Based on plenty of field work and relevant theoretic analysis, this paper unveils and summarizes the developmental characteristics and the driving forces of the urban-rural fringe of Haidian District. The conclusion is the same with other urban-rural fringes in Beijing and in other large cities of China. Results show that the composition of residents in the urban-rural fringe of Haidian District is very complicated. Many people have no steady job and income, and their social welfare is also at a lower level. The size of floating population is almost equal to that of domicile population, and most of them live in the villages and towns of Haidian District. The manner of living and working of floating population has great effect on the development of urban-rural fringe. The proportion of green land in urban-rural fringe is much higher, and the compensation of taking up green land and the development right in green belt has not been resolved very well. The village-owned land is nearly half of the total area. The scarcity of reasonable criterion on land expropriation, development and management results in heavy conflicts. The traditional rural economy and low purchasing power of people impedes the improvement of industry of urban-rural fringe. There are many new industry parks in urban-rural fringe, but because of the great discrepancy between high-tech industry and traditional industry, they can not match very well. It is difficult for high-tech industry to bring into play it diffuse effect. There are more investors and managers of infrastructure than one in urban-rural fringe, and their capabilities are different. To be worse, the responsibilities of building infrastructure among different investors and managers are intersectant. All of these bring up a "dirty, disorder, bad and dangerous" urban-rural fringe. Special location, complicated background and weak system, planning and policy are main factors that influence the development of the urban-rural fringe.

Pursuing an ideal urban living environment of mankind is the common goal of human beings. On the one hand, the urban aggregation effect not only leads to an expansion of the city scale, but also causes a concentration of various production and life pollutants, and urban environment quality deterioration. What city size is suitable for the improvement of environment quality, is a question needed to be discussed deeply. Through constructing a theoretical model of urban scale-environment quality, this paper analyzes the panel data of China during 1997~2006 based on the variable-intercept model. The results are shown as follows: the empirical model of city scale-environment quality in China presents a positive N-shaped curve, the corresponding city scales of the two turning points of the curve are 2.6 and 9.3 million. According to the empirical model, the optimal city scale is 2.6 million, and the reasonable city scale is between 2~3.5 million. Apart from some provincial capital cities and all of the cities at prefecture level and above, the majority of the cities in China are in a rising stage of environment quality, and the expanding of city scale is favorable to the sustainable utilization of urban environment. In order to alleviate the constraint of urban environment to sustainable development, environment-friendly development in the process of urbanization is called for by the severe situation in current China. From the empirical model, the result indicates that the city scale-environment quality in China did not show an inverted N-shaped curve concluded by the theoretical model. On the one hand, it is revealed that the specificity of China's urbanization, on the other hand, there is still certain limitation in the theoretical model. So the improvement of the theoretical model needs further support by more empirical research.

The past two decades has witnessed the considerable strides made in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity. Based on the literature review on the study of China's tourism carrying capacity, this article was designed to make a reflection on its trend and problem: (1) The planning practice in China's tourism carrying capacity needs to be perfect. (2) The method concerning administrative management needs to be improved; in the domestic tourism market tourism carrying capacity is merely treated as a variable used to limit the number of the tourists. Seemingly feasible, this practice actually poses some potential problems, such as ignorance of the dynamic feature of tourism carrying capacity and of tourists' mobility and the drop in tourists' traveling interest. (3) Three misunderstandings occur in the study of tourism carrying capacity in China's academic field. The first misunderstanding is that tourism carrying capacity is always regarded as definite; the second one is that tourism carrying capacity is regarded as a fixed value; and the third misunderstanding is that the study of the number of tourists receives unnecessary emphasis. On the basis of the above discussion, the findings we obtained show that compared with the boom in China's tourism industry the backwardness in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity has exerted negative influence on the maintainable development in tourism destination. In such a context a systematic study of China's tourism carrying capacity is in emergent need. For this purpose the common understandings are to be reached in terms of the study of China's tourism carrying capacity: ① A relationship of carrier and carried, container and contained is to be symbolized in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity. ② The relevant factors concerning the study of China's tourism carrying capacity are in harmony with each other. ③ There is much flexibility in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity. ④ A limiting category can be changed into a regulatory category in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity. ⑤ Systemic indexes need to be established in terms of regulatory management of China's tourism carrying capacity.

The support of the rural aged is the important issue that needs urgent solution in the 21st century. Taking the rural area of Cixi city, Zhejiang province as a case study, we probe into the home care characteristics of the rural aged in the coastal developed areas. The results are drawn as follows: (1) The most important issue of housing conditions for rural aged is the low possession rate of infrastructure and supporting facilities and small per-capita housing area. The possession rate of infrastructure and supporting facilities, such as washing machine, fixed-line telephones, refrigerator, air conditioner, and water heater does not exceed 30%. Some 9.46% of the aged have a per capita housing area less than 15 m². (2) Most of the rural aged are living in a regular lifestyle. But the quality of their leisure behavior is not high because of their low education and weakly active ability. Popular and easy recreational activities, such as watching TV and listening to the radio are the main entertainments of the aged. There are only 26.9%, 3.4% and 1.7% of the aged who often take part in activities in multi-functional rooms, outdoor sports and universities for the aged, respectively. (3) There are few elderly people living with their children. Only 13.9% of the aged live with their children, and most of the aged live together with their spouses or live alone. Some 26.9% and 36.3% of the aged can not receive help from their relatives or friends when they need some help. The living of the left-behind aged in the rural area is noteworthy. (4) The economical conditions of most rural old people are featured by low incomes and low expenditures. The average annual income and expenditure of the rural aged are 3160 yuan and 3024 yuan, respectively. They can manage to make ends meet. But the Engel's coefficient of the aged is more than 80%, which is two times the average value of the whole city. (5) More than half of the aged suffer from various chronic diseases. They have poor self-sufficiency and need Custodial treatment to varying degrees. Thus they cannot afford to see the doctor when they are ill. More than 10% of the aged have some difficulty using telephone and public transportation facilities, managing finance, climbing stairs or going shopping alone. Some 75.67% of the aged need to be looked after to some extent. The number of the aged who can see the doctor on their own initiative when they are ill only occupies 25.33% of those that should receive treatment. (6) Very few aged people desire to live out their twilight years in social welfare. Almost all of the aged have heavy demand for community services, such as housework, house daycare, family doctor, and chat for diversion. But only 3% of the aged have used these services. Some 7.7% of the aged felt lonely because they live alone and some of their spiritual demands cannot be met.

Using MapX component and Delphi, the authors develop a program to calculate and analyze regional time accessibility based on minimal seed algorithm, thus generating a mark diffusing figure and city attracting scope. Based on land traffic network including highway, national way, provincial way and railway, this paper analyzes cities attracting scope. Some conclusions are drawn as follows. Shanghai is the first grade city. Its attracting scope covers the whole Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and presents a fan-like distribution along traffic axis of Shanghai-Nanjing and Shanghai-Hangzhou with Shanghai as its core. The second grade cities attracting scopes present rings along traffic axes of Shanghai-Nanjing and Shanghai-Hangzhou with Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou as their cores. The third grade cities attracting scopes in one hour presents zonal distribution along traffic axes of Shanghai-Nanjing, Shanghai-Hangzhou, Hangzhou-Ningbo and Nanjing-Nantong with 15 main cities as their cores. The relationship between the third grade cities attracting scope and their administrative areas can be divided into four categories. The attracting scopes of Taizhou in Jiangsu province, Huzhou, Changzhou and Ningbo are greater than their administrative areas. The attracting scopes of Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Shanghai and Taizhou in Zhejiang province are tally with their administrative areas. The attracting scopes of Jiaxing, Nanjing, Wuxi and Yangzhou are misplaced with their administrative areas. The attracting scopes of Nantong, Suzhou and Zhenjiang are smaller than their administrative areas. The fourth grade cities attracting scopes in one hour almost cover the whole YRD and present network distribution along the high grade roads and railways with 81 counties as their cores. The attracting scopes of the fourth grade cities in the YRD form a regional spatial system. The attracting scopes of city have changed along with the construction of bridges and tunnels which straddle sea and the Yangtze River.

The study of the spatial structure of city tourism is receiving increasing attention but methodology so far has used qualitative rather than quantitative methods. This paper applies an accessibility and analysis information system based on calculations of optimal road routes and times to scenic spots in Nanjing. This enabled the construction of time contour, diffusion and service range maps and diagrams. The study found that over 80% of the region had access to Nanjing's scenic spots in less than 40 minutes. However, downtown scenic spots were found to be much more accessible than those on the periphery of the city. At county level, accessibility to the city's downtown scenic spots shows a concentric pattern. Due to the disparities in intra-regional accessibility, the paper suggests the development of scenic spots in a recreational belt around the city to optimize their spatial distribution, particularly in Liuhe, Pukou, and Jiangning districts.

Classifying and evaluating tourism resource scientifically will be of great significance in rationally programming and effectively exploiting tourism resource, as well as in promoting the development of regional tourism industry. Science and technology tourism, as an important component part of the modern tourism, is playing an increasingly important role in the practice of tourism. Therefore, establishing a classification and evaluation system of science and technology tourism resource scientifically will be good not only for developing the science and technology tourism, but also for the development of science and technology tourism. However, similar studies were not found in literatures of China. Considering the above conditions, this paper gave a brief review of the study on the classification and evaluation of the tourism resource, both in domestic and foreign tourism studies. After analyzing the concept and characteristics of the science and technology tourism resource, the paper established the classification system of the science and technology tourism resource by considering the "classification investigation and evaluation of tourism resources" and other classification methods. Furthermore, based on the methods of Delphi, Analytic Hierarchical Process and referring to national criterion for the assessment of tourism resources as well, the paper established the evaluation system of the science and technology tourism resource. Evaluating the science and technology tourism resources in the way of the integration of qualitative and quantitative evaluation is consistent with the aim of providing the scientific foundation for development of the science and technology tourism resource. The aim of this study is to establish a classification and evaluation system of science and technology tourism resource scientifically, so as to provide some guidelines in optimizing the development of science and technology tourism resource and making science and technology tourism development strategies.

Urban spatial growth pattern has become a hot topic of geographic science and urban research. After the land reform initiated in 1987, cities in China are facing a new development wave. With the rapid growth of urban space, urban sprawl emerges. Modeling an urban growth pattern is the prerequisite to understanding the urbanization process of China. This paper presents a spatial analysis method of using remote sensing and GIS, and models major patterns of urban spatial growth in the period of 1979~2007 by a case study of Nanjing City. Firstly, the remote images are registered to the GIS data. Secondly, five land cover classes are identified from the images. Then, the different urban spatial growth patterns are established by mobile window calculation technology. It is found that the main spatial growth pattern of inner city is filling and the main spatial growth pattern of outer city expands during 1979~1988; the main spatial growth of inner city is slow and the main spatial growth pattern of outer city expands with linear and clustered features during 1988~2000; expansion and cluster patterns have been relatively obvious since 2000. This paper discusses the features of urban spatial growth of Nanjing. During 1979~1988, urban spatial growth of each district is slow, and the inner growth is in excess of suburban growth, with the peak value of urban growth appearing 5km away from the city center. During the period of 1988~2000, urban growth of suburban areas is in excess of inner city, with the peak value of urban growth appearing 6~13km away from the city center. The most insensitive growth appears in the southeast part of the city, and the growth of each aspect is relatively insensitive except the east and west. During the period of 2000~2007, urban growth of suburban areas is at high speed, and the peak value of urban growth appears 5~17km away from the city center. The most insensitive growth appears in the southeast, and the urban growth of each direction is insensitive except the west, and the development trend of urban areas is towards the north and south. The influencing factors of urban spatial growth are very complex, the main ones of which are social and economic development. Besides, the guideline of urban planning and impact of urban spatial structure are quite obvious. Other driving forces are also important, such as the rebuilding of inner city, new towns development, construction of infrastructure and development zones, population incensement and economic development. The results show that 80% of urban spatial growth emerges in the urban planning districts during 1979~2007, and that each period and direction of urban growth are affected by new towns development, as wellas construction of infrastructure and development zones.

According to the structure of environmental consciousness, we formulate a questionnaire on tourists' environmental consciousness in this study. The main quota systems in the questionnaire include four aspects: intellectual level of tourism environment, attitude towards tourism environment, evaluation on tourism environment and behavior of tourism environment. In view of weighting and bestowing score, we also construct evaluation model of each part in quota systems and overall evaluation model on environmental consciousness to calculate comprehensive score of tourists' level of environmental consciousness. Taking Hohhot region, Baotou region and Erdos area as case studies, we make an investigation on tourists' level of environmental consciousness. And we learn that the pattern of tourists' environmental consciousness is the one restricted by attitude towards environment through counting up and analyzing 480 questionnaires. The study indicates: (1) knowledge about environment is not the key problem which restricts tourists' level of environmental consciousness. Besides, evaluation on environment is not a dominant factor. But attitude towards environment is most important factor and resolves inclination of tourists' environmental behavior. Therefore changing consumers' attitude and training the tourists who are responsible for ecological environment is most critical to change tourists' environmental consciousness. (2) Tourists only know some basic and plain knowledge and viewpoint on environment. But they understand little complicated and abstract knowledge on environment. Especially, it is insufficient that the accuracy of tourists grasping knowledge on environment and degree of gradation increased progressively. (3) In the course of tour, tourists can hardly protect eco-environment conscientiously. And they could not supervise other tourists to maintain the eco-environment. Most tourists mainly think of how to minimize economic cost in the course of tour. They are not ready to serve for environmental protection of prairie tourism. So we can learn that if we can not carry out the guidance towards environmental consciousness properly and the appropriate management to tourist, it is unavoidable that assault on eco-environment. Consequently, we must strengthen that the staff of tour enterprises, including tourist guides, lead to positive consciousness of environmental protection for tourists.

Study on the residents' perceptions and attitudes to tourism destinations have been a lasting study topic of Tourism Geography. A temporally comparative study of residents' perceptions and attitudes is one of two future study subjects in the study area. Ancient villages are a special type of tourism destination. It is particularly important and urgent for ancient villages' tourism sustainable development and world heritage protection to study residents' perceptions and attitudes. Taking the world cultural heritage-Xidi village-as an example, the paper analyzes the temporal change of resort residents' perceptions and attitudes. The results are as follows. 1) As time flies, residents' family income in Xidi village has dramatically increased, in which the proportion of tourism profit (tourism ticket profit and tourism business profit) in family total income has apparently elevated. This indicates that from respective aspect, the extent of residents' reliance on tourism industry has gradually strengthened. 2) As time runs, all the residents in Xidi village pay more and more attention to tourism social-cultural and environmental effect. It suggests that this change conforms to mankind's general perception rule, from formal to substantive, from economic to cultural and from matter to spirit. 3) The temporal changes of Xidi residents' perceptions and attitudes are from collective impacts of diverse aspects, such as individual, tourist scenic spot and government. These detailed influencing factors are formal and substantive rationality, interior management of tourist scenic spot, exterior space compete of tourist scenic spot, construction of new villages and government policy of alluring foreign capital. Furthermore, it clarifies the influencing factors and shaping mechanism of temporal changes of tourism destination residents' perceptions and attitudes.

The previous attention to the urban evolution is mostly about the variety of the architecture landscape, the increase and changes of roads, the construction of good-sized infrastructure, the development of the urban green area ecosystem and urban real estate, the adjustment of urban spatial structure as well as the building of city culture and city culture industry, emphasizing the change of urban macroscopical factors, and attaching importance to the transformation of urban physical form and structure. Especially in the process of studies on famous historic and cultural cities and historic sites, the scholars have paid more attention to the protection and development of constructions and historic areas. In other words, the accomplished studies further emphasized the practicalities which bear the weight of historic meaning and city culture, but ignore the important effects of the urban toponym which record the unique history of the urban area, labeling the urban change, confirming the urban development, embodying the mutative stream of the city. It is pointed out that by analyzing the toponym that is a visual and accessible cultural factor, the track of urban development and changes could be discerned, and at the same time, based on the frequent urbanization, many inner rules of urban development and renovation were open out. And these were the valuable reference of urban development and the effective protection of historic areas. This paper studied the changes of toponym, Liwan of Guangzhou, and brought forward the symbolic effect and evaluation of the toponym in the process of studying decline and renewal of the city.

Canal heritage is an important part of cultural heritage. The Grand Canal has been added to the Tentative List of World Heritage, but there have been relatively few studies on the heritage resource & cultural value of the Canal, especially on the northern section of the Canal in Beijing. Even in the Description of The Grand Canal on website of UNESCO World Heritage Committee, there are no words about the section of the Canal in Beijing (including the Tonghui River). This paper aims at paying close attention to the canal heritage resource & cultural value of the Tonghui and other sections of the Canal in Beijing. The section of Tonghui River, located in Chaoyang District of Beijing City, was a major royal canal in the east of Beijing City during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. It is rich in cultural heritage resource. Now the River is serving as the city channel for discharging flood instead of a royal transport line. Along with the Beijing's urban expansion eastwards, it is urgent for us to harness and protect the environment and heritage resource of the Tonghui River. It is shown that, by the investigation along the Tonghui River done at the end of 2007, there is much canal heritage resource with high cultural value but insufficient public awareness and technical support. Therefore, in order to protect and manage canal heritage resource effectively, the paper proposes three suggestions: to protect key heritage resource of the River that conforms to the criterion for inscribing it into the World Heritage List; to renovate comprehensively heritage resource and setting of the River; and to inherit the canal history and intangible heritage of the River for future generations.

National parks are one of the important tourism resources and products, which is helpful to evaluate their performance for establishing rational resources using policies. The using efficiencies of 136 Chinese national parks in China and their spatial distribution characteristics are evaluated by using Data Envelopment Analysis and Spatial Comparative Analysis methods. Both the results show that the overall efficiencies of Chinese national parks are very low, and most of them are presenting the process of increasing returns of scales; Through decompositions of overall efficiencies, the results show that the congestion efficiencies of national parks are very high, but the technical efficiencies and scale efficiencies are at a low level. Both the experiential study and correlation analysis show that the scale efficiencies are the most important factor that influences the overall efficiencies of Chinese national parks, and the low overall efficiencies of Chinese national parks are also due to their low scale efficiencies. As far as the spatial distribution is concerned, there exists a transmeridional high overall efficiencies belt of Chinese national parks in Central China. The formation of the belt results from the abundant famous tourism resources and products in the related provinces of Central China, which lead to the supplement and substitute effects among them and these effects can be explained by using neoclassicism economy theory and industry agglomeration theory. Finally, the countermeasures for upgrading the using efficiencies of the national parks in different regions are discussed in this paper.

Studies on land use change play one of the most important parts in LUCC, which focus on the change of land use structure, pattern and its rate, ecological effect and so on. This paper takes Shenzhen City as a case based on RS and the GIS. Several remote sense images, land use data of status quo, and landform data during 1978~2001 are used to analyze the time-space differentiation of land use change, so as to study the influence of city landform on the land use. The landform is an important influencing factor of land use change in cities. Because various land use types are all placed in certain vertical space, the change of land use will cause the variation of vertical barycenter. The data analysis shows that, the arable land was the most unstable, 609.76 km² of which changed into other types during the 23 years, while its vertical barycenter declined. However, the areas of construction land increased by 579.20 km², and its vertical barycenter increased by 6.49 meters during this period. The increasing trend of woodland's barycenter was more stable than that of construction land, and the transferred area ratio was the lowest among all types of land use. The restriction of landform to the land use dynamics is obvious in Shenzhen for the land use dynamics degree decreases with the increase of the elevation and slope, the dynamics index on the same elevation belt and slope belt gradient presented an increasing trend during the urbanization process. According to the curve of the land use dynamics state, during the natural landscape period, the agriculture-developed period and the post-urbanization period, the land use dynamics indexes on elevation belts and slope belts are stable and low. Even in the low plane region, the dynamics curves are close to zero. Between these three periods are the agriculture-developing period and rapid-urbanization period, whose land use dynamics indexes are higher. In a word, the index shows a spiral rise, but the dynamics of these five periods show a common trend that it is getting lower with the increase of elevation and slope.

Human health is affected by global environmental change(GEC). The distribution and transmission of epidemics in history could be rebuilt to reved the relationship between health and GEC from the past. This study used the collected data of epidemics in the Ming and Qing periods, when China was seriously influenced by epidemics, to set up some indicators to quantitatively analyze the temporal-spatial distribution of epidemics by GIS and geo-statistics methods. The results are as follows: (1) The indicators of "Number of Incident Years of Epidemics in 10 Years" and "Accumulated Number of Incident Counties of Epidemics in 10 Years" were set up to analyze the temporal distribution of epidemics in China. The results show that the epidemics were more and more frequent from the early Ming to late Qing Dynasty. After 1840 A.D., they happened nearly every year. 1580~1589A.D., 1639~1648 A.D., 1813~1822 A.D. and 1857~1866 A.D. were the four peaks of frequency and scale of epidemics. (2) The indicators of "Percentage of Incident Years of Epidemics to Total Years" and "Percentage of Counties of Epidemics to the Total Counties" were set up to analyze the spatial distribution of epidemics. The results show that many areas were affected by epidemics in the whole Ming and Qing dynasties. But the incidental frequency verified largely in different areas. The high frequency and the high incident areas descended from the east coastal area to the inland area. The middle and lower reaches of Yellow River and Yangtze River were the regions with the highest frequency. The epidemics occurred in all the eastern and central provinces. Over 80% of the counties in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hainan, Fujian, Anhui, Jiangxi, Shandong and Zhejiang were affected by epidemics. (3) The indicator of "Proportion of Accumulated Incident Counties of Epidemics to the Total Counties & Years" was set up to quantitatively analyze both the occurrence frequency and the affected regional scales. The results show that Shanghai, Zhejiang and Shandong were the highest with "Proportion of Accumulated Incident Counties of Epidemics to the Total Counties & Years", indicating that occurrences in these provinces were both high frequency and large scales. Further studies should be done on their relations with droughts and floods, socioeconomic development and the distribution of population.

With the rapid development of the economy in China, the densities and lengths of the land traffic trunk lines have changed largely. Due to the convenient traffic, the economic lifestyle and the scale of human activity have also obviously changed, which are influenced by the increasing traffic facilities. However, as the increase of the flow of travelers and goods, the exposed extent of the traffic trunk lines was also increasing sharply. At the same time, the quantity and frequency of natural disasters were increasingly induced by global change, which enlarged the risk of exposing human to natural disasters in the traffic trunk lines. Based on a brief review of the domestic and foreign natural disaster risk research situations of land traffic trunk line, this paper pointed out that at present relevant studies started late and the research contents were also dispersive in China; the risk distinguish of natural disasters happening on the traffic trunk lines still need to be further improved and the risk research should also be strengthened in China. This paper analyzed the relation between the density of China's land traffic trunk lines (railway and highway) and the past dead people and natural disaster loss modulus through the data statistics and GIS technique. The result showed that the influences of extreme disaster events on China's land traffic trunk lines has become greater, which severely affected the flow of travelers and goods, and also influenced the disaster support; the spatial distribution of the natural disaster risk factors presented a higher pattern in the central and eastern China, but a lower one in the western. However, at present the distinguished research of the risk factors is still penurious and there was lack of risk management. Thus it is necessary to reinforce the natural disaster risk research of land traffic trunk lines in China. The natural disaster risk research on land traffic trunk lines should be focused on three aspects, that is, the node city, the section of the trunk line and the regional traffic network.

The international financial crisis (IFC) is a new economic geography phenomenon that happens suddenly in some areas with rapid spatial expansion and fast regional response. The study of the forming mechanism of IFC in specific places, the spatial expanding process of IFC, and the regional response rule is a new proposition of economic geography research. In view of the strong economic attributes of causes and evolution of IFC and the significant economy-driven effect of spatial process and regional response, this paper puts forward the research mode of "Microeconomy - Macroeconomy - Regional Economy." Based on this mode, the process of the micro unlimited pursuit of fictitious-economy-based enterprises for profit--the macro separation between fictitious economy and real economy and the macro insufficient monitoring of government--the regional occurrence of IFC in specific places is analyzed, the process of the micro adjustment of the enterprises' industrial organization in developed countries--the macro formation of international division of labour founded on industrial chains--the regional (spatial) expansion of IFC is explored, and the micro marginal utility change of consumer and the existence of catastrophe point--the macro dependence of fictitious economy and real economy on natural resources and human capital and the macro recoverable power of each kind of economy--the regional response of IFC is discussed. Accordingly, this paper addressed the four-stage spatial expansion process of IFC, and put forward the judgment of the existence of the phenomenon that "1 yuan RMB ≠ 1 yuan RMB" in different regions. Moreover, based on the analysis of regional response of IFC, this paper obtained a primary conclusion that the regions with their people in great poverty and with economic growth depending on natural resources and environment suffer more damages from IFC. The spatial expansion of IFC has not only verified several important classical theories of economic geography, but also offered a new assumption for further study, namely it may be possible in spatial structure organization for modern service industry to make a stronghold breaking through in some places. Finally, the long-term strategies to entreat the risk of globalization, such as improving the contribution of human capital to industrial development, and promoting the pulling function of domestic demand to economic growth were discussed.

Remote sensing data classification is an important source of land cover map, and remote sensing research focusing on image classification has long attracted the attention of the remote sensing community. For several decades the remote sensing data classification technology has gained a great achievement, but with the more multi-source and multi-dimensional data, the conventional remote sensing data classification methods based on statistical theory have some weaknesses. For instance, when the remote sensing data does not obey the pre-assumption of normal distribution, the classification result using Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) will deviate from the actual situation, and the classification accuracy will not be satisfied. So in recent years, many artificial intelligence techniques were applied to remote sensing data classification, aiming to reduce the undesired limitations of the conventional classification methods. Ant colony algorithm as a novel intelligent optimization algorithm has been used successfully in many fields, but its application in remote sensing data processing is a new research topic. Due to the ant colony rule mining algorithm based on classification rule mining, it can process multi-feature data. This paper introduces the theory and flow of application of ant colony rule mining algorithm in multi-feature remote sensing data classification. This paper selected Landsat TM and Envisat ASAR located in Beijing area as experiment data for land cover classification based on ant colony rule mining algorithm, and the classification results are compared with MLC and C4.5. The experimental results indicate that the advantages of ACO used in multi-feature remote sensing data classification can be summarized as follows: (1) It does not assume an implicit assumption for processing dataset; (2) Contextual information can be taken into account; (3) It has strong robustness; (4) It can construct simple classification rules; (5) It can take advantage of multi-source dataset for land cover classification. So the ant colony rule mining algorithm has provided a new approach for multi-feature remote sensing data classification.

Based on the data of digital geomorphology with a scale of 1:1 000 000, this study analyzes spatial distribution of geomorphologic patterns in Xinjiang. The geomorphologic types were artificially visually interpreted from the multi-sources data including the TM/ETM imageries (a resolution of 30 m) around 1990 and 2000, the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation model (USGS, 2004) with a horizontal resolution of 90 m, geomorphological maps and geological data etc. The quantitative indexes of the classification system of the digital geomorphology include altitude, relief, genesis, sub-genesis, morphology, micro-morphology, slope-aspect, and lithology, etc. The methodology of geo-statistics and GIS spatial analysis were used in this article. Firstly, the overall features of geomorphology were presented from three levels, i.e., altitude, relief, and basic morphologic types. Secondly, the spatial distribution patterns of different geomorphologic types were analyzed from the features such as altitude, relief, genesis, sub-genesis, morphology and micro-morphology. The results show that: (1) compared to the mountain types, the plain accounts for about 1/3 of the total area in Xinjiang; (2) in terms of absolute altitude, the area of the geomorphologic types of middle altitude (1000~3500 m) makes up about 50%; (3) the hill types (< 200 m) dominates the morphologic types, mainly distributed in the Tarim and Junggar basins, which presents the feature of sand dunes; (4) in the basic morphologic types, the area of the middle-altitude hill types possesses the largest area, being about 21.417%; (5) fluvial, arid and aeolian landforms are the dominant types among all of the genesis types; (6) in general, there are two main characteristics in the spatial pattern of geomorphology in Xinjiang: the horizontal ringed and vertical zonal distributions, from basin center to the highest-relief highest mountain, the genesis geomorphologic types changes from lacustrine landform, aeolian landform, arid landform, fluvial landform, peri-glacial landform, to glacial landform etc. This study provides a scientific basis for a better understanding of the spatial distribution pattern of geomorphology in Xinjiang. It also provides the basic data for the future analysis of the potential arable land resources, prone-to-desertification regions, the distribution of glaciers, and other information, as well as regionalization, sustainable use and development, the restoration of ecological function, etc.

This paper is devoted to developing the theory and methods of spatial autocorrelation analysis based on the Moran statistics. Firstly, the mathematical process of the Moran’s index is reconstructed with the theory of linear algebra. Two kinds of generalized spatial weighting matrix (GSWM) are defined as follows: one is the ideal spatial weighting matrix (ISWM), and the other is the real spatial weighting matrix (RSWM). The Moran’s I can be redefined by both ISWM and RSWM. Secondly, the theoretical essence of Moran’s I is brought to light by using the ideas from symmetry and invariance of mathematical transform. The Moran’s I is in fact the eigenvalue of ISWM and RSWM, and the corresponding eigenvector is just the vector consisting of the standardized data for spatial autocorrelation analysis. Thirdly, the Moran scatterplot is revised. Based on ISWM and RSWM, the Moran scatterplot for local analysis of spatial association is improved and the result is more satisfying than the original form. In the improved scatterplot, ISWM presents a straight line, and RSWM shows itself as a random distribution of data points. Three approaches to estimating the Moran’s I are advanced as follows: (1) The method of formula. Three-step computation process is summed up by means of matrix theory. (2) The method of matrix. The scaling relation is employed to estimate the Moran’s I by calculating the eigenvalue of ISWM or RSWM. (3) The method of regression analysis. This approach is based on the correlation between the standardized vector and ISWM or RSWM. The key step of making analysis of spatial autocorrelation is to construct the contiguity matrix. The spatial weighting matrix (SWM) is divided into four types: (1) locality correlation, (2) quasi-locality correlation, (3) quasi-long-distance correlation, and (4) long distance correlation associated with action at a distance. Different types of SWM are suitable for different cases of geographical analysis. The improved theory and method of spatial autocorrelation based on the Moran’s I is applied to the systems of towns in Hebi Prefecture of Henan Province, China. Based on the measure of total population of towns, a symmetrical pattern of spatial autocorrelation, which looks like a butterfly, is revealed and illustrated. This example shows how to make use of spatial autocorrelation theory in human geographical analysis easily and simply.

It has been gradually accepted that the information and communication technologies have influence on the spatial reorganization of the economic activities. However, the reorganizations of the distinct spatial hierarchy and departments have different characteristics, which bring about fierce arguments and come to different conclusions. As the most basic economic unit, the variations of enterprises with the application of ICTs grow to be a very important research subject. Through the means of case study on the clothing and textile enterprises and collecting materials by enterprises interviews, this paper aims to explore the features of the traditional manufacturing's development by using ICTs, especially the features of the spatial organization variation of the production chain based on time cost. The present paper achieves two main goals. Firstly, the paper analyzes the application of ICTs to the clothing and textile enterprises' operating. Secondly, it probes into the features and the variation of the spatial organization of the production chain with the aid of ICTs in the enterprises at different developing stages. Finally the paper draws a conclusion that these enterprises have shortened the cycle of designing, manufacturing, and dispatching with the help of ICTs, which proves that the time factor plays a key role in the spatial organization variation of the production chain by the application of ICTs. At the same time the present research discovers that the application of ICTs to the traditional processing and manufacturing clothing and textile enterprises chiefly boosts their management of some sections in the whole production chain; while for the industrial upgraded enterprises, the application of ICTs greatly affects the spatial organization of the whole production chain.

Most living oyster reefs in China develop in the estuaries such as Xiaoqing estuary, Zimaigou estuary etc. However, Liyashan oyster reef, which lies at the southern Yellow Sea coast near Haimen, Jiangsu province, develops in the non-estuary. Despite some researchers have studied its modern landform and environment, as well as because of the sand layer on the surface, we still do not know on what basement the oyster reef developed is. In addition, the sea water here has a high salinity which is beyond the best range of the oyster growing. Then a question arises: how was the environment during the oyster reef development? In order to answer these questions, we have been to this region several times to do investigation and sampling. The results indicate that the basement of the oyster reef is sandy sediments of estuary bar or tidal current ridge impacted by estuaries, rather than tidal flat deposits.

Since the traffic flow reflects the socio-economic relationship of cities and also has the spatial attributes of flow fields, its study can reveal the urban interaction to some extent. Based on the review of flow fields, this paper introduces the basic concept and theoretical points, and then designs a spatial recognition model, i.e. factor analysis including R-mode and Q-mode. In this paper, we also introduce the model's study process, parameters and the software (SPSS). Finally, using inter-urban railway passenger flows in 1990 (197 cities) and in 2006 (249 cities), this paper studies the spatial field of traffic flows, i.e. the centralization field and decentralization field, especially focusing on the number, structure, hub nodes, catchment areas and the evolution from 1990 to 2006. Then, we design some indices to analyze the hierarchical structure of the flow field and find that the traffic flows in China exhibit four levels of centralization and decentralization fields. According to the spatial distribution of traffic flows, centralization and decentralization fields have distinct communicating circles around provincial capitals and stop in the boundaries of provinces. Also, the two types of spatial flow fields are overlapped spatially and developed stably. The traffic flow fields centered in Shanghai and Guangzhou are playing more and more important roles. According to the study of spatial fields through railway passenger flows, this paper discovers the interaction of China's urban system and offers some suggestions for railway planning and urban planning.

Being an important subtropical fruit, the longan is very sensitive to climate change, especially temperature. Based on previous researches, selecting observed temperature data from 60 counties of South China from 1960 to 2005, the article established the longan temperature suitability model and the temperature risk dynamic assessment model to calculate the temperature suitability and risk of longan, to evaluate the temporal and spatial differences and also to predict the temperature suitability and risk of longan. Firstly, the article analyzes the temperature suitability of longan at different growth stages, and the result shows that temperature change has a great impact on the temperature suitability of dormancy stage, physiologic differentiation of flower bud stage and morphologic differentiation of flower bud stage. All these have low suitability and high variability, while the other three stages have high suitability and low variability. In addition, the inter-annual change of temperature suitability at different growth stages is analyzed, and the result shows all the growth stages except for fruit growth and maturity stage and treetop growth stage have a decreasing trend in the future. This is caused by the temperature differences between the different growth stages. Further study indicates that it is hot damage in winter and spring rather than cold damage that plays an important role in longan production in South China. Secondly, based on probability distributions of the longan temperature suitability degrees of different reduction rates of yield, the article divided South China into three regions: the low risk region, the medium risk region and the high risk region. At the same time, a comparative analysis was done on the longan temperature risk among different periods in South China. The result shows that there is difference in the changing trend of the longan temperature risk: in the aspect of spatial distribution, the temperature risk degree decreases with increasing latitude in South China; in the aspect of temporal distribution, the temperature risk of longan has a gradual increasing trend with the elapse of time. Finally, the responses of longan growth stages to climate warming in South China were analyzed.

The vertical distribution model of transport rate of sands in different grain size groups in aeolian mass flux is one of the hot topics on the structure of aeolian mass flux. Some researches have been carried out by use of wind tunnel experiments or mathematical modeling, but the results are different. We believe that the combined methods should be used which include the field observation and wind tunnel experiment as well as mathematical modeling. Changli Gold Coast in Hebei Province is one of the most typical coastal aeolian dune distribution regions in China. It is very famous for the tall and typical coastal transverse ridges in Changli Gold Coast. One of the typical coastal transverse ridges in Changli Gold Coast was chosen to be measured to build the vertical distribution model of sands in different grain size groups in coastal aeolian mass flux by using the combined methods. On the basis of data from field observation and wind tunnel experiment, the vertical distribution model of sand transport rate in different grain size groups in aeolian mass flux, which is the correlation between sand transport rates of different heights with heights in aeolian mass flux, could be obtained by use of mathematical modeling. The results show that the vertical distribution models of sand transport rate in different grain size groups in aeolian mass flux are different. The vertical distribution of coarse sands could be expressed by typical power function, but the vertical distribution of the sand transport rate of medium sands and fine sands could be typically expressed by an exponential function, and the exponential function distribution is their vertical distribution model. Reasons for the difference of vertical distribution models of sands in different grain size groups in aeolian mass flux are the height of distribution of sands of different grain size groups and their movement ways in aeolian mass flux. For coarse sand particles, they are mainly distributed in the scope of 4cm height over dune. Normally turbulent flow plays a leading role in the movement of sands at the low height over dune. The influence of turbulent flow in near-surface layer makes most of the coarse sand particles to move as the way of surface creep and the distribution model of sand transport rate of coarse particles with height to satisfy the negative power relation. But the fine sands and medium sands, they mostly move in the way of saltation. A large number of field observation and wind tunnel experiments as well as numerical simulation research results demonstrate that the vertical distribution of sand transport rate of saltation particles is exponential decrease function.

Based on the theory of relative prices, this paper evaluates the degree of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional market integration from the perspective of commodity markets. All of the data applied in the models in this study are obtained in the period of 1985~2007, coming from three areas, which are Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province. These panel data cover nine categories of the most important commodities. The study found that, in the period of 23 years, the level of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional market integration experiences a course of "Smooth - Fluctuating - Smooth". Specifically, from 1985 to 1988, the regional variance of relative price changes in a small range. This implied that the regional markets of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are in the state of integration. From 1989 to 1997, the relative price variance is in the trend of fluctuations, indicating that in this period, the problems of regional market segmentation are more serious. The study based on time series data also revealed that since the end of the 20th century, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei market integration has developed rapidly and stably. Overall, the level of this regional market integration improves year by year. The analysis of market integration between any two areas showed that internal imbalances exist in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan region. The leading rank of regional market integration is Beijing-Tianjin, followed by Beijing-Hebei, and Tianjin-Hebei. It is worth noting that the regional market of Beijing-Tianjin is a key factor to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional market integration. The conclusions of the research enriches the current theoretical studies on the market integration of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. Further efforts will be made to strengthen the stage of regional integration and policy analysis of how to accelerate the pace of regional market integration.

In the advancing process of New Countryside Construction, agricultural villages will become the cruces and nodus. Owing to the representative and demonstration of its rural cultural landscape, cluster agricultural villages deserve to be studied. Taking a case study of Yukou Village, Shangdong Province, this paper discovers that the cultural landscape of cluster agricultural village has approximately changed over three stages since the reform and opening-up. Its settlement evolution has gone through three stages-mechanical expansion, sprawling expansion & hollowizing, and refilling & recentralization. The landscape evolution of its folk house has undergone three phases-traditional quadrangle, one-storied flattop and multistoried building. The landscape evolution of its land use has experienced three stages-circled stratification, fragment & intensive cultivation, and concentration together with extensive cultivation. The short-term cultural landscape evolution of cluster agricultural village is primarily influenced by human factors. The macro-scoped factors include urban-rural relation, national economic development and modernization, system of family planning and farmland usufruct, and governmental policies. Concretely, the evolution of rural settlement is affected by demographic characteristics, planning, management, economic and social development, cultural ideas, and agricultural structure. The production ways of agriculture and the natural environment are the basic factors affecting the evolution of folk house. However the influences of household income (especially non-farming income) and demand, socio-cultural idea and mind, and architectural technology increased gradually with the economic and social development. Agricultural land use is restricted by natural factors. The short-term driving factors of its evolution include the distance to village, the construction of production facilities, the land system, and the profit changes of different land-use types. In the future, the recentralization of settlements will become the trend; the folk house will show a harmonious development including modernization, ecological trend, and individualization; scaled, intensive, and sustainable land use are likely to be the trend.

This paper studied seeping characteristics of loess, paleosol and the enrichment condition of groundwater by seeping experiments at 30 experimental points, magnetic susceptibility analysis, porosity and CaCO₃ determination of 10 loess and paleosol layers in Middle Pleistocene on Bailu tableland. The result showed that loess layers with greater porosity developed well in water bearing space and were prone to form water-bearing layers. The paleosol with less porosity did not develop well in water bearing space and was prone to form a water-resisting layer. The difference between loess and paleosol in permeability and water bearing space is attributed to climatic difference and pedogenisis. Generally, CaCO₃ concretion layer is a good water-resisting layer with its compact structure. The Koctakob formula in the three experience formulas is more fit for describing seeping rule loess and paleosol developed since 500 ka BP by seeping experience data of Bailu tableland. The average and standard deviation for every parameter of three experience formulas can provide important reference for hydrological and agricultural sector using the seeping experience formula. This study broadened a new application field of climatic change theory in Quaternary period. It is showed that studied results in climate change of the Pleistocene had important application value in soil and groundwater enrichment condition and rule, and utilization of water resources.

The study on employment location of farm household is the basis of understanding flow law of farm employees. Through the case study on three sampting villages in Henan province, we find that the personal characteristic, family characteristic and the community characteristic have significant influence on the employment location choice. On personal characteristic, the sex has significant influence on employment space and also age on employment distance. On family characteristic, family type has significant influence on employment distance, as well as family generation number and learner number on employment distance and employment space. On community characteristic, economic development level and terrain in village have significant influence on employment space. The relation network of farm household plays a key role in the employment location choice. Based on gaining some earnings, the choice for employment location of farm household is the result of considering all the factors, such as personal characteristics, family characteristics and community characteristics. The farm household is in logos. The geographic factor has important influence on employment location. Like the migrants in migration, the non-permanence farm employees are also selective, but the causation is decreasing the family management cost and avoiding the migration risk. Therefore, to regulate the rule of labor mobility market, reduce the risk of migration, construct rural social service system and eliminate the worries of the employment workers have critical significance to rational flow of rural surplus labor. Their policy implications are that the guidance of early employees and nurturing network of relations are of great significance for development of labor economy to the villages that have fewer emigrants. When migrant workers develop into a relatively large size, potential employees are likely to be real employees relying on its own network. Therefore, the government should focus on nurturing the seed employees. Furthermore, the formation of that relation network has played a key part in the employment location choice in validating applicability of the "migration network theory" in temporary migration.

Archaeological sites are the relics of human activities, which belong to the concept of archaeology. The sites were the places where the ancient human lived, worked and took part in ather activities. As one of the five biggest freshwater lakes in China, the Chaohu Lake is important for local environment and society. There are about 19 Neolithic Age sites and 120 Shang-Zhou Dynasty sites on the western shore of the Chaohu Lake. Based on sites data, topographic data, drainage maps, administrative maps and ArcGIS9.0 Geographic Information System, this paper tries to introduce spatial analysis methods into archaeology of Chaohu Lake Catchment. The spatial analysis methods include: (1) Sites point density is studied by spatial analysis in ArcGIS9.0 and spatial distribution is estimated by spatial interpolation as IDW (Inverse Distance Weighted). (2) In order to access the relationship between sites, distance analysis is used to reveal organizational structure features. (3) 3D analysis was done by DEM and contours to reveal micro-geomorphologic features of sites. (4) The relationship between the sites and river drainage was discovered by buffer analysis. The paper analyzes the spatial distribution pattern and the impact factors of sites from Neolithic to Shang and Zhou dynasties on the western shore of the Chaohu Lake. The results indicate that archaeological sites spread from the west shore of the gradually to the northwest, later to the south, and then they symmetrically spread. Restricted by productive forces and other factors, the ancient people preferred to settle in those places near water, plain, and fertile land, which led to the sites scattered in the direction of line, aggregation and decentralization etc., and presented the disciplines such as river valley-direction, terrace-direction and soil-direction, etc. This paper indicates that the distribution of the sites was influenced earlier by natural elements such as climate, topography, and vegetation; and was more by human factors such as productive forces, economic activities later. Research of site distribution features in the study area is significant for the integration of GIS and archaeology. And the hypothesis from spatial analysis should be proved by field archaeology.