness index. At the same time, for the apparent differences between the current assumptions of topographic wetness index and actual water cycling process and runoff mechanism in arid/semi-arid region, the research approaches and the conceive of the application of topographic wetness index are proposed for the Losses Plateau to provide theoretical and practical foundation for the vegetation restoration and the conservation of soil and water in the region.

In the process of rapid economic growth and social restructuring, solving the problems such as spatial development disorder and costly resources and environmental impact has been an important scientific proposition of regional sustainable development in the field of human-economic geography. In accordance with the report to the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, optimizing spatial development pattern nationally is placed as the primary measure of ecological progress, followed by the specific requirements stated as "the space for production is used intensively and efficiently, the living space is livable and proper in size, the ecological space is unspoiled and beautiful." Shaping the ecological-production-living space by following these requirements will become the foundation of the spatial planning system. Moreover, it also contributes to improving the protection system of spatial development and implementing major function oriented zoning at all scales. Revolving around the target of optimizing geographical space and regional sustainable development, this article systematically reviews existing literature on ecological-production-living space both in China and internationally, focusing on the quantitative proportion and spatial layout of ecological-production-living space. Following the requirements of improving precision and increasing spatial resolution and with a focus on functional classification, spatial identification, and spatial development pattern optimization, this article finally put forward the research framework of ecological-production-living space. To promote the progress of theoretical research and practical applications on ecological-production-living space, the following measures can be implemented: (1) Establish an improved research framework and technical process through multidisciplinary partnerships. (2) Expand the scope of basic units of analysis. (3) Explore new methods for function identification and attach more importance to the dynamic evolution of ecological, production, and living spaces. (4) Promote the integration of suitability evaluation at different scales. (5) Meet the practical needs of multiple-planning integration and ultimately serve the national efforts of optimizing the spatial development pattern.

Aiming at getting clear about the reference implication of the theory and practice of international regional economic cooperation to intra applications in China, this paper gives an analytical introduction to the changing basic conception framework of international economic cooperation. The traditional conception of regional integration based on European experience is elaborated at first, and the major challenges faced it by the reality of international relationship in terms of cooperation and grouping in the past decades have been discussed. Then the recent academic development concerning the extending of the conception over the worldwide experiences of regional economic cooperation has been summarized.

The importance of culture upon the land has long been a leading theme in cultural geography, and cultural landscape has exercised strong attractions on geographers, particularly those of Berkeley School. The author believes that cultural landscape can be defined as landscape created intentionally by man to satisfy some of his needs, taking use of materials in the environment. In the following parts of the paper, the author gives us a thorough discussion of the inventory and progress of cultural landscape research from six aspects: 1) evolution; 2) perception and interpretation; 3) constitution; 4) classification; 5) ecology and 6) conservation and planning.