This paper discusses the rural households in regional development of rural area from the perspective of reductionism, suggesting the specialties of rural households in China as the unique objective of geographical research. Following this a research framework of geography of rural households has been formulated. This includes location of the rural household, spatial structure of households economic activities and their relations with geographical environment. The original location of a rural household relied heavily on natural environment and especially agricultural resources endorsement. Their relocations aim to achieve higher spatial utilization and to overcome the constraint of physical environment. Due to high population density and limited arable land, the villages are concentrated in central China, so as to form a close circular land use pattern. Although the pattern follows Tunen's theory, the mechanisms are quite different. Rural manufacturing industry has been spread in rural area and targets of migrant working are heavily affected by job opportunities and income levels rather than by spatial distances. Capital input, economic structure and geographical factors affect the income of rural households differently in different levels of development. Furthermore, the impact of capital and structure varies in coordination with their types of geographical factors. In rural development, entrepreneurship of rural households is fundamental for formation and growth of specialized villages, while the villages' resource endorsement, location, economic development history and tradition determine the direction of specialized villages. The relevant research has demonstrated the theoretical significance of geographical research of rural households, and also provides important reference for raising rural household self-developing ability, improving rural settlement and realizing rural sustainable development. Compared to geography of enterprises, geography of rural households shows differences in many aspects. The initial location of an enterprise is mainly determined by economic factors, while an initial location of a rural household is mainly determined by living conditions. The growth of an enterprise results in spatial expansion and division of organizational hierarchy, while the spatial division of a rural household is a temperate behavior, and the transregional structure exists only among the kinship-linked households. Spatial expansion of an enterprise follows contagious, hierarchy and relational channels, while a rural household is not affected by physical distance in migrant working situations. This specialty further enhances the study on geography of rural households in China.

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.

Mangrove is a unique forestry community that exists in the coastal areas of tropics and subtropics. It plays a vital role in some aspects, such as seawater purification, marine calamity reduction, biodiversity maintenance, ecological security protection, and so on. However, due to its lower direct economic values, and its habitats with frequent human activities, mangrove wetland has become ecologically vulnerable in coastal zones. This paper, taking Zhanjiang as an example, conducted investigations and analyses, and pointed out the problems that exist in the protection of mangrove wetland. The reasons are summarized as follows: (1) We are unaware of the strategic importance of mangrove in regional ecological security pattern. (2) Mangrove suffered certain negative impacts from the development of local socio-economy. (3) The resource exploitation of mangrove has lagged behind. Aiming at solving those problems, firstly, this paper focuses on the strategic status of mangrove in two aspects: ocean-land integration, and coastal development; then proposed some suggestions to Zhanjiang: (1) to reconstruct the regional ecological security pattern with mangrove as a kernel; (2) to reconstruct the mangrove ecosystem; (3) to intensify the ecological restoration of mangrove in coastal areas; (4) to promote the development of mangrove eco-tourism.

By using the water chemistry and water quality analysis technology, the water chemistry components and nitrate nitrogen concentrations of surface water bodies and groundwater bodies in the Liangtan River basin in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area were measured to reveal the spatial distribution rules, sources and circulation processes of the water chemistry components and nitrate pollution in the water bodies in the study basin. The results show that: a tendency of becoming severe for the nitrate pollution in the surface water bodies exists in the Liangtan River basin from the headstream to the downstream along the surface water flow paths, and this tendency presents the direct relationship with the direct discharge of waste and polluted water from the breed aquatics, housing and farming industry along the surface water flow paths. A spatial distribution of nitrate nitrogen pollution of groundwater displays a lighter pollution level for the headstream and downstream reaches area in the basin, while a heavier pollution level for the eastern branch in the middle reaches area. There is a close relationship between the spatial distribution of nitrate nitrogen pollution and the factors such as the ammonia nitrogen and organic nitrogen concentrations of the surface water bodies, the recharge and discharge interrelationship between the surface water and groundwater bodies, the existence of thick unsaturated zone and land use condition. The analysis shows that application of livestock manure and widespread use of nitrogen fertilizers are potential sources of nitrate contamination. Generally, the ground water bodies in the agricultural watersheds are polluted by long-term trend of nitrate contamination, which coincides with higher mineralized water due to agricultural-related land use practices. In a basin where severe human activities are dominant, the evolvement tendency of the ground water nitrate may disobey the rule that ground water nitrate concentrations decrease substantially along the groundwater flow paths. As for the Liangtan River basin, along the groundwater flow paths, there is a sharp increase in the groundwater nitrate concentrations from the headwater area to the area between the upper and middle reaches of the river, while a sharp decrease appears in the area between the upper-middle reaches and the middle-lower reaches of the river.

The inbound tourism market in mainland China can be divided into two parts. One is overseas Chinese and compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan; the other is foreigners (including the overseas Chinese who have foreign nationalities). With the strengthening communication across the Taiwan strait, Taiwan tourists will play an increasingly important role in mainland China tourism market. The author analyses the data of tourism market (1998~2008) of different provinces (cities, districts) in mainland China, using the methods of geographic analysis, indexes of seasonal intensity, seasonal variation, geographic concentration, dynamical degree, and GIS to analyse the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of tourists and its evolution. (1) Viewing from time dimension, the change in the number of tourists from Taiwan Island to the mainland during the year is not obvious. The peak seasons are mainly February, April, July, and October, and the off-peak seasons are mainly January, March, June, September, December and other months. The yearly change can be described as a clear "double M" shaped curve, and this "Double M" shaped curve become more and more obvious over time (except the year 2003). The number of tourists from Taiwan to mainland China is increasing in a wave-shape type, and its share number of inbound tourists in mainland China increased from 1.38% in 1988 to 3.37% in 2008. Tourism development is in line with general economic development cycle, and there are Kitchin cycle, Juglar cycle, and Kuznets cycle. (2) Viewing from the spatial distribution, the overall number of tourists from Taiwan was mainly concentrated in the east instead of the middle and west China, covering 60%~70%. Spatial patterns characterized by the "W"-shaped type tended to be the "U"-shaped type. The geographic concentration of tourists from Taiwan is consolidated, and the difference among the provinces is gradually expanding, and the east-oriented trend remains. Provinces with the changing rate in the number of tourists from Taiwan above the national average (20.01%) are mainly in the eastern coastal zone, northeast region, central region and Tibet. Tibet had the maximum changing rate, which is 270.66%. This study is practical and significant in guiding and promoting the tourism development between Taiwan and mainland China, especially in tourism planning, tourism products upgrading tourism marketing and tourism management services, and so on.

The purpose of this paper is to study regional large scale temperature elevation phenomenon in the Pearl River Delta using MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spetroradiometer) land surface temperature data. The result shows that MODIS data can reflect the change of regional land surface thermal environment in the rapid urbanization process. Land surface temperature (LST) relates to land cover types and NDVI. Corresponding temperature of urban land use is the highest, while that of the woodland is the lowest. The higher the NDVI, the lower the LST is. This trend is similar to the air temperature change. In the large-scale continuous urbanization process, non-urban land around urban areas is impacted by urban land use, causing LST rising and then large area of the regional temperature rising, thus regional heat island forms. In this study, there are about 46% of the non-urban areas where regional heat island effect occurs, while the percentage is about 75% for urban areas where RHI effect happens. The space pattern of RHI is highly interrelated with space layout of urban land use. Large cities or city groups are often the center of RHI. The circumferences of these regions have evident RHI phenomena. Towns in the southwest and northeast of the research region are distributed separately, where the RHI phenomena are not so evident. Therefore, regional urban pattern has an important effect on the intensity and spatial form of RHI. The result is useful for urban planning. Obviously, the better pattern for the metropolitan areas is small towns with large area green belts, which can mitigate the RHI effect. The result of the study also indicates that the MODIS data have some merits for monitoring the RHI effect, which includes large area coverage, high resolution, and easy access to the data. However, the shortage for MODIS is that it is likely to be affected by the cloud. Only when the air temperature is derived from the land surface temperature with MODIS data, can the study on urban heat island and regional heat island make a sound progress.

The article puts forward the concept of Developing Maturation of ReBAM (Recreation Belt around Metropolises) on the basis of recent ReBAM researches which have the tendency towards micro-viewpoint and its relationship with regional environment. The concept is used to describe the developing status of ReBAM in the whole or some special regions. The authors design the evaluation system and methods which include 4 standards and 13 sub-factors. The 4 standards are interior structure, region integration, supporting facilities, and information in Internet. Using the evaluation system and methods, we can realize the quantitative evaluation of ReBAM, and based on the result scores the ReBAM will be classified into 4 developing maturation statuses: embryonic stage, developing stage, approaching maturation stage, and maturation stage. The authors select Beijing city as the case, and divide the Beijing ReBAM into 13 circle-shape regions according to a 10-km distance standard from city center to the farthest edge of ReBAM. On this basis, the authors evaluate the developing maturation status of each circle-shape region using the evaluation system and methods. The evaluation result shows that the Developing Maturation of Beijing ReBAM presents evident spatial differentiation characteristic. In general, the farther it is from the city center, the lower degree of Developing Maturation in the area, but there is also evident waving in the general pattern. The 40-100-km circle-shape regions in Beijing ReBAM are the more active regions in developing, and they will become the major regions for developing in the ReBAM, and tend to maturation.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the most ecologically critical region as it is the source area of some large rivers, such as Yangtze, Huanghe, Lancang, and Yarlung Tsangbo rivers. Based on the field investigation and laboratory analysis of soil samples, this paper discussed the soil physical and chemical properties under different types of land use in main river valley areas in eastern Tibet. The results suggested that distinct differences of soil physical properties among soils under various types of land use were found, cropland and bare land had the higher content of sand compared with other types of land uses, while all the soils in this region tended to be desertified in texture; Due to the accumulation of organic matter, the soil in north-facing slopes contained higher nitrogen; While cropland soil contained higher P and K contents after the agricultural practices mainly owing to fertilization; Among all the types of land use, the bare land soil had the lowest nutrient contents, which were significantly lower than woodland soils despite of its relatively high silt content. The soil organic matter content influenced all the other N, P, K nutrients,which was positively correlated with total N, available N total P, available P and available K (R>0.527, N=97). The correlation between soil nutrients and silt content also disclosed the susceptibility of nutrient losses of disturbed soil by tillage, especially on steep hillslopes during rainfall events. Above all, organic matter management, in terms of land use scenario, is crucial for the significant protection of the regional ecology.

There is an ecotone connecting farming region and pasturing region for northern agro-grazing ecotone. Its ecological function consists of conserving water sources, checking the wind and fixing the shifting sand, purifying air and maintaining biodiversity.Grassland is not only one of the important ecosystems, but also a background vegetation. Over the past decades, human activities have caused great land cover changes, such as desertification, grassland degradation, and sandy. Therefore, accurate and timely monitoring grassland is of critical importance for utilizing and administering grassland, developing pasturage and improving ecological environment. Using MODIS remote sensing data for the year 2005 and the ground measured grass yield of the corresponding period, linear regression model,non-linear regression models and BP neural network model were respectively established, to express the regression relationships between ground truth data and vegetation indices in this paper. Some conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) Regional models are better than whole-area general models. It is reasonable for the four grassland areas, and the regional models can better describe grass production.(2) Models based on BP neural network are better than linear regression models and non-linear regression models in fitness accuracy. Its decision coefficient increases by more than 3%, and the highest is 6.92%. Moreover, by precision validating, we find its root mean square error and relative errors are smaller, the models precision increases by more than 2.5%, and the maximum increases 23.22%. It is obvious that models based on BP neural network are most suitable for monitoring grass production of northern agro-grazing ecotone, and it can meet the need of estimating of grass production in northern agro-grazing ecotone.(3) The suitable vegetation indices for monitoring grass production of northern agro-grazing ecotone are NDVI and SAVI.(4) With the accumulation of the temporal scales data, further studies may focus on input data for BP neural network model. For example, input data may adopt soil moisture index and temperature and precipitation, and so on, which may further increase precision of models, and approach actual grass production for monitoring results.

Place names are certain exclusive names of the physical or humanic geographic entities of specific space locations given by people and they are important signs through which the mankind knows the nature and human activities. As the language fossils, geographic names have the instructive functions to different historical periods and different regional social cultures. Located in the southern border area of China, Guangdong province which is affected by Central Plains and overseas culture deeply at the same time has its own peculiar development courses. This article adopts the GIS technology and establishes a Guangdong geographic name Yuan database (GEODATABASE) on the mathematical statistic basis. It also deals with the databases to output the straight side topic maps and other special maps which needs other special maps through ARCGIS GEOPROCESSING,SPACIAL STATISTICS TOOLBOX and ANALYSIS TOOLBOX according to the attribute essential factors as well as carries on dividing and color chromatic aberration processing. Finally, the place name landscapes of Guangdong demonstrate the peculiar geographical environment characteristics of the south of the Five Ridges and historical development characteristics: no harmoniousness in space distribution, varieties of common names and proper names, distributing concentration of neat head(qitou) place-names which have many ethnicities and dialects. The article also carries on geographical zoning on the basis of counting, and divides the geographic names Guangdong province into four big areas according to the types, namely the Hakkas(Kejia), the lucky man(Fulao), the Zhuang language(Zhuangyu) and the Cantonese(Yueyu) geographic name area, and they also respectively displays the core-edge proliferation pattern in space.

The aim of this study is mainly to deal with the impact of human farming activities on the environmental changes especially the soil erosion in the upper reaches of the Fenhe River in recent 600 years.Through field investigation and the analysis of the long-term data of hydrology and landscape, the authors used the historical documentation method to make a quantitative analysis and estimate farming population, farmland and soil erosion development process of the study area. The study indicates that: (1)In recent 600 years, the population of the area increased by 716%, while the farmland merely 432%. So the farmland per capita available decreased by 34.8%. At the same time, per mu (15mu=1ha) average corn yield mu was only about 50kg lower than that in the middle reaches of the Yellow River in the Han Dynasty.The trend of reclamation still exited. (2)Through the analysis of the result of land measurement of Yangqu county in later Qing Dynasty, we thought the data of farmland area were far less from the actual amount, which was possiblely less than the half. (3)From the Qianlong to the Guangxu years of the Qing Dynasty, soil erosion amount increased because of slope farming, which was only 2%~3% of the total eroded amount and cannot play the dominant role. (4)From the Guangxu years of the Qing Dynasty to modern times, much scarp and steep slope land was reclaimed in the Fenhe river basin which led to the soil erosion increased to 30% of the total amount.But the amount of the gully erosion induced by natural force was also 70%. So the farming activity was merely the second factor for the soil erosion.

Decomposition of fine roots plays an important role in carbon turnover and nutrients cycling in forest ecosystems. To date, several methods have been suggested to study the decomposing process of fine roots: (1) litterbag; (2) intact soil core; (3) minirhizotrons and so on. The method of litterbag is commonly used worldwide for researching on the process of decomposition of fine roots, and its primary disadvantage is strongly disturbing in situ conditions which may result in an underestimation of decomposition rate of fine roots. Intact soil core is another technique for researching on the fine roots decomposition. The major disadvantages of this method are laborious in sampling and different greatly among samples. Minirhizotrons is an advanced technique for studying the decomposition of fine roots, but may overestimate the decomposition rate. Therefore, the greatest challenge in study of fine-root decomposition is to design efficient experiments and develop new techniques. In this study, we applied the method of carborundum tube widely used in agriculture ecosystem into forest ecosystem to study the decomposing process of fine roots of C.carlesii, C.lanceolata(chinese fir) and their mixed samples, and compared it with the method of litterbag. The experimental site is located at Wanmulin Natural Reserve(27°03'N, 118°09'E)in Fujian province. This experiment was conducted from May 2002 to May 2004. Through two years’ experiment, the results show that: (1) fine roots of C.carlesii decomposed fastest in its community with the two decomposition methods, and its monthly decomposition rates are 0.0052(0~1 mm)and 0.0080(1~2 mm). In addition, fine roots of C.carlesii and its mixed samples decomposed in C.carlesii community show that the decomposition of 1~2 mm diameter is faster than 0~1 mm diameter; fine roots of chinese fir and its mixed samples decomposed in chinese fir plantation laws contrary. Soil condition and biochemical quality of fine roots are the main factors affecting fine roots decomposition. (2) The results of the two methods can be better fitted by Olso negative exponential equation and the fitted decomposition indicators shows small difference between the two methods. In subtropical forest ecosystems, carborundum tube method can be applied to study fine-root decomposition.

The source regions of the Yangtze River, Yellow River and Lancang River are located in the middle east of the Tibetan Plateau with a total area of about 198496 km². In recent years, the risk of vegetation degradation in the regions has been keeping increasing, which led to many negative effects. This study assessed the trend and temporal-spatial distribution of vegetation index change, which is related with vegetation degradation, in the source regions of the three rivers using multi-temporal NOAA AVHRR NDVI data (8 km spatial resolution) from 1981 to 2001 provided by NASA, DEM data (1 km resolution), roads, residents, rivers data (1 ∶ 250000) and collected field data. Data types converting and reclassifying and zonal statistic analysis are completed in Arcgis 9.0 software. Results show that: ①The decrease, improved and the invariant vegetation index occupied 18.92%, 13.99% and 67.09% of the whole study area respectively. ②The decrease rates of brush, needle-leaf forest, alpine meadow, alpine sparse vegetation and alpine steppes are 22.15%, 20.75%, 18.83%, 18.73% and 18.6% respectively; on the different frozen soil types, the decrease rates differ insignificantly.The vegetation index decrease rates on permafrost and seasonal-frozen ground are 19.78% and 19.41% respectively; the decrease rates are relative to the population density and livelihoods. ③The decrease rates are different in space, which in the source regions of the Yangtze River, Yellow River and Lantcang River are 13.56%, 32.51% and 18.1% respectively. ④The nearer to the roads and water sources is, the higher the decrease rates are; but to the distance buffers of the residents, the decrease rates rise with distance expending, and reach the top when arriving at the 24 km. ⑤The trend of decrease rates is according to the settlements density in different elevation zones with the correlation coefficient of 0.78. ⑥The vegetation decrease is highly related with the activities of human beings in the source regions of the Yangtze River, Yellow River and Lancang River.

Flood disaster is still a threat in the lower Yellow River due to unusual precipitation caused by the deposit of channel, the hidden danger in the embankment and unfavorable riverbed in the lower Yellow River. Study on the embankment-break flood characteristics of the lower Yellow River can afford the scientific basis for flood disaster mitigation. According to the characteristics of the embankment-break flood in the Yellow River,flood routing characteristics of embankment-break is simulated at four different locations of the lower Yellow River by inputting terrain data, typical historical flood data and land use data of the study area to two-dimensional unsteady-state flow model. Simulated results show that: Firstly, routing flood encroach the rivers on the way and enter into the rivers after reaching the lower reaches;secondly, in the same river reach, flood submerged area of north band is bigger than the corresponding location of south bank towards the same historical flood;thirdly, it is different in flood submerged degree of different regions due to the different spatial locations of floodplain; and fourthly, the area of mainstream where flood depth is high and flood velocity is quick is relatively small, but the area of non-mainstream where flood depth is low and flood velocity is slow is relatively big. Flood disaster risk in the protected zone of the embankment will be analyzed by using the results of the simulated flood in this paper, on the basis of the simulated results, the spatial pattern of the flood disaster risk in the protected zone will be analyzed in the lower Yellow River in the future. The attempt on the simulated methods and technique of the flood routing can serve as a reference to the researches in other similar regions. In this study, some factors such as the sediment, infiltration and evaporation weren't considered, which is a limitation to research the hydraulic characteristic of the levee-breaking flood in the Yellow River. In the succeeding simulation, the sediment should be considered to research the long-term influence on the local environment of preventing flood due to the deposit of the sediment in the riverway. At the same time the surface features should the whole way be close to the reality.

Wavelet analysis, known as "Mathematical Microscope", has become a new mathematical approach in recent 20 years, being applied widely in many fields. Especially, with the significant advantage of characteristic of variable scale, it is suitable and effective enough to demonstrate the multi-scale traits of climate change, such as temporal series of temperature and precipitation. Accordingly, in this paper, Mexican Hat Wavelet is used to analyze the multi-scale characteristics of the climate change in Dari County, based on the temperature and precipitation of instrument data for 588 months during 1956~2004. Consequently, the periods and turning points of temperature and precipitation series in different time-scale are revealed, and the primary periods determined are 3 years or 4 years in a small scale and 16 years in a large scale. Meanwhile, the wavelet coefficients patterns exhibit a probable increasing trend in temperature and humidity in the following years. In the past 50 years, the temperature climbed to peak values for 3 times with the maximum at the beginning of the 21st century, and the precipitation is 2 times with the maximum in the early years of the 1980s. In general, the tendency of temperature and precipitation in Dari County is approximately consistent with that on the Tibetan Plateau and the source regions of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers except for some local lags in several periods. Changes in underdecadal scales are nested into complicated background in larger scales. The turning points varied along with the time-scale. According to the above analysis, we can conclude that there is a significant advantage of wavelet analysis in revealing the multi-scale characteristics, the primary period, and forecasting the trend of climate change in the following years.

Spatial distributions of total nitrogen(TN) in soils are difficult to estimate because of their inherent spatial variabilities and lack of sufficient sample data.Soil-landscape model,based on parent material and topographic factors,was generated through applying GIS spatial analysis technique and a digital elevation model (DEM) in large areas.Based on 151 sample data, spatial distribution characteristic of TN was studied.Correlations between TN and topographic factors were analyzed and a regression model was established to predict TN content through linear regression analysis.The results for surface soils (0~20cm) showed that the average content of TN was 1.06g/kg in topsoil,with TN content between 0.5g/kg and 1.0 g/kg occupying the largest area (1580km²,49.3% of the total area) and that over 2.0g/kg the smallest(127km²,3.9% of the total area)in spatial distribution. Also,soils derived from sandstone and shale had the lowest average TN content (0.88 g/kg soil),soils developed on phyllite showed the highest average TN content (1.35 g/kg soil).Aspect among topographic variables had an important effect on TN content.The correlations of TN content with parent rocks,elevation and aspect were positively significant (P<0.05),slope exposure had the highest correlation with TN content (r=0.62).The correlation of TN content with slope was insignificant (r=-0.03).In the soils of the whole study area,the step regression analysis of the TN content, topographic factors and parent rocks showed that elevation,slope exposure and parent rocks were the best factors for predicting the TN content in topsoil (P<0.05).The multiple linear regression model is: TN=0.095+0.005×parent rocks+0.001×elevation+0.115×slope exposure classification n=113 R²= 0.637 The spatial distribution of TN content could be predicted by using a multiple linear regression model and DEM ( with a 30m×30m grid).

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.

On the basis of introducing the connotation of the reference land price(RLP)and by adopting the comparative and analysis method,this paper analyzes the characteristics of RLP of the town in five counties of Hohhot from the aspects of nature, society and economy. The regional distribution of RLP and the relation between RLP of the towns and its influencing factors is expatiated. The conclusion is that no matter what level and what type of land, the direction is that the town RLP of Tumd Left Banner, Togtoh County and Horinger County is higher than that in Wuchuan County and Qingshuihe County. If the land level is high, the RLP is high, which shows their positive correlative connection of each town and reflects the difference in land locational condition and land use benefit. The RLP of land for business, housing and industrial purposes presents a decreasing trend, with an average ratio of 4.22∶1.50∶1. The distribution of RLP of business forms a higher price area because of facing primary road. The RLP for housing purpose becomes lower with distance accretion from town center. The RLP for industrial purpose is lower than that of land for business and housing, because benefit from industrial land use is much lower than the latter two and its locational request is relatively low. Town layout factor has important function in the evaluation of RLP of the towns. The RLP of the towns is closely related with the localional factors.Of the influencing factors of the town RLP, the natural condition mostly includes landform, climate, hydrology, the social condition mostly includes population status, perfect degree of public infrastructure and the economic condition mostly includes per capita GDP data, financial earning, per capita disposable income, traffic condition, etc. They collectively affect the RLP from different aspects. They show an identical changing trend with land price. The influencing factors should be improved to reduce difference of the RLP and promote development of regional economy. The research will play a stimulative role to develop land market of Hohhot in the future, guide reasonable, intensive and efficient exploitation of the land, and bring into play the land potential value, and afford gist and method for the grading of the urban land in Inner Mongolia. It will accelerate management of land market.

For detecting the applicability of classical urban population density models on the microcosmiclevel, this paper calculates grid-based population landscape density of Shenyang city, analyzes it's spiatial auto-correlation and variability using theories and methods of geostatiatics. It is found out that all semivariogram functions of populatin density fit with spherical model with negget in ten kinds of grains from 100m to 1000m, indicating that population distribution presents structural characteristics in the spatial extension of Shenyang city. But because of different grains, the auto-correlation scales, neggets, and stills, the rate of negget and still is different. This means that spatial auto-correlation of population distribution depended on the scale intensively, resulting in scale effects.By calculating semivariogram functions curves of different directions, it can be found that population density takes on a classical zonal anisotropy, which means that there were different structural characteristics in different directions for poplation distribution. The analysis of population density auto-crrelation and variability should be taken as bases for researching urban population density distribution. The impacts of grain on population density auto-correlation and anisotropy are objective, so more attention should be paid to choosing feasible scale and identifying structure of population distribution. In the specific time for a certain city, the condition of population distribution is objective, while population density models are abstract expressions of population distribution characteristics, whose parameters are only quantitative indexes of expressing population distribution pattern. So, when researching spatial structure of population distribution in a city, the emphases should be put on how to identify spatial structural characteristics of population distribution, rather than on how to apply classical population density models mechanically.

In this paper, the authors made a fractal analysis on the spatial structure of tourist scenic spots systems of Nanjing, based on a latest tourist resources survey, to explore the characteristics of spatial structure.The authors chose 14 leading tourist scenic spots as samples to analyze random aggregation fractal dimension, grid information fractal dimension and correlation fractal dimension of the spatial structure of tourist scenic spots systems. Through analyzing fractal dimensions and individual fractal dimension coordinate, the author concluded that it is feasible to apply fractal approach to study the spatial structure of tourist scenic spots systems in Nanjing. Analyses of three fractal dimensions all lead to the same conclusion that the tourist scenic spots systems in Nanjing have a fractal spatial structure and show a tendency of self-organization optimization. Hierachical centers and spatial geometrical centers overlap each other and form a mature fractal spatial structure. Pillar attraction dots in each tourist spot are close to each other, providing ideal order and sequence and well-arranged spatial structure, thus leading to an optimized independent operation. To be exact, the random aggregation fractal dimension D=0.6818, less than 1. The spatial structure of the whole tourist spots network shows a strong random aggregation while the density of tourist spots lowers down quickly from the center to its surroundings. Grid information fractal dimension also presents a highly-centered layout of tourist spots in Nanjing. Its value approaches 1, which shows that tourist spots gather along certain directions in spatial arrangement. And the correlation fractal dimension reveals that the spatial structure of tourist spots is of a multi-fractal feature with varied fractal structures, which means that the spatial structure of the system has not reached an ideal self-organization optimization, or retrogradation has occurred to some degrees.The tendency of self-organization optimization has been interrupted by some unexpected factors and the spatial structure needs new adjustments.

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.

This paper analyzes the spatial pattern of financial services industry and the impact of enterprises' financial service consumer behavior on that by using first-hand data obtained through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The city and second-hand data are from socio-economic statistics(1991-2004)and second basic units census(2001). The results are as follows: Firstly, a decentralized spatial pattern of financial services industry in Dongguan has been formed as nearly the same as that of secondary industry, which means that these two industries are linked closely to each other. Secondly, the enterprises invested by Hong Kong's and foreign capital are now searching the opportunity for supplying the financial services in Dongguan, Pearl River Delta (PRD) and the whole country. Except PRD, Hong Kong and other areas are becoming the main sources of financial services for enterprises located in Dongguan. Thirdly, the producing bases of multinational corporations, successful Hong Kong enterprises and town-owned industrial firms facilitate the spread of financial services in the town by making the consumption standard and the financial services normalized. As a result, the decentralized spatial pattern of financial service industry has come into being. Finally, the consumer behavior of different enterprises is dissimilar, so is its spatial effect. Comparatively, the 'park-style’ consumer behavior of financial services of town-owned firms mainly represents the distinction of less out-of-town consumption and its facilitation to the development of financial services is limited to the scale of township. While the multi-spot style' consumer behavior of multinational corporation producing base plays a key role of causing the spatial centralization and decentralization of financial services with different spatial dimensions at the same time.The 'twin-spot style’ consumer behavior of enterprises in Hong Kong, oriented by extensive and in-depth investment and trade between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province, is the micro behavior basis of two processes, which are the industrialization of Pearl River Delta and the transformation of Hong Kong's economy from manufacturing to services industry and the medium for establishing closer financial linkage between Hong Kong and Pearl River Delta.

Professor Zeng Zhaoxuan(1921-2007), a celebrated geographer, geomorphologist and educationalist, initiated and promoted southern-styled methodology' all his life. He attached great importance to field work, read extensively and made great efforts in advancing innovations. He was an erudite scholar and involved himself in a wide spectrum of disciplines and technologies. His efforts were highly contributive in such fields as physical geography, geomorphology, historical geography, anthropological geography, local records, ethnology and folklore. One after another, he ushered in three new fields in geology, namely: 'rock geomorphology', historical geomorphology' and anthropological geography', filling in gaps disciplines. Professor Zeng insisted on practice first' all the time and advocated that the geographic science is a discipline for the sole purpose of application'. He recommended that scientific researches should be integrated with production and serve national economic construction. Besides scientific researches, Professor Zeng devoted his whole life to education and to the cultivation of geographers. He considered that students' academic proficiency and scientific quality was predominated by the textbooks, thus gaving top priority to the teaching material. He proposed that the geomorphological teaching material should be language easy to understand, contents diversified and knowledge up-to-date. These three aspects were not only required by the compiling of geomorphological teaching material, but also a unique idea for higher geomorphological education.

Danxia landform is defined as a kind of landform made up of non-marine red clastic rock and characterized by red walls and red cliffs. Flat top, steep face and gentle piedmont are the most typical geometrical features of it. Northwest is one of the regions in China where Danxia landforms concentrate. The Danxia landforms are mostly distributed in the narrow strip area; around Longshan Mountains, the valleys of the Yellow River and the Huangshui River, Hexi Corridor and the south of the Tianshan Mountains. The main line of the Silk Road is just along these areas.Because of this, the Buddhism was introduced to China and spread along the Silk Road, so there are numerous Buddhism grottoes.In the west of China, almost all of the Buddhism grottoes are located on the Danxia landforms, so it is certain that there exists a relation between the Buddhism was grotto and Danxia landform along the Silk Road. This paper firstly describes the routes, along which Buddhism was introduced into China. According to the difference of the landscape and lithology in northwest, the paper divides the study area into six sub-areas. They are the areas along the north route of the Silk Rout, Hexi Corridor, the valleys of Yellow River and Huangshui River, the areas to the east of Longshan Mountain, Binxian of Shaanxi Province, and Dunhuang area. They are all the areas where Danxia landforms concentrate, excluding Dunhuang area. The paper discusses the Buddhism grottoes located in these areas respectively, comparing the difference of the grottoes' distribution, structure and style. In addition, it discusses the environment of each area. Based on the discussion it analyses the relation between the grottoes and Danxia landforms.It is held that the characteristic of the Danxia landforms is the basis for the grotto excavating.The red color is in favor of the Buddhism grottoes and the lithology make people cave easily. Therefore, the Danxia landforms are the best choice to cave grottoes and almost all the grottoes along the Silk Rout are located in these areas. If there is no Danxia landform there would be no grotto or no stone statue, for example the southern part of the Silk Road and Dunhuang area. Because of difference of rock character and the environment, each grotto has its own structure and style. Of course, the style of the grottoes and the statues on Danxia landforms differ from those on non-Danxia landforms, even they are all on the Danxia landforms they are different, for some kinds of rock are fit to cave subtly, some are fit to shape statues and others only fit to paint fresco. Therefore, the paper thinks the difference of the rock character is the most important factor controlling the grottoes' structure and style.Finally the paper compares the Buddhism grottoes of the Danxia landforms and of other landforms, such as karst landforms. Although the karst landforms are widely used for cutting grottoes and carving status, comparing to Danxia landform it has disadvantage. Based on the above, the paper concludes that the Danxia landforms are the best choice for Buddhism grottoes and the most important natural conditions that control the grottoes distributing structure and style. The grottoes in the Danxia landforms along the Silk Road integrate with nature, history and art perfectly.

The environmental pressures on industrial firms, involving government, public and market etc. , come from exterior of the firms and force the firms to improve their environmental behaviours. The industry in Jiangsu Province along the Yangtze River has been developing rapidly in recent years, and thus inducing many environmental problems. The increasing environmental problems in consequence enhanced the environmental pressures on the industrial firms from exterior. In order to get insight into the structure, degree and changes of environmental presures on the firms so as to adjust and innovate the environmental policies for enhancing industrial greening, this article studies the impacts of all kinds of environmental pressures on industrial firms and their contributions based on dataset of questionaire from concerning firms with LISREL model. This study revealed that in the study region the pressure from government administration is still the main pressure to the industrial firms, and the improvement of the environmental behaviors of industrial firms is also made by the force of government. Although it is becoming more and more important, the pressures from market, especially the pressures from domestic market have not been the main ones to the industrial firms, and the pressures from the public are also very weak. But in the developed countries, the pressures from market and public are the main environmental ones to the industrial firms. Therefore, there is a long way for China to go to adjust the structure of environmental pressures. In the future, necessary measures should be taken to improve the environmental pressures from market and the public while with the pressure from government administration being sustained.

The Yellow River has a vast expanse of drainage basin,but most of which is in arid and semi-arid areas.The influencing factors, such as increasing water demand, flow regulations by reservoirs, water diversion, and climate change impose intense effect on the channel. Based on field data in 1960-1997, the relations of several influencing factors with the wet area at full-bank stage of the wandering reach in the lower Yellow River are discussed, and linear multiple regression functions have been found. The bankfull cross-section area of the lower Yellow River experienced four alternating periods with expansion and shrinkage from 1960 to 1997, i. e.1960-1964 expansion, 1965-1973 shrinkage, 1974-1985 expansion and 1986-1997 shrinkage. The variation was caused by many factors.Among them annual runoff was most important and annual sediment load was minor important. The peak discharge in flood season and annual average sediment concentration have also influence. Moreover, water diversion is an important factor affecting the bankfull wet area.Flow regulation by the reservoirs upstream of Lanzhou station exerted a remarkable influence on bankfull wet area. Different operation modes of the Sanmenxia reservoir had a direct effect on the channel of the lower Yellow River, but the influence became limited after 1973 when the reservoir began the operation mode of "storing clear water and releasing flood".

According to the defintion the concept of the harden ground, the harden ground is classified as road, town block and farmyard. Through analyzing erosion quantity and the capability of rain-water collection of different kinds of harden ground in the east of Gansu Province, by utilizing the formula which could testify the rain-water collection capability of the harden ground in the 400-600 mm rainfall area on the Loess Plateau, the paper points out that there is serious soil erosion particularly by the roads, towns and villages, which is related to the physiognomic phenomena of gullies on the Loess Plateau, since the rain-water collection of the harden ground is more effective than the natural ground on the Loess Plateau. It is argued that the rain-water collection capability is connected with the harden ground's characteristics, different ways making harden ground led to different kinds of rain-water collection and different kinds of soil erosion, even if this happens on the same type of the harden ground. The study holds that the increasing population, the enlargement of harden ground area, and the resultant more serious soil and water loss constituted one of the essential reasons for the aggravated soil erosion on the Loess Plateau in the historical period.Therefore, the future soil and water conservation work on the Loess Plateau should organically connect the work of prevention and control of soil and water loss with the solution of water shortage problem. Furthermore, the best resolution to the problem of water shortage on the Loess Plateau is to use the harden ground gathered water for industrial and agricultural, produation and domestic consumption.

It is significant for regional development whether the distribution of manufacturing industry is rational or not. Based on data from the census of Beijing's basic units in 1996 and 2001, this paper, with the Ordered Probit Model (OPM) and analytical techniques in Geographical Information System (GIS), attempts to probe into how the location factors impact the manufacturing industry in Beijing these years, as well as the changes of the impacts. On the one hand, through these studies concerned with a special region, the capital, it might offer the development of Location Theories some material, and it also helps to promote the practical application of the OPM; on the other hand, the studies' findings can be useful references to both the adjustment of industrial distribution and the planning of industrial development in Beijing in the future. The findings suggest that:(1) Beijing's manufacturing industry is being in the course of developing towards outer city and suburbs, and that development trend accords with the characters of Beijing's resources, environment and economy, which is an optimization of the spatial distribution pattern.(2) The OPM's results validate findings (1), and reveal that labor factor, enterprise factor, industry factor, convergency factor, and geography factor have different effects on the locational behaviors.(3)The laborers' quality plays a vital part in Beijing's manufacturing industry's spatial distribution, and in order to maintain the higher level of industrial structure, Beijing should improve the laborers' quality in the outer city and suburbs, which are the most important viewpoints of this study.

This article inferred the formula of accounting energy consumption in mining shallow groundwater, based on the supposition that the energy consumption of groundwater mining is equivalent in the mining well and in its radius of affected area. According to the characteristics of evolution of shallow groundwater seepage field in the south Haihe River plain in the three periods of time, namely, the 1960s, the 1980s and initial period of the 21st century, as wall as integrating the GIS technique,we account the energy consumption and their differences in groundwater mining of the three different typical years (1964, 1984 and 2001) of the three periods. The results indicated that, when shallow groundwater table drops deep for 1m in the study area in 1964, 1984 and 2001,the energy consumption of groundwater mining is respectively 0.16×10⁸ kw · h, 0.65×10⁸ kw · h and 1.2×10⁸kw · h; when shallow groundwater table drops deep for one unit, in comparison with the three different periods of 1964-1984, 1984-2001 and 1964-2001, the energy consumption difference of shallow groundwater mining is respectively 0.49×10⁸kw · h, 0.55×10⁸ kw · h and 1.04×10⁸ kw · h. After analyzing the spatial distribution map of energy consumption of shallow groundwater mining in different periods of time in the south Haihe River plain, it is found out that, since the 1960s, the energy consumption of shallow groundwater mining has increased substantially, from average 269kwh/km² to average 1781kwh/km², due to groundwater overdraft.The computation of the energy consumptions and their difference of shallow groundwater mining both assume the increasing tendency from the alluvial and coast plain region to the Taihang piedmont plain region, the maximum energy consumption of groundwater mining is from 68 kwh/km² to 8908 kwh/km², but the energy consumption difference of shallow groundwater mining increases from 4760 kwh/km² to 8568 kwh/km².The research results could be used to provide the reference for the social and economic benefits appraisal of the shallow groundwater table rising after implementation of the South to North Water Transfer Project in the study area, and provide service for the research of the local construction of an "abstemious society".

Wetlands, named as the kidney of nature, are transitional areas between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and often have the unique characteristics of both. Wetlands perform functions such as providing habitat for birds, animals and plants, and cleaning water of nutrients and pollutants, and these functions make wetlands important and valuable to humans. But in recent years, due to both disturbances of the nature and human, worldwide wetlands have shown a degraded trend. Based on the data from hydrographic monitoring, field survey and analysis of experiments, this paper analyzes the hydrological characteristics and ecological degradation pattern of Lake Nansi in the last 50 years. As one of the biggest lake wetlands in North China, Lake Nansi wetland plays an important role in reserving the regional biodiversity and adjusting climate. The water inflow into Lake Nansi is obviously decreasing with a rate of 5.5×10⁸m³/10a. Water reduction, mud and hydrophyte deposit make Lake Nansi shrink and block up. The lake is dying out. The water environment of Lake Nansi polluted by the waste water of Jining and coal mines is so serious that the security of the lake's ecosystem has been severely affected. As a result, human couses much more damages to the environment than the nature. The deterioration of water environment of Nansi Lake has badly endangered the health of the ecosystem and restricted the sustainable development of society and economy. On the basis of the above-mentioned analysis, the paper puts forwards some brief suggestions on wetland conservation.