Based on complex physiognomy of the mountainous city, as well as its underlying surface type, this paper used TM, DEM and ETM⁺ data to extract the land-use cover types of Chongqing, and retrieved the land surface temperature by using single Landsat TM/ETM6 thermal infrared data to analyze complex urban landscape of 1988 and 2000. The integration of remote sensing and GIS was further applied to examine the influence of land cover change and urban growth on land surface temperatures. The article analyzes land-cover change in Chongqing during recent 10 years and its influence on land surface temperature. The results show that the combination of various land cover types extracted by effective infrared band and retrieved land surface temperature space as well as plant-covered space, could accurately reveal the relationship of plant-covered degree and retrieved land surface temperature. And then this paper demonstrates that the rise of land surface temperature in Chongqing is mainly due to urban land development. In the period 1988-2000, the land-cover of the study area changed significantly, in particular, the urban construction land area increased significantly. The land-cover change led to spatial changes of the LST distribution. Furthermore, urban development in Chongqing raised land surface radiant temperature. We studied four types of cultivated land surface temperatures related to mountains, hills, fattened land (intermontane basins) and steep slopes. The results show that the land-cover changes in the mountainous city caused the changes of NDVI, and the change of NDVI caused the land surface temperature. As NDVI decreased by 10%, the land surface temperature rose by 0.49K. Finally the essay concludes that the increase of accuracy defined by land surface emissivity could increase the accuracy of retrieved land surface temperature. The increase of categorical accuracy in land use types could demonstrate how land use change influences land surface temperature in the mountainous city, which should be emphasized in further researches.

Decomposition of litter plays an important role in carbon turnover and nutrients cycling in wetland ecosystem. Tide is the key feature for the estuarine tidal wetland. The wetlands of the Minjiang River estuary region are one of the major estuarine tidal wetlands in the southeast of China, and the Shanyutan is the largest wetland in the Minjiang River estuary region. Litter decomposition, nutrient dynamics and influencing factors of two native species (Phragmites australis and Cyperus malaccensis) and one exotic invasive species (Phragmites australis) were studied using mesh bag method in two sites under different tidal water submergence conditions. One site was near the tide ditch, and the other is far from the tide ditch in central Shanyutan wetland. The results indicated that: (1) Frequent tidal water submergence had no significant effects on the litter decomposition rates of three plants. (2) Frequent tidal water submergence accelerated the N and P loss of Cyperus malaccensis and Spartina alterniflora, however, it had little effect on Phragmites australis. (3) The order of litter decomposition rate was Cyperus malaccensis＞Spartina alterniflora＞Phragmites australis, with rates of 0.003166-0.005280 d 1, and the time of 95% dry mass of litter loss ranged from 1.56 to 2.61a. (4) C concentrations had only a little change, and the major pathway of C release was mineralization during the 280 days; there was an upward trend in N concentrations, at the end of the experiment, N content had a net loss and the major pathway of loss was mineralization; there was an obvious fluctuating downward trend in P concentrations at the end of the experiment, P content had also a net loss and leaching losses were responsible for much of P loss. (5) Litter quality was a main factor influencing the litter decomposition rates of the three plants. Litter decomposition rate of Cyperus malaccensis with the lowest C/P was the greatest.

Forest resource is the largest and most important natural resource in Lao PDR. Based on the forest cover and land use data of Lao PDR in years of 1982, 1992 and 2002, the concept of Lorenz curve and Gini coefficients (GC) are introduced to make an qualitative and quantitative analysis of the forest cover change in Lao PDR. Moreover, its driving forces and main influencing factors are analyzed. The result indicated that the area proportion and the distributed structure of each type of forest land have changed relatively. In terms of the area, Current Forest (CF) and Other Wooded Areas (OW) decreased most remarkedly, by 3% and 5.3% respectively. While Potential Forest (PF) and Permanent Agriculture (PA) increased by 5.4% and 2.1% separately. Comparatively, the area of Other Non-Forest Areas (NF) did not change much. As for the feature of the forest distribution, Current Forest (CF), and Other Wooded Areas (OW) show discrete, while Potential Forest (PF), Permanent Agriculture (PA) and Other Non-Forest Areas (NF) tend to be balanced. Forest cover of Lao PDR has changed due to its history and level of economic and social development, which is the co-driven result of development of society and economy, population increasing and so on. And the main driving forces are the widespread poverty of Lao PDR and the slash-and-burn cultivation, which has a devastating influence on society and environment.

Based on multi-temporal Landsat TM/ETM+ Images and GIS, we extracted information of urban construction land use in Hangzhou with supervised classification and overlay technology. The characteristics of the changes of urban construction land use were analyzed with the aid of spatial overlay technique in order to obtain urban spatial expansion information. Then, the intensity index, direction of urban expansion as well as the situation of the land occupied by urban expansion are analyzed quantitatively, and the socioeconomic driving forces factor and their effect mechanism during the last 15 years (1991 to 2008) were explained. The result revealed that the rate of urban expansion in Hangzhou city was very quick and the urban land area in 2008 was over twice more than that in 1991. The arable land around the urban area, water body and woodland, the main land use types due to the urban expansion, accounted for 66.98%, 17.71% and 15.31% respectively. The study also showed that the main human driving forces causing urban expansion in Hangzhou in the past 15 years included the following aspects: the high-speed economic development, the rapid growth of population, the increase of investment at home and abroad, the quick renewal in the old city and the development of suburban real estate, the group development of Higher Education and Science and Technology Development Zone, and the development of urban transport facilities such as the four bridges across the Qiantang River and the two ringed highways around the Hangzhou city. The local government ought to rethink profoundly the advantages and disadvantages of urban expansion in the different stages, and to do in-depth analyses of the future urban expansion mechanism to push forward sustainable urban expansion.

Two concepts of ecological footprint component index (EFCI) and bicapacity component index (BCCI) are proposed based on ecological footprint (EF) and entropy methods in this paper. EFCI and BCCI in China 1949-2006 are calculated, and predicted with autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. The results show that: 1) Over the last 57 years, EFCI in China has constantly increased with fluctuation, being 0.0081 in 1949 and 0.0285 in 2006, respectively. BCCI has slowly decreased with fluctuation, but increased in some years. For example, BCCI is 0.0264 in 1949, 0.0147 in 1983, 0.0169 in 1984, and 0.0132 in 2006, respectively. 2) Many tests (including ADF and PP unit root test of residues, fitting forecast and real series) show that ARIMA (2, 1, 1) model of EFCI, ARIMA (1, 1, 1) model of BCCI are their optimum prediction models, respectively. The forecasts calculated from 2007 to 2010 indicate that EFCI will increase to 0.0293 in 2007 and then fall to 0.0280 in 2010, while BCCI will decrease to 0.0129 in 2010. The relationship between EFCI and each of the selected ten influencing factors with prominent correlative coefficients is analyzed. A model between EFCI and the ten factors is constructed based on partial least-squares regression (PLSR) method in order to explore their sequence of correlation influence. The results show that the positive correlation sequence is urban population, primary industry output value, total population, total value of imports and exports, and tertiary industry output value. The negative correlation sequence is government consumption expenditure, rural population, resident consumption expenditure, per capita GDP, and secondary industry output value. The modeling of the abundance indices is a useful tool for a better understanding of the dynamics of EF component, and enables short-term quantitative recommendations of ecosystem management. The effective approaches which could boost up sustainable development in China may be adjusting population structure, boosting primary industry and international trade development, holding down resident consumption and government consumption expenditures, and moderate growth of GDP including secondary industry.

Biomass on the grassland is the main indicator of balance of livestock carrying capacity, and is also an important reference for the sustainable development and management of the grassland. Based on the progress in this field at home and abroad, this paper aims to conduct research on the grassland monitoring under the guidance of the Ministry of Agriculture of China. Supported by high-precision data sources of grassland, we studied the calculation of grass production and balance of livestock carrying capacity in the rangeland region of Northeast China. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The index model is the most appropriate one for the calculation of grass production. The accuracy of the yield estimation model is more than 80%. (2) In 2007, the output of fresh grass amounts to 169,160 thousand tons, equivalent to 50,940 thousand tons of hay, and fresh weight per unit area is 4562 kg/ha, equaling 1374 kg/ha of dry weight; (3) In 2007, pastoral areas and semi-pastoral areas are generally overgrazed. The balance rate of livestock carrying capacity of the pastoral areas is 32.23%, and that of the semi-pastoral areas is 48.51%. There are three counties stocking deficiently, 11 counties stocking appropriately, 31 countries stocking avergrazed, 11 counties stocking seriously overgrazed, and one county stocking extremely overgrazed. Among the 57 countries, more than 43 countries are stocking overgrazed or even extremely overgrazed, accounting for 75% of the total. This article can provide a basis for the scientific plan of the development of animal husbandry in the rangeland region of Northeast China.

In order to resolve the problems of semantics integration of multi-source spatial data, based on the latest study results in spatial data and geo-ontology integrating fields, a method of spatial data integrating based on geo-ontologies was presented and a prototype system based on the method was implemented in this paper. The method was based on the hybrid ontology integration architecture and the strategy of local geo-ontologies integrating into standard geo-ontology was used, and all geo-ontologies involved in this method were described by a component called "Common Intension Property Panel" (CIPP) which included the intension properties of all geographic concepts in the concerned fields, and the CIPP was often given by the community specialists. Based on the CIPP, semantic relationships between geographic concepts in different geo-ontologies can be calculated and established, which can complete the integration of different geo-ontologies. Above all, the purpose and the key step of this method was to integrate spatial data which were from different information communities and had different goe-ontologies, and spatial data integration was completed based on semantic relationships between geographic concepts in different geo-ontologies and relationships between geographic concepts and feature classes, and included steps of SQL statements generating, feature sets selecting, geometry shape of selected features copying, and semantic granularity fining, spatial objects merging and splitting, and so on. Through these steps, spatial data having different geo-ontologies and their semantics were integrated successfully into the standard geodatabase, in which all feature classes have the same geo-ontology and semantics. Based on this method, a prototype system of spatial data integration based on geo-ontologies was designed and developed, which can provide users some convenient tools to build formal geo-ontologies automatically and integrate geo-ontologies and spatial datasets semi-automatically after integrating rules selected by users. The result of an example study of land use datasets integration using the prototype system showed that the spatial data integrating method based on geo-ontologies presented in this paper could integrate spatial datasets and their semantics efficiently.

It is valuable for the harmony between human society and ecosystem to analyze the responses to eco-immigration and their reasons from the viewpoint of herd family according to herd family interviewed data, RS images, physical geographical and socioeconomic data. In this research, we selected Maduo County in the source region of the Yellow River as a case study. Based on rangeland degradation data for the period 1977-2004, meteorological data in the past 28 years, grazing pressure index data between 1988-2004, interviewed data of 144 herd families in two recent years, we obtain the following results: (1) The rangeland degraded extensively over the 28 years, the percentage of degraded area in all rangeland was over 43% and degradation of pasture was more serious in cold season than in warm one. The degradation ratio showed an increasing trend. (2) The degradation was caused by the integration of a dry-warm trend of climate change and rangeland overgrazing. (3) The immigrant families are mainly composed of the aged, or families without livestock, with 48.5% and 68.3% of the immigrant ones respectively, due to the profit difference between the eco-immigration and socioeconomic situations of herd families. The herd families with middle and young ages and more livestock are unwilling to move out of this region. Furthermore, the percentage of immigrant households that share one rangeland certificate with parents or brothers in the immigrant family is 54.5%. Therefore, it is hard to decrease overgrazing through eco-immigration in terms of the eco-immigrants' family structure.

It is important to achieve the qualitative and quantitative information of land use/cover in a county (or county-level city) of China with higher precision, which is helpful to enhance eco-environment protection and sustainable development of rural economy. Presently, remote sensing images of the medium and high resolution are mostly used to monitor the changes of land use/cover in a county. To make better use of remote sensing technology in monitoring land use change, it is necessary to improve the automatization level of information extraction from the remote sensing images and meet the precision of change monitoring synchronically. Hierarchical information extraction is an effective method for information extraction of land use/cover in a county from the remote sensing images. Based on the information of each ground object, the image is decomposed layer upon layer according to certain principles. The method functions well in the classification precision over "the same object with different spectra" and "different objects with the same spectrum" because the environment of information extraction is comparatively pure. Aided by the TM image in Xinyi city of Jiangsu province obtained in the winter of 2003, the hierarchical method is used to extract the information of land use/cover. On the basis of such processes of original images as geometric correction, image registration, image clip and image enhancement, first of all, the image was classified using the maximum likelihood classifier and the unused land with the least inaccurate probability was extracted from the classification result observed. Then, the scope of the water was extracted using spectral analysis method, the urban construction land and village by combining supervised classification method with visual interpretation method, and the woodland using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Finally, the cropland was extracted. By comparing extracted result of land use/cover with the land use map in the same period, the area accuracy of the land use classification for the entire Xinyi city reaches 96.17%, and the space accuracy reaches 88.38%. These indicate that the hierarchical method applied to information extraction of remote sensing images is feasible.

There are many problems in conceptual modeling process, such as difficulty of modeling conception sharing, complexity of modeling method, difficulty in cooperative modeling by experts from different domains, and so on. In order to solve those problems, we study the metadata and semantic of geographic conceptual scenarios, geographic conceptual entities and relationships among them. In this paper, geographic conceptual entities are represented by the configurable icons, the relationships among entities are represented while geographic conceptual scenario is organized, and finally the geographic conceptual scenario is built. As the manifestation of geographic conceptual entities and relationships among them, those icons contain the meaning of geo-model, geo-semantics, geo-data, and the match rules between models and data. According to the geo-problem domain, geo-study area, and temporal and spatial scale, geographic icons are chosen to represent geographic conceptual entities and relationships, and match rules are used to build geographic conceptual scenarios. During this process, spatial data specification and geographic model metadata specification are designed as its induction and matching rules, and conception/relationship constrain engine, graphics/conception constrain engine and model/data match engine are designed to guide the model match and data match process. In this paper, the geographic conceptual model of hydrological cycle at regional scale is applied to validate the geographic conceptual modeling environment. By the experiments, it is shown that our research is a new attempt for geographic conceptual modeling, and that this environment is flexible for geographic conceptual scenario building, modeling conception sharing, and modeling result reusing. As a result, it provides a convenient and visualized modeling method for experts in multi-domain of geographic fields.

Resource-based cities are of great concern in China. Little literature has been published on the understanding of their functions. This paper attempts to define five functional categories of these cities, most of which are dependent on mining to varying degrees. City function features are composed of four elements, i.e. , to superior function, specialised sectors of the city, functional intensity and functional scale. The first element is defined as a ratio of the number of mining employees to that of industrial employees. The other three are defined after Zhou Yixing and Sun Zexing (1997). The category of samples are modified after Liu Yungang (2006). Five functional types of cities are identified, i.e., super specialized mining cities, multiplex mining cities, super specialized industrial cities, multiplex industrial cities and trade cities. These represent progressive functional diversification of the resource-based city. Although cities have shown a trend towards diversification, most remain within their original categories, and functional transition appears to be a long-term process.

Taking transportation infrastructure level and transportation smooth degree to other regions into consideration, choosing 8 indexes, including road density, railway density and distance from the road, etc. , this paper established the transportation ability index model firstly. By using the model and geographic information system technology, this paper then systematically evaluated the transportation ability of China in 2005 at county and province levels, so as to bring some scientific references and policy-making supports to the transportation planning and population development planning of China. The results showed that: ⑴ at county level, the transportation ability of counties within China in 2005 was significantly different, demonstrating a spindle shape in general. The spatial distribution presented a tendency downward gradually from coastal regions to inland regions. Compared with poverty-stricken areas, the transportation ability of urban areas were much better, and the transportation density difference was notable. ⑵ at province level, the transportation ability of provinces in 2005 was also significantly different, presenting a distribution of "high in east, low in west" in general; Transportation density difference was also notable between different levels, and the transportation supporting ability of western provinces was inferior. Thus, our government should make great efforts to improve the transportation condition in western China, so as to narrow the economic development gap to realize the coordinated development within different regions of China.

Based on the theoretical research results about the relationships of the Port-hinterland at home and abroad, this paper analyzes the mean value correlation degree of Lianyungang Port-Huaihai Economic Region by grey correlation analysis method during the period 1990~2005 as well as the driving factors affecting the correlation degree of Lianyungang Port-Huaihai Economic Region. Some conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) The correlation degree of Lianyungang Port-Lianyungang City is remarkable as a whole, but the stage characteristics are obvious. (2) The correlation discrepency degree has regional characteristics between Lianyungang Port and northern Jiangsu, southern Shandong, northern Anhui and eastern Henan of Huaihai Economic Region, that is to say, northern Anhui and eastern Henan maintains stable, southern Shandong presents a descending trend, northern Jiangsu rises slowly. (3) The process of economic integration of Lianyungang Port-Huaihai Economic Region has been accelerated on the basis that the correlation development trend is strong on the whole, but the weakening tendency is obvious. (4) These driving factors affecting the interactive level of Lianyungang Port-Huaihai Economic Region are natural conditions and locations, infrastructure and transportation, economic level and policies, and the integration degree of hinterland.

Urban is the engine of economic growth. With the rapid development of urbanization process across the world, the dynamics of city-size distribution has been a hot topic. The heat debates centering on the optimal city size have exerted impacts on the urbanization courses in China. From several different perspectives, this paper investigates the spatio-temporal dynamics of city-size distribution in the Yangtze River Delta during the period 1984-2002. Empirical results show that the evolution of urban system in the Yangtze River Delta has undergone primate, rank-size and primate distribution patterns. The primacy of Shanghai was the lowest in 2002, but the whole pattern of urban system in the Yangtze River Delta shifted to primate distribution pattern again, which to a large extent reflects the corresponding adjustments of urbanization guidelines in China in the 21^st century. In term of the relationship between city size and city growth, the whole urban system takes the form of convergent growth, which means the initial smaller cities grow faster than larger cities. However, the difference in city growth is not significant. From the long-term tendency, the number of cities over two times of the average size will greatly decrease to about 6%, and middle-sized cities will dominate the urban systems in the future. Generally speaking, it will take about 16 years for a non-city area to develop into a city with half of the average size. On the whole, the change of city-size distribution in the Yangtze River Delta is becoming much even, but the tendency of spatial polarization and concentration is not the case. The spatial agglomeration in southern Jiangsu and Hangzhou Bay rim continues to be strengthened with the deepening of the policy opening to the outside world, which contrasts with the relative quiescence in northern Jiangsu and southern Zhejiang.

Much research has been done on the effect of geographical elements on economic difference throughout the world. Furthermore, based on the theory of two nature of metropolitan location proposed by Krugman, as well as the theory of human-land relationship and comparative advantages, this paper presents three geographical elements that affect economic differences. The first geographical element includes natural environment, i.e. , elevation, slope, undulating topography, human climate index, water resource index, and potential agricultural production; the second consists of traffic and location, which are represented by transport facilitation and economic position respectively; and the third contains human capital and R&D level, respectively represented by years of schooling and the number of patents. Supported by Arcgis 9.0 software, this paper, through modeling, analyzes the impact of various geographical elements on economic difference within the whole country and three major regions. The result shows that the geographical environment plays an increasingly important role in economic development. In addition, it extends the knowledge of Sachs et al. about geographical elements of economic development. At present, China's economy is in transition. Among all geographical elements, the great one affecting economic difference is transport facilities index, reaching 0.374. So more capital should be injected in infrastructure construction in the future.

New economic growth theories stress the role of dynamic externalities in driving economic growth. Three types of dynamic externalities, including MAR externalities, Porter externalities and Jacob externalities, are tested in a variety of empirical studies although results are rather inconclusive. This study proposes that impacts of dynamic externalities on local growth are conditional on economic transition in China. Using data on two digit manufacturing industries at the prefecture level during the period of 2000~2005, this study found a significant nonlinear relationship between dynamic externalities and local industrial growth. Industrial specialization and local competition may help city industry growth but hurt local growth when they exceed a certain level. Diversity helps industry growth but only when it reaches a certain level. This study also found that liberalized, globalized and protected industries are more likely to benefit from dynamic externalities. Industries located in cities with greater authorities and responsibilities are found to grow faster. The results clearly suggest that economic transition has created conditions to allow more significant roles of dynamic externalities in stimulating city industry growth in China.

Urban development has its own spatial and temporal process. It is important to study urban spatial expansion for properly realizing the urbanization process and optimizing the urban distribution as well as increasing economic competitiveness and land use efficiency. Many decision makers and scholars have paid more and more attention to the phenomenon of urban expansion in Western countries since the 1950s and in China since the 1980s. This article aims at the mutual effect of urban expansion and economic competitiveness. Firstly, the article analyzes the inherent correlation between urban expansion and economic competitiveness by agglomeration economy and efficiency of urban land use as well as urban sprawl on the basis of urban geographical theory and new economic geography theory. Secondly, by designing seven indicators, the comprehensive urban expansion index is calculated by drawing lessons from Western countries and the regional disparity of urban expansion in Shandong Province is examined. Thirdly, economic competitiveness and its spatial difference are evaluated by using the statistical data. Fourthly, the inherent correlation between urban expansion and economic competitiveness in Shandong Province are studied by applying method of correlation analysis. Fifthly, some conclusions are drawn: (1) the more developed city has the more compact urban structure and higher population and employment density; the less derdeveloped city has lower population and employment density as well as more unreasonable land use structure. (2) The city needs to expand rapidly when its population and land size are small and the degree of its expansion will have effect on the more economic product and runs more effectively when it reaches the higher urbanization level. This is respectively embodied in the prefecture-level cities and county-level cities in Shandong Province. Finally, some ways to realize urban smart growth in Shandong Province are proposed, which include taking the step of the compact urban development and distribution in varied level cities, optimizing and upgrading of the industrial structure, strengthening industrial cluster in the sprawl of county-level cities and as well as reinforcement of megalopolis construction.

The development of producer services greatly promotes urban synthesized function and strengthens urban international competition. Based on an analysis of industry relevancy and its spatial distribution, this paper conducted an empirical study on the regional comparison of producer services between Beijing and Shanghai. The following conclusions are drawn. Firstly, the growth of producer services speeded up evidently from 1997 to 2002 both in Beijing and Shanghai. Finance, transportation and real estate were the main components of the producer services. Secondly, the output of producer services was mainly consumed by tertiary industries. There was an upward trend of the intermediate demand from 1997 to 2002. The share of tertiary industries on intermediate demand was higher in Beijing, while that of manufacturing industries on intermediate demand was higher in Shanghai. Thirdly, the main consumption by tertiary industries focused on finance, but the structure of intermediate demand was quite different between Beijing and Shanghai. Fourthly, the structure of intermediate demand by different types of manufacturing industries was quite different between Beijing and Shanghai. Finally, the spatial distribution of producer services focused on inner city and suburbs both in Beijing and Shanghai, which also presented a structure of circle attenuation. The structure of spatial distribution by different types of producer services was dissimilar, which could be divided into four types.

This paper uses the social network analysis (SNA) to examine the evolution of networks in traditional manufacturing clusters of undeveloped rural areas, based on the case of steel measuring tape cluster in Nanzhuang village, Yucheng county, Henan province. By contrasting the network structure and characteristics of the spin-off networks in initial stage with that of the emotion networks, advice networks and cooperation networks in present stage in the cluster, it finds the particularities of evolution of networks in traditional manufacturing clusters of undeveloped rural areas, such as the auto-organizational principle of this kind of clusters. In the process of this evolution, the changing of the size, status, capabilities of the enterprises or the community environmental changes may alter the core relations in cluster network. The evolution of networks in traditional manufacturing clusters of undeveloped rural areas can be divided into four stages, that is, the family-extensive family networks, the division-production networks, the local innovation networks and the global supply networks. The different types play different roles in different stages of cluster development. Meanwhile, the intrinsic capabilities and the extrinsic contracts of enterprises also match the network stages respectively.

Post and telecommunications have a significant effect on both economic and social development. This paper analyzes its spatial disparities in Guangdong Province based on the data of business and infrastructure of post and telecommunications in every city of Guangdong. It explores the changing trend of business volume from 1980 to 2006 using the Geordie coefficient, and then chooses 1985, 1995 and 2005 as typical years to analyze the spatial patterns of post and telecommunications development level by factor analysis and cluster analysis in SPSS software. The results are expressed in Arc View GIS. Finally, an index P is constructed to show the rate of development of the cities in Guangdong Province. The conclusions are drawn as follows. Firstly, spatial disparities of business volume of post and telecommunications have increased with a core in the Pearl River Delta. There was a single center in Guangzhou in the 1980s, to which Shenzhen was added in the early 1990s. During the mid-1990s, two sub-centers of Foshan and Dongguan emerged. Thus the pattern became multi-polar. Secondly, increasing development was also imbalanced and went through the transition from "equity-inequity-equity" with the Geordie coefficient ranging from 1.574 in 1985, 1.870 in 1990 and down to 1.115 in 2005. At the same time, the core area was sprawling. Similarly, post and telecommunications developed faster in the cities of the Pearl River Delta than in the surrounding area. There were many cities that were developing faster than the average rate of the Pearl River Delta for the province. Furthermore, by multi-regression analysis, the main factors affecting post and telecommunications development in Guangdong Province are foreign investment, tertiary industry development and urbanization as well as policy making. However, population density, transportation infrastructure and fixed assets investment do not exert significant effects on the post and telecommunications development.

The economic differences of provincial border-regions is a new research field of regional economic discrepancy. Based on comprehensive economic data of county level in Huaihai economic zone during the period of 1996-2005, using a global and local spatial autocorrelation, this paper carries out a preliminary exploration of the spatio-temporal pattern features, evolution trend and driving mechanism in this zone. The results are shown as follows. First, as for the counties similar at development level in Huaihai economic zone, the trend of polarization and congregation is consistent with evolution trend of economic diversity, which indicates that spatial polarization becomes the spatial structure evolution tendency in Huaihai economic zone. Second, during 1996-2003, the regional economic disparities in Huaihai economic zone, as well as inner economic disparities of the four regions, continue to expand with fluctuation, and the inner differences of Subei and Yudong regions are the main contributor to the changes in Huaihai economic zone. Since 2004, economic development disparity in Huaihai economic zone presents a slow expanding tendency, however, the inner economic differences of the four regions are obviously showing a east to west gradual expanding trend. Thirdly, H-H counties obviously concentrates to Lunan, and L-L counties obviously concentrates to Wanbei and Yudong. The result indicates that the economic diversity between the east and the west becomes the main token discrepancy of economy in Huaihai economic zone. Finally, the variation of the economic discrepancy in Huaihai economic zone is driven by many economic factors, such as investment ability, growth rate and industrial structure, as well as the influence of development policies of border-regions and the obstructing effect of provincial borders.

As a new research frontier in the domain of sustainability science and global environment change since the 1990s, 'Vulnerability' provides a valuable research paradigm on the regional sustainable development. Mining cities, which have been and will be an important power to regional and national development of China, are confronted with complex problems on the regional sustainable development. Among these problems, urban employment of mining cities during the process of adjustment of regional and national economic structure since the 1990s has been an important factor which induces social instability. Based on the research paradigm of 'vulnerability analysis', the paper intends to study the urban employment of mining cities in a new way. Taking 14 typical mining cities of Northeast China as examples, first, the paper analyzed the elements and characteristics of employment vulnerability of mining cities in Northeast China, and then based on the data from statistical yearbooks of these regions and other correlated statistics, the influencing factors and disparities of employment vulnerability of mining cities in Northeast China were analyzed by integrating BP neural network with vulnerability index. The paper concludes that urban employment of mining cities in Northeast China is of typical vulnerable characteristics for their high sensitivity and lack of resources and effective ways to cope with the unemployment problem. To indicate the disparities of employment vulnerability of different mining cities, 16 indicators are selected to signify the sensitivity and response capacity of the mining city, and BP neural network and vulnerability index are integrated to rank the employment vulnerability degree of these mining cities. The results show that the correlated relationship between sensitivity and response capacity of these mining cities is not prominent, urban employment of most mining cities is of high sensitivity, the difference among the response capacity of different mining cities to unemployment is obviously larger, which plays a leading role in determining the employment vulnerability degree of different mining cities. In addition, mining cities based on different resources or in different stages of life circle differ greatly in their employment vulnerability, the employment vulnerability of mining cities based on oil resources is relatively low in Northeast China, most mining cities based on coal resources are of higher employment vulnerability compared with other kinds of mining cities, and the employment vulnerability of mining cities in recession stage is much higher than that of mining cities in mature and growing stage.

As a rising metropolitan region, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region has an extremely important strategic position in the regional development pattern of China. During the past several decades, the spatial structure of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region has greatly changed. The research on that can not only help reveal the spatial characteristics of the regional economy, and the trends of their evolution, and determine the regional development stage, but also bear important implications for regional planning. Agglomeration and dispersion of population are the fundamental reasons for the evolution of regional spatial structure. People are the main micro-economic actors, so the authors choose the evolution of the spatial distribution of population as the research focus. This paper analyzes the population growth of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region from 1990 to 2000. By using three classes of variables, this paper studies the influencing factors on the population growth of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region and its disparity. Three main conclusions are as follows: (1) The population grows faster in the southern part of the region than in the northern part. The distribution of population densities shows that the agglomeration of population in the region has become more evident. (2) The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan region has a polycentric spatial structure. There exist two high-density corridors within the region in 1990 (the Beijing-Tianjin corridor, and the Beijing-Baoding-Shijiazhuang corridor), and three (with the Beijing-Tangshan corridor as the newly added one) in 2000. (3) The econometric analysis indicates that the natural conditions and the economic factors have significant impacts on the population growth. The lower elevation values, the faster growth rates of per capita GDP, the faster development of the tertiary industry and the larger market potentials can lead to the faster population growth. The model also shows that although both the natural conditions and the economic factors have important impacts on the population growth, the influences of the latter are much greater.

The coordinated development of urbanization and economic development is a worldwide experience; also is inherent requirements of economic development. China's urbanization has unique pattern and characteristic, which has attracted attention from a large number of multi-disciplinary scholars and relevant government departments at home and abroad. At present, there is a heated dispute on the correlation of China's urbanization level and economic development. This paper highlights the characteristics and pattern of urbanization in the world based on the quadrant map, using data of 118 countries or regions. The results indicate that both the process of urbanization and the effects of GDP on urbanization have shown a downward trend. Next, a further exploration examines China's urbanization process and economic development over time, which indicates that both of urbanization level and the level of economic development belongs to the type of low-level coordination pattern. They are coordinated between the low level of urbanization and economic development, and urbanization is not seriously lagged behind the economic development. The low level of urbanization is closely related with the low level of economic development. Furthermore, a dynamic analysis was done on China's urbanization pattern in the world. Actually, China's urbanization lag appeared in 1985-1995, but it has been narrowed since 1995 as a result of rapid urbanization growth. The complicated realities revealed in this analysis challenge the existing two prevalent views: (1) the urbanization process continues to speed up in the world; (2) China is at very low urbanization level relative to its level of economic development.

Based on the analysis of the experiences and lessons drawn from the first national plans of China and the characteristics of all the previous national plans, as well as the latest one of Japan, this article brought forward the general framework for the national planning of Liaoning Province. Although great achievements have been made in ascertaining the actual situation of the resources and environment, the first national planning failed to be executed in an effective way. The main reasons for this are the lack of pertinence to specific problems and legal basis. Japan has launched the national planning five times altogether, each of which has produced a certain effect, and the preparations for the sixth planning are well under way. Keys to success of Japan's national planning include its priority to core and major issues and the establishment of law and regulation, prompt adjustment according to changes in socioeconomic development and the national and international circumstances, and the emphasis on creating and nurturing land resources. Similarity exists in land environment between China and Japan, and the latest round of national planning of China should advocate the five new's, namely, new concepts, new starting points, new theories and guidance, new methods and approaches, new contents and system, with the successful experiences of Japan as an example to follow. The new national planning of Liaoning should take a brand new perspective on land resources, lay emphasis on rejuvenation and sustainability, stick to the theory of harmonious development between regions as the predominant guideline, attach importance to the combination of the orientation of goals and that of problems, and make full use of 4S technology.

This paper analyzes market potential as an indicator of market accessibility and its effects on regional development in Northeast China, based on district-level data. The results indicate that market potential index (MPI) degrades from the southern part to the northern in Northeast China. The market potential index has a significant leap between the Liaodong Peninsula and other parts of the region. Such a geographic distribution of market potential affected the spatial concentration of manufacturing sectors. Then it contributes to the intra-regional disparity of the economic development in Northeast China. A significant spatial correlation between market potential index and intra-regional economic performance has been observed. Such a spatial correlation verified that market accessibility is one of the determinants which affects intra-regional economic development. Contribution share of market potential from exportation and out-northeast areas occupy a large portion of the total market potential index. This result indicates that Northeast China can benefit from its market accessibility. However, now production growth of most industries in Northeast China is induced by local consumption. Such an inconsistency makes it clear that the future development of Northeast should enhance economic cooperation with out-northeast areas and reinforce industrial competitiveness based on its market accessibility. As recently the economic centers have limited effects on leading regional development, it is important to enhance market attraction power of the economic centers in order to promote the economic development of Northeast China.

Port function is a special function for a city, and it is difficult to find an equilibrium point with other city functions. The balance between port function and city function is very important, so as to ensure the healthy development. Based on the analysis of the relationship between port function and city function, we establish a relation matrix, and think that port function and city function have nine types of syntagmatic relation. Then we introduce Relative Concentration Index to make quantitative analysis on the matrix, which helps us quantitatively analyze the relative position between port function and city function. According to the variation characteristics of RCI, we can get the interdependence degree between ports and cities. By taking 25 national-level port cities as the research objects, we analyze the status and evolution characteristic of the function relations since 1985. Based on this point, the relation between port function and city function under different states is described, and the universal laws of the function relation of port cities are summarized in China. The laws are as follows: (1)The relation between port function and city function is unbalanced. (2)The evolution of the relation between port function and city function is a gradual process. (3)Evolution periods of the relation between port function and city function are different for different port cities. (4)Port cities of different developing scales have their respective equilibrium state. Finally, we put forward the corresponding adjustment direction to the port cities which deviate from normal development track.

The urban fringe does exist impersonally, but it is difficult to identify it precisely. Current methods have some difficulty in combining spatial precision with linkage of spatial units and attribute data. There are two problems in current methods such as the single-factor-method and the multiple-factor-method for identifying the rural-urban fringe spatially. One is the spatial precision, and the other is the poor linkage of spatial units and attributes data. As viewed from industrial activities, this article believes that rural-urban fringe is a result of dual effects of urbanization and sub-urbanization. Based on industrial structure character and industrial distribution, this article has proposed a new single-factor-method for indentifying the urban fringe spatially by dint of some analysis instruments such as non-linear regression, spatial auto correlation and GIS. In addition, this article has made a case study of Beijing City by using the data of 1996 and 2001 National Basic Unit Surveys. The method proposed in this article can be further divided into four steps. First, the method estimates spatial distribution functions of manufacturing and service industry in the study area. Secondly, it draws the datum line of the urban fringe as the keynote and reference line of the fringe area based on industrial structure character. Thirdly, it draws the inside and outside boundaries of the urban fringe by defining the directional spatial auto correlation coefficient to identify the mutational site of industrial distribution. Finally, the method confirms the area of the urban fringe by combining the absolute value of employed population density of manufacture and service industry. The case study of Beijing City shows that the urban fringe of Beijing City is a discontinuity belt of different widths surrounding the Beijing central city. Its average width was 11 km in 1996 and widened to 13 km in 2001. Its area is about 2.5 times larger than that of the central city. The urban fringe of Beijing City moved 2.5 km away from the central area since 1996 to 2001 and every direction reached more and more equilibrium with each other. But the process of ringed expansion would tend to the limit. The sectorial expansion towards south and east will be the main trend of the spatial development of Beijing central city in the future.

Along with the rapid development of socioeconomy and the great improvement of people's standard of living, to provide high quality public service and build a harmonious society is a primary task of the government. Fair space is the key principle of public service. It involves spacial accessibility and spacial attainability, and the former is the foundation and precondition. In this paper, based on the public product layout decision support system, we take an example of the hospitals in Yizheng city, analyze the spacial effect of different distribution of them from the aspect of accessibility, and provide powerful support for optimizing the supply of public product. And moreover, it gives a good sample of quantitative analysis on the public product layout. Through the case study of Yizheng city, we think there are two basic indices to measure the fair space of public product. The first is quantity index. For Yizheng city, we choose the accessibility of half an hour as quantitative target to optimize the public product layout. The second is quality index. We choose accessibility's distributing frequency and cumulative frequency of five minutes' interval as quality standard. In other words, for the same accessibility of half an hour but different distribution, it means different fair space. Therefore, it is a further study on the conception and methodology of fair space.

Urban socio-spatial structure in Western countries has been extensively analyzed since the 1940s. Shevky and Bell (1949) initiated social area analysis in the study of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In China, there have been many studies of the social structure of major cities using the Fifth National Population Census data at the subdistrict (jiedao) level recently. Chinese scholars carried out research in the cities of Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanchang and so on, but the research fruits of urban social areas on China's city are rather limited. This paper uses the factorial ecological analysis and cluster analysis (Ward's method) to explore the social spatial structure of Nanjing in 2000, based on the Fifth National Population Census data at the subdistrict (jiedao) level in Nanjing. The result reveals that major factors under consideration for the components of social structure in Nanjing include floating population, agriculture population, urban residential factor, educational degree and occupational status, as well as urban unemployed population factor. According to the factor scores in 2000, the city of Nanjing can be divided into six types of social areas: 1) higher socio-economic residential areas, located in the north part of the core area in Nanjing; 2) high population density, ordinary salary worker areas, located in the south part of the core area; 3) mixed areas of floating population and ordinary salary worker on city outskirts; 4) crowded floating population areas, located in the urban fringe; 5) outer subur-ban industrial areas; and 6) agricultural areas, located in the periphery area. The concept model of the urban social mosaic exhibits generally a zonal pattern with the synthesis of sector and zonal pattern. The inner ring-belt is the old core composed of the native residents. The middle ring-belt is transitional. The outer ring-belt is composed of the agricultural areas. We consider that the market-oriented reform, Nanjing urban planning, the history of the city development, and its physical geography are the main formation mechanism.