Recently most relative quantitative modeling studies on retail location, based on GIS technology, did not consider factors simultaneously including traffic network, traffic grade, store attraction and competition. Considering shortages mentioned above, this paper attempts to integrate these factors and make quantitative analysis of large scale shops based on accessibility method, Gasa laws and GIS technique. This study, taking the large scale supermarkets in Shanghai central city as an example, applies the concentric buffer method, sector analysis and nearest neighborhood analysis to explore the supermarket spatial features. Trip cost method is used to investigate quantitatively supermarket accessibility, then delimitating market area is simulated based on trip cost analysis and Gasa rules. The result indicates that the whole accessibility of large scale supermarkets in Shanghai central city is good, and the west is better than the east. Trade areas around the outer ring are greater. There is obvious polarization among Gasa shops' trade areas and size. The characteristics mentioned above show that areas with intense competition among supermarkets coexist with areas lack of supermarkets, and there are grade differences between supermarkets' market size and functions.This study can provide references for urban planners in the aspect of retail network arrangement. Managers can quickly understand the shop trade areas and provide consult for choosing shops location. Some tips for selection of retail locations can also be provided. Although our research suggests that we provide more effective methods toward trade area definition, several problems should be solved in future. Further studies should be done on demand, and purchase ability and residential trip habits from consumers shall be taken into consideration.

After World War Ⅱ, the rapid expansion of tourism industry around the world has put forward a new proposition for tourism researchers to study tourism environmental impact. However, review of previous studies indicates that most researchers have committed to the microcosmic analyses. Few investigators are interested in regional comparative studies. In order to reveal the relationship between human and nature involved in tourism activities, this paper has presented a new concept, namely tourism ecological load. Through analysis of the factors concerning tourist pressure, tourist traffic load and invasion of tourist infrastructure, 6 indicators including population density, tourist density, passenger cars per 1000 residents, road net density, tourist bed density, as well as tourism forest load were selected and calculated for establishing a synthetic assessing model. On this basis, the regional disparity of tourism ecological loads in China have been analyzed. The results show that, of the 31 provincial-level administrative districts in China, the tourism ecological loads in coastal areas are generally greater than those in inland areas, and they are generally greater in southeastern part than in northwestern part. At present, the highest tourism ecological loads occur in the central part of eastern coastal China such as municipalities of Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin, as well as provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. It was suggested therefore in this paper that in the above mentioned three municipalities the further tourism exploitation should be properly restricted. The second highest tourism ecological loads take place mainly in Chongqing Municipality and provinces of Guangdong, Shandong, Henan. In these areas the conflict between tourism development and eco-environmental protection has become increasingly prominent, thus only sound environmental management can promote continual prosperity of the tourism industry. The remaining districts show moderate or relatively weak tourism ecological loads. It has been proposed that some preventive measures should be considered in the tourism planning in these regions. In order to guarantee the sustainable tourism development in China, it is important to strengthen the researches on tourism ecological loads of various spatial dimensions, to enhance common consciousness of environmental protection for ordinary people, and to take rational tourism development strategies and environmental protection measures, considering that the further expansion of tourist industry in China will be inevitable.

Spatial information was obtained for different periods and different types of desertified land Duolun County, Inner Mongolia. In this paper, the intrinsic mechanism of mutual conversion of different types of desertified land is revealed by computing relationship between perimeter and area of patches, fractal dimensions and stability indexes etc. on the basis of principles and methods of fractal theory. The results show that the types of desertified land in different periods in Duolun County, Inner Mongolia, have fractal structure, with the average values being 1.3988~1.5635, which are close to random value, thus desertified land are prone to a flowing trend. The desertified land is identified into four types, i.e., weak, median, serious and more seriously desertified land, among them, fractal structure of weak desertification has increased in the form of fluctuation, suggesting that spatial structure of weak desertification has become more and more complex and that the stability has decreased; while the stability of spatial structure of seriously desertified land has increased since 1987, and the stability is relatively high. Analysis of spatial structure of desertification land in this paper can provide the basic theory for the governments to control desertification.

This paper describes the spatial distribution of cancer mortality and explores the spatial hotspot of death cases in the study area, based on the 4 kinds of digestive tract cancer death surveillance data and the population data. According to it, the environment and public surveillance will be held in the next step. With basic layer Voronoi technique, global Moran's Index method and spatial hotspot exploration, the spatial autocorrelation index graph was drawn using automatic multi-dimension exploration, which describes the relationship between the Moran's I and the distance. The accurate parameter was identified under the spatial analysis technique and the distribution character of cancer mortality, which was used to observe the spatial cluster in this county with GIS. It had a remarkable positive autocorrelation in the 4300 meters in space. At the same time, three hotspots were confirmed as high value cluster, including 58 villages and a population of about 30,000 in each cluster. The crude death rate in the hotspots is significantly higher than that in other areas and the average level of the county. The spatial hotspot exploration and analysis, which imported the spatial weight matrix, made up for the deficiency of traditional statistical method in spatial information and spatial correlation. It offered the evidence for making the risk factor of high cancer incidence much clearer. And it is the necessary makeup for the traditional statistics.

Based on the expansive use of input-output analysis, this study uses an index system to establish regional division models and cross-regional industrial linkage models (including gravity model of inter-regional, gravity model of inter-industry, cross-region model of inter-industry linkage). Also, it explores characteristics of China's industrial division and linkage from the perspective of specific industries. The results show that: (1) In the aspects of industrial division: Central, Northwest and Southwest China are regions with more static comparative advantage industries, but Beijing, Tianjin and coastal region are regions having more dynamic comparative advantage industries. Regional gradient has been formed between industries; however, some of the regions have similar industrial structures and inter-provincial similar industries. (2)Industrial linkage in cross-regional areas: ① Characteristics of inter-regional linkage: Intensity of inter-industry linkage region is greatly affected by economic status and distance of space, and spatial distribution. Linkage of industries between coastal and inland areas is weak, and it is loose between eastern and western China. ② Characteristics of inter-industrial linkage: Integrated correlation of industries has a significant change between 1987 and 2002. The inter-related intensity of industries is gradually increasing. It is positively correlated between industries associated intensity and their comprehensive linkage industries. ③ Interaction characteristics of inter-regional industries: Inter-regional industrial linkage has clear space directivity to the neighborhood area, and the same industry in different regions has different intensities of inter-regional linkage and range of industrial linkage. Adjacent regions have strong linkage between industries. There is a close relation between industry-level linkage and the level of regional economic development. Horizontal linkage of cross-regional industry increased, and the mixed pattern of horizontal and vertical linkage in industries is emerging. Primary industry, tertiary industries and manufacturing industry in secondary industry are weak linkage industries, and there is lack of effective convergence among them. The cooperative areas are more concentrated on low-tech energy and raw material-based industries and related downstream industries, so the regional advantage has not been effectively integrated.

China has made great progress in reforestation since the 1990s. More than 686.25×10⁴ hm² of farmland was converted to forestland and pasture during the grain for green project, which led to some positive changes in ecological system, but did not influence national grain supply significantly. However, to preserve the achievement from expansion of farmland under increasing population pressure and economic development, some new institutional measures need to be taken based on a better understanding of regional farmland change. This paper, taking Yan’an region, one of the earliest test-regions for reforestation, as the study area, analyzes its farmland variation between 1978 and 2007 and studies the impact and acting mechanism of policies. Empirical analysis reveals that the reduction in farmland area was a long-term regional trend from 1978 to 2007 instead of a short-term trend dominated by grain for green policy. The reduction process can be identified into six periods according to yearly change rates, and each period of farmland change was affected by different institutional factors such as soil conservation projects, reforms of agriculture tax, subsidies for grain production and grain for green policy. Although there are different driving factors for different periods of farmland change, it is consistent that the changed farmland turned mainly into orchard land, forest land and pasture. The consistent conversion from farmland to orchard land results in the higher comparative benefit of orchard production, and its gradual change can be attributed to the gradual increase of farmers’ capability in investment. Moreover, the impact of an institutional factor on farmland change is determined by to what extent it changes comparative benefits of land use types and farmers’ capability. Comparative benefit and farmers’ capability seem to be the dominative factors in regional farmland change. Therefore, to preserve forest land and pasture which has low comparative benefit from the conversion to farmland, subsidization for reforestation should be continued for a short period. Meanwhile, long-term measures should be taken as soon as possible, which includes more labor transfer and economic benefit upgrading of forest and pasture through ecological tour, green production and guaranty of forest right.

This article,chooses Datong city and seven counties under its jurisdiction in Shanxi province locating at the edge of the Loess Plateau and being eco-geographical sensitive region as research objects according to the long time climate survey data from 1971 to 2000, and based on the agriculture eco-climate amenity degree dynamic model established by GU Heng-yue and AI Nan-shan, and several vegetation experiments, tentatively points out eco-climate amenity degree attribution function; using which, calculates resource index,efficiency index and utilization coefficient by areas, and creatively concludes that temperature and precipitation amenity degree of Datong city and the other seven counties appear "Λ-shaped" tendency, and the peak value occurs in summer; while sunshine amenity degree of them appears "V-shaped" tendency, and the time of resource being abundant is longer, and the low value of resource amenity appears in July of every year. According to fuzzy clustering, the average efficiency index of every region by months, demarcates three types of agriculture eco-climate which are appraised respectively. The results show that the agriculture eco-climate resources of Guangling,Datong and Zuoyun counties are better, the value of C_e is between 1.5 and 2.5, especially the configuration of water and temperature resources is reasonable and the sunshine time is opulent; those of Tianzhen,Lingqiu and Yanggao counties are common, the value of C_e is between 1.0 and 1.5, water and temperature are synchronous, but the sunshine time is shorter than the former; and those of Datong city and Hunyuan county are the poorest, the value of C_e is less than 0.5, especially the sunshine time appears short throughout the year.

The ecological protection and environmental treatment are the main goal of implementing the eco-water transfer project (EWTP) in the lower reaches of the Tarim River. Whether it can improve environment and promote local economic development or not has become a concerned problem. This paper adopts the questionnaire investigation to reflect the social benefits of the eco-water transfer to the lower reaches of the Tarim River. The results show: (1)above 90% of the investigators accept that the EWTP is closely related to themselves, and has a favorable impact on their income, local economy and eco-environment. Thus, 82% of the households hope implementing continually the EWTP. (2) The annual incomes of more than 76% of the households have an increasing trend to some degrees after eco-water transfer.The result indicates that the favorable changes of eco-environment after water transfer have a positive function on the local economic development. (3) In terms of households willingness to pay, above 70% of the households will pay for their labors to support continual water transfer while 15% will pay for money, and 6% will pay for both of them. The result shows that the households' willingness to continual water transfer is obvious, which is relative to the local economic development and people's living standard. (4) Seen from the environmental changes perceived by the households and shepherds, the changing degree of the eco-environmental factors is in the order of the decrease of the times of blowing wind-sand> the favorable growth of the natural vegetation> the increase of the wild animals> the increase of the plants species. The result is also consistent with the monitoring result in field. On all accounts, the EWTP plays forward a positive role in both households and shepherds' living and eco-environment. The social benefits caused by the EWTP are obvious in the lower reaches of the Tarim River.

As a brand-new type of agricultural development, urban agriculture has gained its deserved attention in the world since the 1980s. With the irresistible trend of urbanization and serious urban-rural relationship, it theoretically is expected as a new concept and a route to create multi-function: economic, ecological, and social. In practice, however, the more important, but less discussed question is on how to make urban agriculture powerful and how to make it adaptable to the urban economic system. Empirical experiences tell that enterprise is the most effective form to organize and develop urban agricultural industry under the market economic system. It can organize the productive elements and balance the power and the interest among the stakeholders, such as the government, the farmer and other enterprises, all of which are playing crucial roles in the urban agricultural development. Based on the investigation of Mutual Benefit International Food Group Co. ,Ltd.(MBIF), this paper explores the mechanism and dynamics of the food processing oriented.urban agriculture enterprises.By aid of first-hand information and data, the discussion on the enterprise operation is expanded at three levels, from outside to the core. The outer mechanism discusses how the enterprise obtains the government and community support; the inner mechanism focuses on its production and management; the core mechanism is on the enterprise competitiveness formation by innovation and cultivating control power. Besides, the relationships among the above mechanisms are disclosed. According to the findings, the paper abstracts the development mechanism of food processing oriented urban agriculture enterprises as a"fish model". The paper further provides suggestive instructions on developing urban agriculture enterprises and makes amendatory measures on the existing problems. The authors finally come up with several key issues for the new but very promising industry, to strengthen the future urban agriculture development.

In order to satisfy the traveling demand which grows unceasingly and tends to be diversified and multilevel, the traveling industry chain is extending unceasingly and forming comprehensive tourism which has high interrelations with other industries and has multiple combined earnings. Comprehensive tourism is a kind of mature pattern of the tourism industrial development, which is broader and more comprehensive than the traditional tourism industriy in aspects of connotation. In this paper, the connotation, the characteristic and the industrial system of comprehensive tourism are discussed explicitly, especially from the viewpoint of the exploitation of advantageous resources, the resources substitution and the industrial substitution. Furthermore, the impacts, effects and benefits of comprehensive tourism industry are analyzed from both theoretical and empirical study, based on the case of Gansu Province.The authors emphasized in this paper that tourism can accelerate less-developed areas to win the multiple benefits in regional economy, society and ecology, as well as resources comprehensive utilization. Compared with traditional industry, comprehensive tourism has obvious advantages and prospects in regional development. In terms of theory, the comprehensive tourism industry imposes its impacts on the economy, the society and the ecology which are universal and multilevel, reflecting in three aspects: impacts on national economy, impacts on social development and impacts on environment. In terms of empirical study, on the basis of theoretical study, the data analysis of Gansu Province has been carried out, which showed that comprehensive tourism, as a new high growing industry, had strong economical, social and ecological impacts in the province. The paper concluded that being an environment-friendly industry with multi-benefits and impacts, comprehensive tourism has the functions of driving regional economic development, increasing employment, mitigating ecological pressure, especially in the less-developed areas. Some policy suggestions have been made to the development of comprehensive tourism in a more scientific and effective way.

In recent years the ecological footprint (EF), originally developed by Wackernagel and Rees in the mid-1990s(Wackernagel M and Rees W,1996,1997), has gained much attention in ecological economics. This method tracks natural resources consumption of a nation or a region and translates them into biologically productive land area, which is required to produce the resources and to assimilate the wastes.EF calculation should be based on different scales (globe, nation, region, city or individual) of consumption. And then we can compare the EF and the ecological capacity (EC) of the same scale to determine the ecological status of this scale. Most of the researchers used statistical data and models to calculate EF and EC; however, the calculation is static. Moreover, the theory and methodology of EF and EC prediction have not been developed in literature so far. This paper is one of the few quantitative studies of EF and EC predictions. In the paper, the concept, theory and method of ecological footprint are introduced which can measure the goal of sustainability. On the basis of it, the study brings forward the method of EF and EC prediction.In terms of EF prediction, the method of combining consumption model with population model is adopted while for EC prediction the method of combining geographical cellular automata with GIS is used. The above models and methods are employed to calculate EF and EC in 1995 and 2000 and predict them in 2005 in Hexi Corridor. The result shows that EF is continually increasing, and EC ascended in the anterior five years and will descend in the posterior five years. This calculation and prediction model method is characterized by accuracy, speediness and high operability but the prediction method is of limitation to a certain degree.

Holiday policy is the key factor influencing the travel time of urban residents, China's holiday policy has changed three times, and what's the impact upon world heritage tourism management remains unknown. Currently, the tourism pressure during golden week on world heritage site has arisen lots of arguments about holiday policy, thus what's the right holiday policy for world heritage site becomes a valuable issue. The research, based on case study of world natural heritage Wulingyuan, uses the data between 1986~1988, 1996~1998, 2000~2002 and 2004~2006 within 12 years, which represents four different holiday policy periods separately, and analyzes the variation of tourist flow in the heritage site.The findings are: The centralization of holiday time increases the tourists in world heritage site and leisure time change influences the tourist flow distribution in the year. The centralization trend of holiday time doesn't make any significant influence on the seasonality of the world heritage site. It shows that although the leisure time change influences the tourist flow in world heritage site, because of high quality of resource and various tourist origins, those tourists who are able to choose travel time freely choose the travel time rationally, which influences the seasonality of the world heritage site and balances the influence of holiday policy. The increase of tourists doesn't exert significant influence on the daily variation in the golden week, but the tourist percentage of golden week in the month lowers down, "golden week" becomes "golden month", due to perfection of transportation conditions and tourists' rational choice of travel time. The research shows that centralization of holiday time burdens the world heritage site with overcrowded tourists, hence more on-site management is needed for the heritage, and the holiday policy should be considered seriously.

Five controlling experiments with a 3D diagnostic model including a wave-current coupled model, the third generation wave model SWAN (Simulating WAves Nearshore) and the bottom boundary layer model driven by the monthly discharge and sediment load of the Yellow River, was conducted to individually explore the effects of tidal currents, wind waves, residual circulation and the Bohai Sea circulation. The simulations on the temporal-spatial variation of SPM (Suspended Particular Matter) concentration and sediment flux from the Yellow River to the Bohai Sea were carried out. It could be discerned that the surface sediment concentration in the waters is quite low except for the Yellow River estuary. The sediment from the Yellow River cannot be delivered in long distance under the condition of tidal currents. Almost all the sediment from the Yellow River is deposited out of the river delta under the condition of the wind-driven residual circulation, and part of the inflow sediment is delivered to and deposited in the Bohai Gulf and the Laizhou Bay. The temporal variation of the suspended load concentration in vertical direction indicates that, the bottom shear stress induced by the wind-driven currents cannot reach the critical shear stress for erosion, and then no re-suspension is incurred. On the basis of wind forcing, the sediment from the Yellow River is mainly transported north-northwestward, and some sediment which is first delivered to the Laizhou Bay is continuously moved northward. On the basis of wind-driven and tide-induced residual circulation, the suspended load transport depicts an obvious 3D structure characteristic, and the depth-integrated sediment flux is quite different from the residual circulation in the Bohai Sea. The residual circulation cannot satisfy the transport structure of the suspended particle matters in the Bohai Sea, especially for the suspended load with complicated vertical processes. The phase of the temporal variation of the sediment concentration and transport pattern due to the interaction between waves and currents is consistent with that of the bottom shear stress, which is modulated by the wind variation, all of which is proved to have a ten-day cycle. Around the Yellow River estuary, currents fields contribute a lot to the outward transportation of the sediment. In other waters, the surface waves-induced bottom shear stress due to the wind forcing makes enormous sediment re-suspended locally, which continues to be transported by horizontal currents.

Residential development is a major driving force in the dynamics of urban land use and ecosystems. The type and rate of land development depend on the complex interaction among the stakeholders and their responses to the environmental consequences after a development decision is made. This paper introduces a framework of a coupled human and natural system and uses a multi-agent model to simulate the complex interactions among land stakeholders with respect to the decision making process for local land development. The human system was built on a multi-agent model, with each class of agents representing different types of landowners, homeowners, municipal government, and commercial developers, respectively. The decision making process of each agent class was modeled using an agent-specific multi-attribute utility function. The complex interactions among different classes of agents as well as among the agents of the same class were simulated with a given time lag in sequence. The natural system was built on a cellular automata platform, where the land cover transition rules were governed by a landscape model (MOSAIC) and a patch model (FACET). The environmental quality indices to be used as feedback to the human system were generated from a hydrological model and a habitat model. In each lifecycle of simulation, human decisions on land development were passed to the natural system, which in turn generated environmental indices to be considered by the concerned agents (such as homeowners and the government) in the land-related decision making in the next cycle. Using a fast-urbanizing region in northern Texas as the study area, the model was run to produce simulations with a 25-year time span. Preliminary results demonstrated the ability of the model in simulating real dynamic situations at the qualitative level. It revealed a cyclic trend of interactions among agents, which was also observed in the real situation, with landowners and homeowners being the most active agent types. In addition, this study tested several land management strategies and revealed that considering landowner values when targeting available open space for preservation may lead to more effective growth management strategies than solely purchasing land based on opportunity or ecological factors. Extensive efforts are also required when applying this modeling framework to different socioeconomic and cultural settings, such as China.

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.

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.

In this paper, we use the concept of urban flow to describe the basic economic activity in a city, and use the concept of urban flow intensity to represent the quantitative index of external service capability of a city. We find that there is strong positive correlation between urban flow intensity and centrality index of Chinese central cities and the urban flow intensity can be used to describe the quantity of external service capability of a city effectively. By calculating the urban flow intensities of 286 central cities in Chinese urban system and analyzing their structures, we investigate the spatial distribution of external service capabilities of Chinese central cities and summarize its characteristics. The main findings are as follows: more than 85% of the total external service capability of Chinese central cities centers on the bigger cities with a population of more than 500,000 and more than 65% centers on the mega-cities with a population of more than 1 million; the cities with a population of more than 1 million take the tertiary industry as their main external service sectors, whereas the cities with a population ranging from 500,000 to 1 million have outstanding performance in manufacturing industry; the three great urban agglomerations in the eastern region concentrate on nearly half of the total national urban flow intensity. Shanghai, Beijing-Tianjin and Guangzhou-Shenzhen are the three major external service centers in national scale; the total external service capability of central cities in the eastern region is much higher than the central, western and northeastern regions, so the distribution of external service levels of central cities is greatly uneven among different regions of China.

Based on regional land-use and eco-environment system, an index system and complex matter element model were established. The evaluation model was applied to Harbin City, at the scope of which the assessment of spatial differences of the land-use and eco-environment situation among the county-level regions were conducted. The results indicated that: Firstly it is applicable for the matter element analysis to deal with the evaluation of regional land-use and eco-environment. The result revealed that there were obvious spatial differences among the county-level regions in terms of the land-use and eco-environment coordination situations. Secondly, the single index information based on the matter element model helps to find out the key elements affecting the land-use and eco-environment coordination situations, for example, most county-level regions are confronted with relatively low intensive land-use level and eco-environmental risks such as soil pollution, soil erosion and fragile ecological functions of wetland. The research result coincides with the actual situation. Thirdly, regional sustainable land-use, improvement of eco-environment quality and sustainable regional development of Harbin City depend on formulating different regional measures for land eco-environment control and active guidance to prevention and control of land degradation, and etc.

The world natural resources have been depleted both on quantity and types with the increase of population and economic development in recent decades and the regional ecological security problem is getting more and more serious. Central Asia is not only the neighboring region of China, but also has the similar climate characteristics, physical geographic settings and even the same ecological environmental problems of the arid zone of north easternpart of China. Both countries belong to ecological environment's fragile region in the world. In this paper, four different regions of Central Asia's per capita and regional total ecological footprint, ecological capacity, ecological deficit and ecological footprint pressure index (EFPI) were calculated and analyzed based on the concept and method of ecological footprint. And according to EFPI, the assessment on the ecological security of different regions in Central Asia was made. The analytical results showed that :1) the mean ecological deficit of Kirghizstan from 1992 to 2005 is 0.0900 ha/capita and mean EFPI is 0.9388, on the slightly unsafe ecological status.2) The long period mean ecological deficit and EFPI of Turkmenistan and Kazakstan are 0.3303 ha/capita, 0.8379 and 1.1327 ha/capita , 1.2320 respectively, with both regions on the relatively unsafe ecological status.3)The regional total ecological capacity of Ozbekstan decreased from 28807119 ha in 1992 to 28527138 ha in 2005,and total regional ecological footprint presented an increasing trend; the mean EFPI is 1.7540,on the unsafe ecological status. Based on the calculation results, Kirghizstan's ecological environment is relatively good compared with other regions in Central Asia, followed by Turkmenistan and Kazakstan, and the last one is Ozbekstan. In a word, all these four central Asia nations are in the unsafe ecological environment condition, only the unsafe degrees are different. This study results would have academic value for the comparative analysis of the ecological security or sustainable development assessment of other arid and semi-arid regions in China or in the world.

The paper puts forward an analytical method of part time period to predict and analyze the long time series variation trend, and analyzes and predicts the multi-time scale variation features of natural runoff as well as the future variation trend, based on long time series data measured with instruments about the long time series runoff volume from the headwaters of the Yellow River in the Dari to Maqu section during 1956-2000, through field tests. The study area, located in the northeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and being one of the most sensitive areas to global climate change, is an important water conservation area in the upper Yellow River. With sustainable development of the regional economy the requirement for the exploreation of the river's hydrologic features in the study area is becoming increasingly important. The results indicate that: ①the runoff series has the characteristic of multi-time series changes, with the existence of major periods of 3.2a, 7.5a, 19.5a and 36.5a; ②the variation trend of runoff volume is as follows: it was relatively insufficient in 1969~1975, 1986~2004 , relatively excessive in 1956~1969, 1975~1986, 2004~2017, and will come to a normal period in 2017~2020. The low-flow period appeared since 1986 was supposed to be improved around 2004; ③the annual change of runoff is mainly caused by changes of climate, and has little to do with human activities; and ④the major period has time limitation, that only takes effects in certain periods of time.

Vulnerability of natural ecosystems has become a key issue both in assessing the impact of climate change and in planning the adaptation to climate change. In the paper, we elucidated the concepts of vulnerability, sensibility and threshold, analyzed distributions of the ecolble for global warming will change. The productivity and carbon flux of terrestrial ecosystems are also highly sensitive to climate change. The Net Primary Productivity （NPP） of terrestrial vegetation has been increasing since the 1980s in China. Annual Net Ecosystem Productivity （NEP） varies between 0.32 and 0.25 Gt C a～-1, wit h a mean value of 0.07 Gt C a～-1. Terrestrial ecosystems in China are cur rently a carbon sink, but the carbon uptake rate ogical sensitive zones, vulnerability of natural ecosystems and adaptation to climate and ecosystem changes in China. Numerous studies show that natural ecosystems are high sensitivity to climate change, particularly in the transitional zones （i.e. ecotones）. The first-class sensitive zone in China is the region be tween the east of Inner Mongolia and the southeast of Tibetan Plateau. The climate zones and vegetation zones will produce a northward or westward shift, and the proportion of vegetations is one of the factors responsimay diminish as anticipated with the rapid warming of climate in this century. Seven regions vulnerable to climate change in China account for 20% of the whole country, in which five are in the west of China. The natural hazards are associated with climate change such as drought, fire, pest infestationetc. Excessive use of resources will increase the vulnerability of ecosystems. Applications of some measures are helpful to the adaptation to the climate change and mitigation of the vulnerability. However, there are still high uncertainties in assessing the vulnerability of natural ecosystems, many issues warrant further studies.

The vulnerability assessment in this paper is based on the following points: 1) The vulnerable eco-environment is that with unstable structure,therefore it is sensitive to outside interfere factor sensitive and is easy to develop deterioration under external interference,and the self-restoring force of the eco-environment is worse.2) The type of vulnerability in the research area belongs to that being liable to be degradated caused by erosion,so the authors choose the key element and major indicator which are easy to cause erosion as the assessment indices.3) The vulnerability of ecosystem includes the potential vulnerability before influenced by human activity and the realistic vulnerability after influenced by human activity.This paper chooses altitude,gradient,soil erosion index K,annual rainfall,the proportion of rainfall in rainy period and the drought index of rainless period as an evaluation system of potential ecological vulnerability.In addition to the above factors,two other factors-forest coverage and sloping land index are added to denote the comprehensive effects of regional human-earth relation,economic development and managing level.The revised system indicates the realistic vulnerability. This paper takes Hengyang Basin as a case to study the evaluated potential vulnerability degree of the relevant counties and the realistic vulnerability degree of the same counties respectively in 1984 and 2000.The calculation results show that the potential environmental vulnerability in most parts of Hengyang Basin is at light degree,among them the vulnerable degree of Hengnan County in the central part of the basin is the biggest and Hengyang County comes second.Either in 1984 or 2000,the realistic ecological the vulnerability degree is the biggest in Hengnan County and Qidong County comes next.Comparing the realistic vulnerability degree in 1984 with that in 2000,the latter of all the counties reduces to various degree,among them,Hengyang County reduces the most and the least is Hengnan County.The assessment results show that the eco-logical vulnerability of Hengyang Basin is relatively low before the environment is destroyed by human activity,tending to be absolute degradation and relative restoration.Among all of the counties,the ecosystem of Hengnan County located in the middle part of the Hengyang Basin is most vulnerable,so the degradation here is serious and the restoration is very difficult.

Based on the land use survey maps and data of 1984,1992,1995-2001,and assisted by spatial analysis techniques of GIS and statistic analysis methods,the spatial-temporal process and differentiation of land use change since 1984 in Fengtai district of Beijing were analyzed.Using the data of land use and economic output,the benefit differentiation of economic output between different land use types was calculated in 1999.And according to the data from 1992 to 2001,a correlative model between non-agricultural land use and fixed asset investment,population,secondary and tertiary industries was set up.As a result,this paper found: （1） The total area of agricultural land-use decreased continually,and the decreased area was 8968.76 hm²,with 527.57 hm² of annual average and 3.91% of annual average decreased rate from 1984 to 2001,of which the decreased area of farmland and grassland was much larger.But that of non-agricultural land-use increased speedily with years,and the annual increased area and rate were respectively 569.34 hm² and 4.4% in 1984 to 2001,of which the main increase types were urban & town land and industrial & mining areas. （2） During 1984 to 1999,the spatial different features of land-use change in the district was very remarkable.Along with temporal process,the peak areas of land-use change composed of agricultural land decrease and non-agricultural land increase have been transferred away from center city since 1984.The peak areas of land-use change were between circle-road 2 and 3 in 1984-1992 and between circle-road 3 and 4 in 1992-1999.And predictably,the peak areas will be between circle-road 4 and 5 in the coming 10 years. （3） The comparative analysis of economic output benefits between different land-use types shows that the distinct differences of economic output benefits are pivotal powers of driving land use conversion from agricultural land in nonagricultural land.During 1992 to 2001,the total asset investment,population growth and secondary industrial development are three key factors enlarging non-agricultural land area.

The intensity of sand-drift activities is the important theoretic base for both studying the formation and evolution of aeolian geomorphology and carrying out the sand-damage control measures. Based on statistics and calculations of wind data, this paper studied the intensities of the sand-drift of Taklimakan Desert and drawn some preliminary conclusio ns as follows: ① Except Ruoqiang district, the whole Taklimakan Desert belongs to low-energy environment and the drift potential in most areas is less than 20 0VU. ② With the increase of wind velocity, its frequency decreases gradually, so the most effective sand-moving winds range from 6.1m/s to 10.0m/s, but the most contributors to sand flux concentrate between 9.0 m/s and 11.0 m/s. ③ The intensity of sand-drift activities has great temporal and spatial variation s. As seasons concerned, the sand-drift activity is the strongest during spring and summer and is the weakest in winter, and the autumnlies between them. Ho wever, in the interior of the desert there is a phenomenon called as "wind-temp erature synchronization", that is, the monthly mean temperature and wind velocity get their maximum values during June and July. On the fringe of the desert, the maximum temperature occurs in June and July, while the maximum wind velocity in April and May. According to the calculated results of drift potential and sandflux, the intensity of sand-drift activities is stronger in the central and eastern parts than that of western, southern and southwestern parts. Although this study has got some results, there is still some important work to carry out in future. At first, to give a rational explanation of the temporal and spatial variations of the intensity of sand-drift activities, in combination with the circulation patterns at different elevations. Secondly, to give a det ailed explanation of the "wind-temperature synchronization" phenomenon through scientific experiments. And finally, to integrate the intensity of sand-drift activities with the degree of sand dune activities, so as to provide more effect ive base for sand-damage control measures.

Eco-water demand is a focus of attention in ecological and water science research at present. Under the macroscopical background of implementing the west development strategy, pursuing the ecologi cal project of converting farmland into forest and grassland and realizing regional sustainable development of China, water and land resources distribution, esp ecially the deficiency of water resources has restrained the development and utilization of western region's resources and become an urgent problem awaiting sol ution. Just because of this, the assessment of the scale and intensity of basin ecosystem eco-water demand is of positive and realistic significance. This paper, with western arid climate and hungriness environment as the research object , through analyzing the structure characteristics of different ecosystem's eco-water demand, synthetically estimates the scale of eco-water demand and analyzes the question of equilibrium of supply and demand of eco-water requirement in terms of maintaining the basic amount of ecological base flow of the fundamental eco-environmental function of the drainage channels, keeping basin channels' moisture balance for sediment and salt discharge and maintaining the basin's ecol ogical balance by minimizing water consumed for vegetation evapotranspiration.The research result indicates that the total eco-water demand in the whole basin is about 6.93×10⁹m³/a, accounting for 50.5% of the total amount of the basin's recent available surface water resources, groundwater mining and many years spring average foot-path flow.The development and utilization degree of this basin surface water has already exceeded rational threshold value. The average minimum eco-water demand per ha of vegetation is 413.9 m³/a.Of the eco-water consumed for different types of vegetation, marshland, meadow and forest land separately account for 47.6%, 43.4% and 9.0% of the total water requirement. Marshland and meadow are the principal eco-water consumers. Resear chresults have important reference value to make development and utilization plan of water and land resources, for local government, guarantee the benign cycle of the water resources, realize the sustainable utilization of the water resources, restore and rehabilitate the eco-environment.

The ancient marine eroded landform located at Huangpuzhen town extends more than 200m along the eastern foot of Jianfengshan,a small relic mountain in Zhujiang river delta plain,with well formed marine notches,cliffs and platforms.It is one of the largest ancient marine eroded landforms in Guangdong.However,there is not any marine biological deposits remained in the cliffs or notches for radiocarbon dating to find out the age of the landform.The features of the marine eroded landform,stratum date and ¹⁴C dating from boreholes in the nearby areas,changes of transgression boundaries in Zhujiang estuary during the Holocene era and recording of historical documents have to be used together to identify ancient geographical environment of Huangpuzhen and the time when the landform was formed.The result of this study shows that the area of Huangpuzhen had been a projecting block of red Cretaceous conglomerate by the time of the first transgression which happened in the later Pleistocene.Jianfengshan,the relic mountain of the block,was therefore located as an island in the ancient Zhujing estuarine bay in the most of time of Holocene transgression.When the transgression ended,the shoreline of Zhujiang delta moved out seaward,and the bay was gradually filled into a deltaic plain and the low hill became a relic mountain on the plain.The period for the marine eroded landform at Huangpuzhen to be formed was 6100-1600 aBP,when the low hill was as an island in the Holocene transgression.

The water and nitrogen applications are the two main factors that affect the nitrate leaching on farmland. The field experiment was conducted to analyze the nitrate leaching and yield under different nitrogen and water application rates in summer maize field. The result indicated that there was no distinct yield difference between the higher water treatment (with soil moisture controlled between 70%FC and 100%FC in 0～50cm) and the lower one (between 55%FC and 85%FC), while the nitrogen rate had evident effect on yield with the yield reaching the maximum at about 200 kg N ha^-1,and significant effect on nitrate leaching. Higher water application could accelerate the leaching of nitrate evidently. Under higher water level, the soil nitrate concentration peaks appeared at deep layers more easily than those under lower water level as an indication of nitrogen leaching, meanwhile the nitrate concentrations of soil water at depth of 200 cm were all higher than the national drinking water limit (10 mg NO^-3-N L^-1). Comparatively, under lower water treatment the nitrate leaching depths are all less than those under higher water treatment, but NO^-3-N L^-1 concentrations of soil solution under level of 200 and 300 kg N ha -1at the depth of 200 cm still exceeded the national drinking water limit (10 mg NO^-3-N L^-1). When NO^-3-N in 100cm soil profile came to about 450 kg N ha^-1 the soil NO^-3-N concentration at soil depth of 200cm would rapidly rise to 130 mg L^-1 from 40 mg L^-1 ,at the same time the nitrogen rate just reached 230kg N ha^-1,which mean that the nitrogen rate should be under about 230kg N ha^-1.

In social and environmental sciences,researchers are interested in the analysis and modeling of the spatial data.Unlike ordinary data,the locations of the observation are also concerned as well as the values relating to the objects in spatial data analysis.Real estate has gone through a dramatic growth in China these years,and there were a lot of researches on the development of real estate.But most of the studies just considered the social and economic attributes of the real estate.The location of the real estate was not fully considered.With the development of the Geographical Information Sciences(GISc),the theories and methods about spatial dada analysis developed too.And there are more tools and softwares focused on spatial analysis,which improved the application of the spatial data analysis.In this paper,the way of spatial data analysis,such as point pattern analysis,spatial correlation analysis and spatial interpolation were recommended and used in the study about the real estate in Beijing,the capital of China.By using the quadrat analysis,nearest neighbor analysis and Ripley's K function,the clumped pattern of the real estate in Beijing is found.The Moran's I,which is often used to test the spatial autocorrelation,also suggests that there is significant spatial autocorrelation in the price of the house in Beijing.This means that the research about the price of the house in Beijing must concern about this important characteristic.By use of ordinary kirging,the spatial pattern of the house price in Beijing was simulated,and the results also show that the price has some interesting relationship with the development of the city itself.

The progress and advancement in Soil Information System (SIS) are reviewed in the paper. The status of heavy metal contamination in surface soil showed that it was necessary to develop soil databases of heavy metals as a new special kind of SIS. Such SIS was named Soil Heavy Metals Information System (SHMIS). It was composed of Soil Heavy Metal Database (SHMD) and Soil Heavy Metal Management Information System (SHM MIS). The SHMIS could be used to investigate the concentrations of heavy metals in soils, and its spatial distribution and spatio temporal variation. The paper describes the structures and functions of the database. All kinds of useful data were classified into forty two fields in six tables,which were related with a key field named SID (Soil samples ID).And the data integrity can be checked and controlled with DBMS. These data stored information, e.g., basic geographic attributes around sampling areas,concentrations of heavy metals of soil samples,spatial relationships between sampling areas and geographic conditions, the growth status of sampling areas, etc. A kind of MIS named SHM MIS was developed to manage the information. Under the circumstances of SHM MIS, data could be browsed, edited, analyzed, and queried according to the identification of users. Assisted with this database, the sampling procedure would process step by step, i.e. , followed stage of sampling would be directed with spatial analysis based on the data management of database so that the information of sampling could reveal the spatial distribution of heavy metals in soil with proper density of sampling. Furthermore, this database can support many other researches about heavy metals of soil, such as risk evaluation.

As one of the most important study fields of global change, land use and land cover change has significant impacts on regional and global climate, soil characteristics, and function of terrestrial ecosystem. Most researchers, both in China and abroad, have given much more attentions to the study on land use types and the laws of regional land cover change with synthetic analysis of the factors that influence land use and land cover change. In recent years, some Chinese researchers have carried on studies in this field by stationary inspection methodology, e.g., Professor Fu Buojie and others studied the impacts of land use and land cover change on soil nutrients, regional hydrological condition in loess hilly areas and Zunhua low mountainous areas in Hebei province, Professor Shi Peijun and others studied the impacts of land use and land cover change on natural agricultural disasters in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on the basis of long period investigations and statistical materials. But few researchers studied the impact of land use and land cover change on soil erosion by stationary methodology, and few papers have been published in this area. This paper studied the impacts of land use and land cover change on soil erosion in Fujian mountainous areas on the basis of analysis on long period observational and experimental materials at Jianou Niukenglong Experimental Station and the Provincial Soil and Water Conservation Station, researched soil erosion mechanisms of mountain grassland ecosystem, and different soil erosion modulus under different land use and land cover types. The analytical results indicate that the coefficient of runoff has minus linear relation with grassland coverage, and the modulus of soil erosion has index relation with grassland coverage. This paper also studied the mechanisms and processes of land cover impacting runoff and soil erosion, i.e., land cover influences runoff and soil erosion through the following processes: 1) The grassland cover reduces the forces of rainfall that beats on earth surface, which will impact soil erosion on the surface of the earth, grassland cover has minus index relation with soil erosion modulus, and minus linear relation with coefficient of runoff. 2)The roots of vegetation strengthens the erosion resisting capacity of soils through interluding, twinning and fixing forces on soil particles, and increases the absorbing water capacity of soils . 3) The increase of soil organic material concentration makes the soil particles and structure more and more stable. This paper also points out that there are other mechanisms and processes that need to be further studied, e.g., the relation between land use/land cover and runoff coefficient, the variations of different vegetation's impacts on soil erosion,etc.