With the flourishing development of tourism, competitions among different tourism destinations are becoming tenser day by day. In order to realize the goal of surviving and even sustainable development of tourism, it is urgent and necessary for tourism destinations to enhance the understanding, cultivation and management of tourism competitiveness. Analysis and appraisement on the dynamic developing trend of tourism competitiveness is the fundamental method as well as the basic work to achieve the target above. Taking Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration as the study area, the article establishes the appraisal index system for the entire region and its interior cities, respectively, which include the following five aspects: driving forces for tourism development, tourism development level, tourism impacts, tourism economic connection and tourism contributions of different cities to the whole region. As tourism competitiveness has the characteristics of comprehensiveness, systematicness and dynamicness, the article establishes the dynamic simulation model by use of the system dynamics, simulates and analyzes the tourism competitiveness trend of the Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration from 2005 to 2020. The results show that: tourism competitiveness of the interior cities presents a steadily increasing trend in the next 15 years; at the end of the simulation period, the competitiveness rank of the eight cities will be Qingdao, Jinan, Yantai, Rizhao, Weihai, Dongying, Zibo and Weifang; compared with the individual cities, competitiveness of the entire Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration increases to a greater extent, which reflects that integrated development and regional combination of tourism are important means to upgrade tourism competitiveness in this region.

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

The influencing factors of dike beach risk of the hanging reach in the lower Yellow River should involve four aspects, the locomotion of incoming water and sediment load, the regional crustal stability, the evolvement of river regime and the stability of river dikes. The evaluation indexes system of dike breach risk and synthetic model are established from the four aspects. With the support of GIS technology, the evaluation indexes system and the model of multi-hierarchical fuzzy synthetic judgment are applied to estimating the dike breach risk in the lower Yellow River under different flood conditions. The evaluation results show the following distributing regularities: (1) The dike breach risk increases with the increase of flood discharge. (2) Dike breach risk decreases with the channel pattern changes along the river. (3) The reaches with greater dike breach risk are mainly distributed in wandering reaches where the south bank is relativly high. (4) The dike breach risk of the north bank is higher than the south bank in winding reaches.These conclusions can be applied to the practice of flood control and channel regulation in the lower Yellow River.Simultaneously, the evaluation results manifest that the evaluation indexes system and the method can preferably resolve the problem of dike breach risk evaluation. The spatial analysis functions of GIS technology make the dike beach risk in different spatial locations qualified, and reflect the difference of dike beach risk in different spatial locations in the lower Yellow River. It has important practical meaning to direct the practice of flood control and channel regulation.

The relationship between built environment and travel behavior has long been studied in geography, transportation and city planning. There has been a large body of such researches in western countries from macro and micro perspectives, using different methods such as simulation, description and modeling. Relatively, in China most such researches have centered on trip-based analysis, no matter from aggregation level or individual level, paying little attention to tour-based analysis. In addition, the travel decision-making process of residents has rarely been considered either. This paper attempts to construct the concept model of tour-based spatio-temporal decision-making of travel behavior and explore its residential differentiation on workdays in Beijing city, by using nested logit model with the data of travel diary obtained in 2007. Moreover, it attempts to discuss the relationship between activity and mobility.The results first of all show that residential neighborhood has an effect on the tour type decision-making, but the effect varies with the change of travel purpose. For example, if it is a work tour, its residential differentiation will be significant; but if it is a non-work tour, it will be indistinct. This may be closely related with Chinese unique suburbanization. Secondly, the start time decision-making is mainly affected by the activity type, which implies that there is a strong tie between activity and mobility. But, anyhow, the residential differentiation of start time decision-making is not significant. Thirdly, the travel distance and mode choice is distinct in different neighborhoods, that is to say the residential differentiation of spatial decision-making is significant. On the whole, the travel distance of Danwei residents is comparatively short, and the mode choice is mainly non-motor vehicle. In contrast, the travel distance of residents in commercial housing community and policy-oriented housing community is much longer, and the mode choice is mainly motor vehicle, with car in the former and public transport in the latter. Therefore, the travel behavior of Danwei residents is to some extent low carbon while the travel of policy-oriented housing community residents is long and dependent on public transport. We should pay more attention to these unique neighborhoods in China.

Alleviatory housing is one kind of houses provided by the government for low-income families. It has become one of the important parts in the social security system of China. By doing a case study in the alleviatory housing neighborhoods named Tangxia and Tongde developed during the 1990s in Guangzhou, the jobs-housing relocation and spatial mismatch are tested. The types of residents in both of the neighborhoods have changed a lot from 1996 to 2007. A large number of sub-rent and re-sold houses came up due to the changing of location, relatively low price and inefficient management about immigration and emigration of this indemnificatory housing community. Accordingly, the main structure of housing consists of alleviatory housing, commercial housing, re-rent (sub-rent) housing and Danwei housing. The residents in alleviatory housing and commercial housing meet with great changes of jobs-housing relocation and jobs-housing mismatch with different mechanism factors. As to alleviatory housing residents, the jobs-housing distance became longer after they moved into the houses allocated by the government. The passive jobs-housing mismatch is mainly driven by policies and the barriers from the residents themselves. In the latter case, commercial housing residents who have an average income or above are attracted by the low price of houses due to the political welfare, and they can afford to take taxi or private cars to meet with the long distance commuting. The jobs-housing mismatch is mainly driven by market and the initiate choice of the residents. Different from the residents in both alleviatory housing and commercial housing, residents in re-rent (sub-rent) housing and Danwei housing do not meet with jobs-housing mismatch problems. The former is the residents who work near the neighborhoods and are mostly attracted by the low price of houses, and the latter is the Danwei employees who get houses from their Danweis. Both residents in re-rent (sub-rent) housing and the Danweis on behalf of their employees would take account into the short distance when they select the jobs-housing places. The sub-renting and re-selling of alleviatory housing have carried some inequity and the spatial mismatch for residents in both alleviatory housing and commercial housing has generated some adverse impact on their quality of lives. It is necessary to conduct more researches on the optimization of the alleviatory housing policies and the implementations, as well as the optimization of urban structure.

In today's globalizing age, cities and regions have experienced intensive restructuring in the world, giving rise to deterritorialization and reterritorialization. From the perspective of reterritorialization, this study investigates administrative boundary re-organization in Nanjing metropolitan region, using the case of Jiangning's abolishing county and designating district.According to the theory of territorial restructuring, this study focuses on two territorial organizations-city and state, investigating the process of administrative boundary re-organization, impacts of reterritorialization on urban development and power struggle in administrative boundary adjustment in Nanjing and Jiangning. We argue that territory restructuring is a gradual process in Nanjing metropolitan region, involving abolishing county and designating district and annexation of towns and townships into street offices. Through these administrative boundary adjustments, Jiangning is transforming from a county economy to a city economy. Its economy grows dramatically and the built-up area is extending rapidly after the administrative boundary adjustment. This is due to the independent economic and political status of Jiangning after reterritorialization to a large degree. However, with the restructuring of city space, there is little change in another territorial organization-state. Jiangning district still possesses the former county's administrative system and power. In the new city space, the new administrative system (two-layer governments-city and district) and the old administrative system (three-layer governments-city-county-town/township) co-exist. Therefore, Jiangning's reterritorialization is an incomplete process of reterritorialization due to the lack of state restructuring. Such incomplete reterritorialization causes intensive interest conflicts between city government and district government, especially in urban planning, public transportation and land use, etc. The findings of this study will shed light on other metropolitan administrative boundary re-organizations, and have important policy implementations for improving metropolitan governance.

Regionalization system of China has attained substantial achievements in the last decades by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Based on the stages of "integrated physical geographical regionalization－eco-geographical regionalization－comprehensive regionalization",significant progresses and achievements of some important regionalization schemes were introduced in this paper. In 1950s, integrated physical geographical regionalization was initiated in order to guide the distribution of agricultural production. In the 1990s, eco-geographical regionalization was carried out to instruct ecological development and environmental protection based on ecological theories and methods. Since the end of the 20th century, comprehensive regionalization has been developed along with the further research into earth science and sustainable development. A combination of physical factors with socio-economic factors has been the distinguishing characteristic of recent regionalization research. Moreover, the continuous innovation in methodology and technology, such as remote sensing, geographical information system and numerical simulation, has promoted the development of regionalization research. Regionalization system which was tightly coupled with national economic development and environmental protection would be an important direction of physical geography and even geography in future development.

Agriculture information flows will produce interactive learning effect, and the existence of interactive learning effect plays very important roles in the spread of agricultural technology. Based on the surveys in Mengzhai Village, Henan Province, we collect the data concerning the social and economic conditions on garlic production of neighbors, relatives and nearby-plot farmers, examine interactive learning effect, and analyze the interaction consequences in different types of groups. Results show that: (1) endogenous interaction effects exist only in the kinship group; (2) contextual interaction effect exists in nearby-plot groups and neighborhood group, but interactive learning effects have remarkable differences between the groups; (3) correlated effect exists in all the groups. Compared with the kinship group, the other groups have more correlated effect. Correlated effect is much weaker than endogenous interaction effect in the kinship group, and it is also smaller than contextual interaction effect in nearby-plot group and neighborhood group; (4) direction can be identified in farmers' interactive learning. This suggests that a few farmers learn new methods by communicating with external actors or accumulating the new knowledge by planting the garlic, and their interaction with other farmers might result in knowledge externalities. The size of externalities depends on the degree of intimacy between farmers. The above conclusions have some important policy implications for the diffusion of new technology in Mengzhai Village. For example, in the extension of new technology, we can select a few farmers with stronger absorptive ability in different kinship groups, encourage them to adopt new technology, and thus affect other farmers to accept new technology by the interactive effect. These results revise the findings of foreign scholars. This academic research has important meanings for policy-making.

The rural households have been increasingly taking part in diverse production activities apart from farming in poor mountain areas, which has a great impact on their land-use activities. Taking Yunyang County of Chongqing as a case study, we employed a Participatory Rural Appraisal method to investigate randomly selected 568 households and analyzed the spatial distribution of their rural housing land by using a landscape pattern analysis. The results show that the concurrent business level of rural households was high in Yunyang County. First, according to the ratio of off-farm income to the total income and the proportion of off-farm workforce inputs, we classified rural households into five groups: full-farm, farm-dominated, half-farm, non-farm-dominated and non-farm households. We find that the lower proportion of the elderly or women the households have and the higher education they get, the higher concurrent business level they will be. However, households with multiple divisions of work and a big family size tend to be at the middle stage of concurrent business. Of full-farm and farm-dominated households, the housing land area per family is relatively high, about 180 m², which indicates extensive landuse utilization. Compared with the farm-dominated households, full-farm households themselves used a large proportion of land for rearing livestock and storing groceries except for housing. The residential land of half-farm households increases by approximately 190 m² per family, indicating a relatively intensive and less diverse residential land use. For half-farm households, they reduce the land of storing and increase the land of living to enlarge their housing land. As for non-farm-dominated and non-farm households who almost drop all their farming activities, the residential land area per family tends to be lessened, about 160 to 130 m², which means a more intensive but a less diverse land use pattern. The causes are that the land used for agricultural production decreases, and the decreased land of producing is less than the expanded land of living. As a consequence, the study suggests that the adjustment or arrangement of housing land should be fit to the concurrent business needs of households.

The mechanism of the spatial dissimilarity of regional economy is an important problem for regional economic research. At present, on this problem, there are 5 research visual angles, namely factor endowments, main body of economic activity, object of economic space, division of labor and the system. The research result of each visual angle only explains the mechanism of spatial dissimilarity of regional economy from a certain aspect, the unified theoretical frame of explaining the mechanism of spatial dissimilarity of regional economy has not yet taken shape. The factors influencing the spatial dissimilarity of regional economy are multidimensional and multi-level. It is essential to consider the research results of each visual angle as a whole so that we can get a better understanding of the mechanism of spatial dissimilarity of regional economy. In view of this, this paper embarks on the connotation of the mechanism of spatial dissimilarity of regional economy, takes the relevant theories of economic growth factors and the theory about the division of labor as the rationale and constructs a theoretical analytical model for explaining the mechanism of the spatial dissimilarity of regional economy. The theoretical analytical model reveals that comprehensive factor endowments determine division of labor, and the division of labor produces the result of agglomeration. Thus, comprehensive factor endowments, division of labor and agglomeration are coupling and interacting. Under the control of this relation, in the aspect of spatial dissimilarity of regional economy, there are 3 mechanisms which are both distinguishing mutually and inseparable, namely factor endowments decision function mechanism, the conductive function mechanism of division of labor and the circulation accumulation causality mechanism. Moreover, this paper uses the theoretical analytical model to conduct the empirical analysis for the mechanism of economic spatial dissimilarity in the Yellow River Valley. The results show that there are obvious coupling interaction relations among factor endowments, division of labor and agglomeration in the Yellow River Valley, and the economic spatial dissimilarity in the Yellow River Valley is greatly affected by factor endowments decision function mechanism, the conductive function mechanism of division of labor and the circulation accumulation causality mechanism.

Geomorphology has been a main subject of the modern geography, and it has been regarded as one of the mainstay subjects in the Institute of Geography (now, the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research), CAS. The studies done by the geomorphologists in the institute have made a great contribution to national economic construction as well as to the knowledge of geomorphology. This article makes a general review on the main progress in geomorphology made by the geomorphologists in the institute since the institute was founded, including the progress in the fields of fluvial geomorphology, Loess Plateau and slope geomorphology, Tibet and Antarctic landforms and Quaternary, karst and tourism geomorphology, experiments and simulations of landform processes, and cartography of landforms. The existing Department of Geomorphology and Watershed Processes in the institute focuses on studies of slope processes and slope reclamation, sediment erosion and control in watersheds, sediment transport and river channel changes, land-ocean interactions in estuaries, Simulation of dynamic landform systems, karst landform and hydrochemical processes, regional and applied geomorphology. Some suggestions are proposed for improving the roles of the department in developing the geomorphologic sciences and serving the national economic construction.

Previous research findings have often suggested that rural migrant workers rely on social networks as a job-seeking strategy. But in Dongguan city, a typical area of the Pearl River Delta 'world factory', our study has revealed the existence of many informal and semi-legal small-scale private job agencies. The case study was conducted in Tangxia, a township in Dongguan city. The informal job agencies were examined through thorough research, focusing on their spatial distribution, organisational structure and operational processes. Furthermore, the aim was to understand the conditions of the agencies' appearance and utilities for the involved actors. The methodology employed includes explorative field investigation, participant observation, mapping of 45 informal agencies, a survey of 585 migrant workers in the manufacturing sector, interviews and casual talks with 22 migrants and agents. Their location along a street in the 138 Industrial Zone is suitable for collecting job demand information from the firms in the vicinity. The entire process of the agencies' operations is characterised by informality. Five main reasons for the existence of the informal job agencies were identified. The informal job agencies' advantages are that they are non-binding and offer comparably low cost services and flexibility. The attitude of the local government to these informal job agencies is one of tolerations, "opening one eye, and closing the other eye". Moreover, it has become obvious that the informal job-seeking agencies are playing an increasingly important role in the migrant workers' second and further job seeking after they have become familiar with the environment of the 'world factory'. Finally, it became apparent that (1) the informal job agencies' services cover not only the township of Tangxia, but also several places across Dongguan and Shenzhen. This facilitates intraregional information flow and labour mobility within the Pearl River Delta. (2) Most of the involved stakeholders are previous factory workers who gathered personal contacts to staffing departments of factories. (3) Most informal job agencies have been established in a niche, serving both consumers and suppliers of labour, but the lack of control and sanctions to prevent fraud gives them a bad reputation.

In this paper we summarize the major progress made by the scientists at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences on the study of climate change in China during the past 2000 years and provide insight to future research activities. Faced with hot scientific issue in the field from international projects, much research has been performed at the Institute in the past decade, and many new and significant results are produced in the areas of collection and compilation of various proxy data, construction of an extensive database of climate change in China, reconstruction of temperature and precipitation series, and analyses of the spatial and temporal characteristics of climate change for the past 2000 years. In the future, in addition to reconstructions of climate change based on high-resolution proxies, such as historical documents and tree-ring data, we need to increase the density and spatial coverage of the proxy data. Using the approach of historical climate modeling, the forcing mechanisms of climate change can be examined. With the advantage of the accumulated research results at the Institute, we can also investigate the interactions between climate change and human society during historical periods.

The paper attempts to set up a community participation level evaluation model based on AHP method and entropy weight theory. By taking examples of traditional village and town resorts including Zhouzhuang, Tongli, Xidi and Hongcun, community participation levels and the main influencing factors are analyzed. 1) The importance of the factors that affect community participation levels in traditional village and town resorts is, in proper order, the community participation level in tourism planning and decision-making, the community participation level in tourism income apportionment, the community participation level in tourism resources and environmental protection, publicity and education, and the community participation level in tourism operation and management. Among those factors, the community participation level in tourism planning and decision-making is the key factor. 2) The community participation level of Xidi is in a high state; while that of the rest three, i.e., Zhouzhuang, Tongli and Hongcun, are moderate. Their community participation level order from large to small is Xidi > Zhouzhuang > Tongli > Hongcun. 3) The low degree of tourism planning and decision making in community are the main reason that influences the general community participation level in China's traditional village and town resorts. 4) The principle factors that lead to community participation level difference in China's traditional village and town resorts are the operation and management modes of those resorts, the socio-economic development stage of those tourism destinations, the community tourism systems and policies and the community patterns and tourism resource properties. 5) The key measures to promote community participation level in tourism development in traditional village and town resorts are transforming management system of tourism destinations, implementing the "people-oriented" scientific development concept, and protecting the political rights of tourism development participation of the residents.

In the 1960s, the Institute of Geography called for chemical process research in physical geography and set up the first department on chemical geography in China. The department has participated in all earlier national programmes on environment, which has promoted the development of environmental sciences and technologies in China. The department also has led other institutes in the Chinese Academy of Sciences to conduct the studies on the geographic pathogeny and controlling of Keshan disease, Kaschin-Beck disease and other endemics, which has enhanced the initiation and development of medical geography in China. In 2000, the institute redistributed the department from chemical geography to environmental geography, as well as from medical geography to health geography. The expanding research works include the ecological and health risk assessment of pollutants such as heavy metals, the health risks of global environmental change, the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and their relationships with greenhouse gas emissions. Sets of technologies on site pollution treatment and health protection have been developed. Further research into environmental geography and human health will focus on the chemical property of geographic environment, so as to probe into the interactions among environment, human health and socio-economic development, for human safety and sustainable development.

The objective of this study was to explore the ecotourism perception an attitude towards environmental management of tourists visiting Jianggangshan Scenic Area in Jiangxi Province, China. A survey was conducted between December of 2005 and December of 2007, using structured questionnaires. A convenient sample of 363 tourists was interviewed during their visit to the scenic area, using the expectations questionnaire. It was found that there is much more perception of "nature base ", "tourism resources protection" and "environmental education" towards ecotourism, but less perception of "communities' interests". And different types of tourists including gender, age, education, occupation, income and traveling ways have distinct perceptions. It was also found that, the attitude towards the five types of environmental management measures, such as "responsibility to environment", "environment and resources protection", "attention to environment impact", "importance to environment education", "respecting local culture" is positive, while the attitude towards "enhancing tourists management" is negative. And several sectors of tourists' characters have significant impact on ecotourism environmental management. For example, the male tourists' attitude towards the environmental management measures consisting of "responsibility to environment", "attention to environment impact", "importance to environment education", and "enhancing tourists management" is more positive than that of female tourists. Furthermore, ecotourism perception is related to some attitude towards ecotourism environmental management according to statistical analysis. The tourists who have perception of "nature base", "tourism resources protection" and "communities' interests" hold a more positive attitude to "importance to environment education". Finally, some countermeasures on enhancing environmental management were discussed in this paper.

The Yellow River channel boundary and beach land use within Kaifeng City were mapped in detail by using 2007 SPOT 2.5 imagery, field surveys, and ArcGIS and ERDAS software. The river channel flood fringe lines of a typical 7-year period between 1992 and 2007 (less than 8000 m³/s) were generated from Landsat TM images of annual largest flood peak between 1992 and 2007, in conjunction with hydrological data along the Yellow River. Additionally, the submerged Yellow River beach areas with certain regular flood flows within Kaifeng City were created overlaid with background data. Certain levels of large floods and their potential submerged areas were calculated within the Yellow River beach in Kaifeng (especially over 8000 m³/s) based on the mathematical model of the 'downstream runoff and sediment of Yellow River' together with data obtained from a large cross section of the river channel after 2004. According to land resource management and safety requirements for flood transit within the channel, the current issues regarding the lower Yellow River are discussed, including the increased threat of floods in low beach villages, the infrastructure of agricultural development, the living condition of farmers within this Yellow River beach area, and the negative effects of brick-tile kilns and borrow pits on farmland and farming activities. Four principles of safe land use to avoid flood risk are proposed as follows: 1) protecting and using land resources to improve ecological and economic efficiencies as a whole; 2) utilizing land resources based on suitability; 3) prioritizing 'easily exploitable beach land', such as high and flat beach; 4) exploiting land resources intensively while decreasing beach land utilization rationally. Finally, four zones of safe land use to avoid flood are suggested in Kaifeng beach: a) the risk buffer zone close to the river channel (less than 4000 m³/s, about 200 m from the river course waterfront); b) the zone suitable for cultivated land near the river channel (4000-6000 m³/s); c) the zone of relatively stable land use (6000-8000 m³/s); and d) the zone of stable land use (above 8000 m³/s). At the same time, important measures of safe use beach land resources to avoid flood risk are proposed.

Urban expansion brought by the rapid progress of urbanization has caused many problems in China. It is a significant issue to evaluate the extent of urban expansion and to make appropriate controls over the sprawl of urban areas. With a comprehensive review and analysis of relative planning and economic theories as well as international experiences, this paper argued that Chinese cities have no better choice but compact urban forms. A policy package integrating planning and taxation measures should be adopted to achieve the goal of compact development. To achieve this goal, intensive use of public transportation and high proportion of collective houses should be encouraged. It is necessary to determine the best density of cities based on solid research, where the variation of cities should be considered. Based on comparative analysis, for instance, 80~105 m² per capita is recommended as the reasonable range of urban density in large and middle-scale Chinese cities with about 80% of housing stocks being collective houses.

The Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake, which occurred on 12 May 2008 in Sichuan Province, collapsed a great many houses and injured thousands of people. Undoubtedly, it can be predicted that secondary earthquake landslides, as a common secondary hazard triggered by earthquakes, will draw much attention during a long time after earthquake due to the severe geological hazard. In order to remove threat from the secondary disasters effectively, this study used remote sensing and GIS to generate susceptibility maps, taking the case of northern Wenchuan County. Seven factors affecting landslide occurrence have been taken into account in the susceptibility assessment, including elevation, slope, aspect, lithology, seismic intensity, distance to faults and rivers. According to the probability that predicts the possibility of landslide occurrence by information value method and logistic regression separately, the study area was ultimately categorized into five classes, namely, "extremely low", "low", "moderate", "high" and "very high". The result has proved to reflect closely the spatial distributions of landslides in the study area. Subsequently, these two probabilistic and statistical approaches for estimating the susceptible areas of the study area of Wenchuan County were tested. It can be concluded that the predictive capability of logistic regression model appears to be more accurate compared to information value method. It is mainly due to the fact that logistic regression could reduce effectively the subjectivity in selection of evaluation factors and weight assignment.

The study on rural residential land in China is important and complicated. There are 7.5 billion local farmers settled in 3 million villages across the country. In this paper, Zhaozhuang Village is chosen as a study area, which is located in the central region of Huang-Huai-Hai Plain. Through the analysis of high resolution airborne images data and hut-to-hut survey data, the changes of rural settlement land are examined between 1967 and 2008 by detailed land use classification. The result shows that the area of rural residential land increases by 126% from 1967 to 2008, and the main increment is from rural residential land and grain-sunning ground; the number of rural houses increases faster during the period 1985~1990 than that in other periods; rural settlements extend mainly towards the south and west, which is 182 m to south and 285 m to west. In general, the rural settlement land extension has three periods featured by gradual sprawl, leapfrogging expansion and filling space. The increase of farmers' residential demand and the enlargement of production scale are interior driving forces of rural settlement extension, and the striking contrast between inner and external condition is external environmental force. Growth of farmer income provides the economic support, however, the absence of rural land-use plan and inefficient management of rural land use makes rural extension out of control, and these interactive factors drive rural settlements to extend quickly. It is suggested that the system of rural land management should be modified and the local governments should pay more attention to the change of grain-sunning ground, waterhole and woods in the future. Finally, the authors indicate that it is important to make a long-term planning of strategic and integrated consolidation for the sustainable development of rural residential lands.

Big dams built across Luanhe River since the 1980s caused great decrease of freshwater and sediment discharges. After Taolinkou Reservoir was built in 1998, the average freshwater decreased to 596×10⁶ m³/a, and the sediment discharges reduced to 24.3×10³ t/a. The period of zero flow has prolonged in recent years. Based on remote sensing images from 1979 to 2007, the hydrological changes of the Luanhe River have greatly influenced the development of downstream channel and delta. In a few years after the construction of Panjiakou and Daheiting reservoirs, the downstream channel was cut deeply and eroded widely. But since the 1990s, huge water transfer and irrigation water from the Luanhe River has made the flow in the lower Luanhe River decrease greatly. According to the remote sensing images of 1991, 2000 and 2004, the width of the lower channel became obviously narrower due to the reduction of the river flow. The main channel was 3 to 5 km wide around Macheng in 1979, while the width decreased to less than 100 m in 2004. Although the curving cut-off took place in 1991-2000, the migration of the channel has been limited within the old channel. After 2000, the zero flow happened frequently and the curving cut-off almost ceased. Most point bars inside the Luanhe artificial levee have been reclaimed for farmlands and woodlands. In recent years, the frequent zero flow has deteriorated the river water quality. Based on the remote sensing images of 1979, 1991, 2000 and 2007, the main branch of the Luanhe Estuary in 1979 was abandoned in 1984 and changed its path to Xiaotaiwan. The new main branch kept the single path from then on. Because of the great decrease of the peak flood flow, the width of the estuarine branch became narrower from 1979 to 2007 and the width has decreased to less than 100 m recently. Since the Daheiting and Panjiakou reservoirs were built in 1984, the Luanhe Delta front has stopped growing because most sediment was trapped by the dams. Two segments of the Luanhe Delta were eroded severely. One segment was located around Puochuanmen and the average erosion rate of the sand spit was 29 m/a in recent 28 years. The other was the south flank of the Luanhe Delta, and the average recession rate was 30 m/a in 1979-1991, 24 m/a in 1991-2000, and 27 m/a in 2000-2007, respectively. The severity of recent deltaic erosion was related to the history of the abandoned river branches.

Green water is vital to vegetation recovery in karst area. Considering the processes in green water cycle, this paper coupled the canopy interception process, soil moisture movement process and evaportranspiration process, and built a green water cycle processes model to simulate and analyze green water cycle of typical vegetation types in karst area. Under the rainfall simulation experiment calibration and soil moisture monitor calibration, the model was extended to regional scale, and was used to simulate the green water cycle in a karst area, Guizhou Province, China, during October 2005 to March 2006. The results show that: First, most of the rainfall during this period turns into green water through canopy interception and infiltration into soil, which totally occupies 87.4% of rainfall and is supplied for vegetation ecosystem water use. Second, there are many differences in green water cycle processes of different vegetation types in the study area. The percentages of green water of different vegetation types are 93.3%, 93.2%, 91.5%, 81.9% for shrubs, coniferous woodland, mix woodland, grassland respectively. It can be concluded that with the vegetation recovery from grassland to shrubs and woodland in the study area, there will be more and more rainfall turning into green water which is used by the vegetation ecosystem and benefits the vegetation recovery. Third, the changes of green water cycle between months in different vegetation types share the same characteristics. The green water storage is increasing in October, January, and March in all vegetation types, and is decreasing in November, December, and February. In this period, the amount of green water is much greater than that of blue water, and the green water storage is increasing overall. Drought is unlikely to occur during October to March and the green water storage is supplemented in this period before the "spring drought" and "summer drought" in this karst area.

The study on soil carbon sequestration at regional scale is of great significance, as the Kyoto Protocol and other accords of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have prescribed that carbon (C) sequestration in soil can be included in the measures to meet the Quantified Emission Limitation or Reduction Commitments in the first period (2008~2012). The methods on estimating the amount of C sequestration in soil at regional scale were reviewed, and the development of the methods was prospected. According to the estimation accuracy and principle, the approaches could be categorized into four methods: (1) Simple model, which scaled up the estimation of SOC sequestration from local plots to region simply or by statistical model, was used widely but with low accuracy. The method was recommended in the region without sufficient data. (2) Inventory method, which was used in soil database of different periods to estimate the change of soil carbon between the two periods, could be used to estimate the amount of carbon sequestered in soil in the past with higher precision, but it could not be used to predict the change of soil carbon in the future. (3) Empirical model including the Book-keeping Model and the Tier 1 and Tier 2 recommended in IPCC Report (2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories) could provide environmental interpretation in soil carbon sequestration with no mechanism explanation. (4) Mechanism model developed from soil organic matter mechanism model (e.g. CENTURY model) based on geographic information system (GIS) could estimate SOC sequestration with highest accuracy among these four methods, which could also provide mechanism explanation in the process of the change in SOC. In summary, each type of the four methods had its own limitation and applicability, so the methods should be chosen based on the site-specific conditions and the research purposes. Finally, based on the analysis of some gaps in the mechanism of soil carbon sequestration, scaling, scenario analysis and soil organic matter model, we proposed that the integrated model,based on GIS, coupling SOM mechanism model, land-use model, econometrical model and regional scale eco-hydrological model, would be developed for studying soil carbon sequestration at regional scale in the future.

Land development and consolidation plan is bound to affect ecological environmental conditions within the planned area. However, the specific evaluation method, index system and modeling algorithm should be standardized. By taking Lianshui County of Jiangsu Province as an example, Land Development and Arrangement Plan of Lianshui County (2000~2010) was analyzed, and the affection was compared by a evaluation model of scenarios. The result shows that the influence in 1997 was lower than in 2000 in Lianshui County. This can be explained as: during the three years, not only the occupation of cultivated land has been strictly controlled, but more cultivated lands have been transferred also. Environmental quality declined in 2010 because of without planning. The possible reason is that the construction of land fragmented farmland and unutilized land, which increases density of plaques. In comparison of future scenarios without planning and with planning in 2010, it is indicated that eco-environmental conditions could obviously increase by 0.6736 percentage point. This shows that proper land development and consolidation plan plays an important role in promoting a healthy eco-environment within the planned area.

The Qinling Mountain Range is considered as an important geo-ecological boundary between the warm temperate and the subtropical zones in eastern China, however, the specific line of the boundary has been controversial among the academic circles. Several studies based on vegetation ecology and flora geography have been done on discussing the division of this boundary, but in all of which Pteridophyta is not included. Pteridophyta is a transitional link between different flora groups in plant evolution, and thus is more sensitive to the environment that fosters it than other plant groups. It is conducive to and necessary for a better understanding of the division of the geo-ecological boundary in Qinling Mountain Range to research into the Range's Pteridophyta flora. In this paper, the composition and geographical elements of the flora of Pteridophyta were studied, and the division of the vertical Pteridophyta spectrum and the further division of the geo-ecological boundary in Qinling Mountain Range were also discussed, by applying the principles of classical florology and using quantitative ecology method as TWINSPAN and DCA into the analyses, based on comparison between the field investigation data and the relevant literatures. The results of our research have shown and revealed: 1) There are 311 species of Pteridophyta, belonging to 85 genera and 36 families in the Qinling Mountain Range; in which the dominant families are Dryopteridaceae, Athyriaceae, and Polypodiaceae, and the dominant genera Dryopteris and Polystichum; meanwhile, the main areal-types of family and genera are tropical elements, while the areal-types of species is dominated by the temperate elements. 2) The altitude of 1000 m a.s.l. at the southern piedmont of the Range should be an important ecological boundary, since the floristic composition of the Pteridophyta below this elevation showed more similar features to the subtropics, while above it the features of the composition and the vertical vegetation spectrum of the Pteridophyta are much closer to the temperate zones. 3) DCA ordination of FER (floristic element ratio) among 15 regions in northern and southern China and the both sides of Qinling Mountain Range strongly supported the hypothesis mentioned above. Based on these results, we tend to deem that the geo-ecological boundary between the subtropical and warm temperate zones lies around the altitude of 1000 m a.s.l. at the southern piedmont of the Range.

Recently, a lot of orchards in the gully region of the Loess Plateau have been degenerated, which should be returned to cultivated land. But the ecological water effect of returning orchard to cultivated land is still unclear. Taking the Wangdonggou watershed as a case study, this paper chose three land use types such as peak period orchard, waste orchard and cultivated land converted from orchard, the ecological water effects of returning orchard to cultivated land have been studied based on the soil moisture data of 1986, 2002 and 2009. The results show that: (1) The mean soil moisture content and water storage of wasted orchard and cultivated land converted from orchard are significantly bigger than those of the peak period orchard in 2009. With the orchard disuse or return to cultivated land, the soil moisture content will increase significantly. (2) When the land use changes from peak period orchard in 2002 to cultivated land in 2009, the mean soil moisture content of 200-600 cm profile of cultivated land converted from orchard is 10.62%, which is significantly bigger than that of the peak period orchard (8.53%). (3) Dried soil layer affected by biota use is a common soil water phenomenon in the peak period orchard, wasted orchard, and cultivated land converted from orchard, which is an urgent ecological problem that need to be resolved.

The impact of anthropogenic activities on carbon cycle is fulfilled through land use change. It is helpful to study the impacts of land use change on carbon cycle through linking carbon emissions to different land use types. By using data of energy consumption and land use of Jiangsu province from 2003 to 2007, this paper estimated carbon emission by energy consumption through carbon emission model, and analyzed the carbon emission and carbon footprint of different land use types through linking carbon emission to different land use types. The conclusions can be drawn as follows.(1) Total carbon emission from energy consumption of Jiangsu province increased from 8792.24×10⁴ t (2003) to 16329.85×10⁴ t (2007) with an annual rate of 86%, of which carbon emission from terminal fossil energy use accounted for 53.6%. Because carbon emission from fossil energy use was the main reason for the increase of total carbon emission, developing clean energy and improving energy efficiency are the key methods to decreasing total carbon emission. (2) Per unit area carbon emission of Jiangsu increased from 8.24 t/hm² (2003) to 15.53 t/hm² (2007) with an annual rate of 88.5%, of which per unit area carbon emission from residential and industrial areas was the highest (95.62 t/hm²), indicating that dwelling districts and industrial parks were the regions that contributed carbon emission mostly. So, improving energy structure and improving energy efficiency of the above regions was crucial in carbon emission reduction. (3) Carbon footprint of energy consumption was greater than the area of ecological productive land, and the ecological deficit was 1351.28×10⁴ hm² in Jiangsu in 2007. It is indicated that the carbon absorption of terrestrial ecosystems of Jiangsu Province cannot compensate the carbon emission of energy use. So strengthening environmental protection and enhancing carbon sequestration rate could effectively decrease the carbon emission intensity. (4) The descending order of carbon footprint of different land use types was: residential and industrial area, transportation area, unused land and special use area, agricultural land and water conservancy area. So, adjusting the land use pattern and introducing carbon footprint and carbon emission reduction into land use planning is one of the effective methods to reduce regional carbon footprint. (5) Per unit area carbon footprint of Jiangsu increased from 0.938 hm²/hm² (2003) to 1.769 hm²/hm² (2007), which indicates that the carbon footprint of land use had been expanded since 2003.

The runoff erosion formation and the sediment yield intensity present a vertical distribution because of the complicated topography and the special climate condition in the Loess Plateau of China. The variation of vegetation distribution has great effects on sediment yield in slope-gully system because of the erosion spatial variability. The authors, taking the slope-gully system as a research object, which is composed of the 4-meter-long slope and the 3-meter long gully slope, made a series of simulated scouring experiments under different flow discharges (3.2 L/min, 5.2 L/min). This paper studies the effects of different flow discharges, different vegetation distribution along the slope (up-slope, middle-slope and down-slope) and different vegetation coverages (0, 30%, 50%, 70%, and 90%) to the sediment yielding of slope-gully system. The results show that, the total runoff volume and the process of runoff yield have no obvious difference among the three types of different transplanted grass on slope under the same grass coverages and the same flow discharges, but the sediment yield has distinct variation among the three types. That is, different types of grass decrease the sediment yield not by reducing the runoff volume. The total runoff discharge is only related to the grass coverage on slope and the flow discharge under the experimental condition. The amount of sediment yield on gully section increases with the increase of the flow discharges under the same grass coverage, as well as the same transplanted grass on slope. The amount of sediment yield on gully section did not show a decreasing tendency when the flow discharge is raised, but showed an increasing tendency instead. According to this result, if we only take the measure of harnessing the slope without harnessing the gully, the amount of sediment of gully section will increase with the rise of flow discharges. So we should give attention to slope and gully when we harness the soil and water loss in watersheds of the Loess Plateau.

Due to the existence of international commodity trade flows and economic activity globalization, responsibility for carbon emission reduction at a national territorial level would easily result in carbon leakage, thus may lead to significant misunderstanding in evaluating reduction performance. Accordingly, trans-boundary displacement of emissions resulted from inter-country flows of goods through international trade should be taken into account in the international negotiation on global climate change. This paper attempts to explore international competitiveness of China's iron and steel industry from intra-industry trade flows and associated energy consumption and CO₂ emission embodied within these trade flows. China is not only the biggest producer and consumer of iron and steel products but also the biggest exporter and importer of iron and steel commodities in the world. From the perspective of intra-industry trade, China's iron and steel industry is at the bottom of the vertical intra-industry trade. In other words, China has a comparative advantage in primary products as low-tech or low value-added and carbon-rich products along the production chain. Such division of China's iron and steel industry in international trade has contributed a lot to the sharp increase of domestic energy consumptions and carbon emissions of China. In 2007, the energy consumption and the corresponding CO₂ emissions embodied in the iron and steel commodities exported from China amounted to 54.3 Mtce and 142 Mtce, respectively, accounting for 11.4% of the total energy consumption and CO₂ emission of iron and steel industry in China. In addition, due to the greater carbon-intensity and relatively less efficient production processes of Chinese iron and steel manufacturing, the bilateral trade between China and trade partners resulted in approximately 119 Mt CO₂ emission leakage to China. The results presented here have a clear implication for CO₂ emission reduction policies. It is suggested that a consumption-based CO₂ emission accounting system which subtracts the emissions embodied in exports form domestic production-based inventories and adds the emissions embodied in imports to the consumer economies would be a fairer method of allocating responsibility for emission.

The channel variation of the Ningmeng Reach has been very remarkable in the upper Yellow River and has increased flood risk. To reveal the channel variation trend and its influencing factors the sediment budget method was adopted in this study. The Ningmeng channel was divided into 5 sub-reaches, simultaneously, the total time period was divided into the 5 time periods. The mean annual erosional or depositional suspended sediment capacity (SSC) at the 5 different sub-reaches during the different time periods was calculated and analyzed. The results show that, sedimentation strongly occurred during 1952~1959 when there was no big reservoir and during 1994~2003 when the three big reservoirs of Qingtongxia, Liujiaxia and Longyangxia had been built and the downstream channel had been adequately adjusted. The mean annual SSC is 9.588×10⁷ t/a and 9.503×10⁷ t/a for the two periods, respectively. Intense erosion (-6.127×10⁷ t/a), slight deposition (0.161×10⁷ t/a) and stronger deposition (7.475×10⁷ t/a) respectively occurred in the periods of 1960~1968, 1969~1985 and 1986~1993. The mean annual deposited SSC is 3.45×10⁷t/a in the Ningmeng Reach, including 0.76×10⁷ t/a in the Ningxia reach and 2.69×107 t/a in the Neimenggu reach. The annual mean SSC deposited in the 5 downstream channel reaches in the Ningmeng Reach of the Yellow River is 0.73×10⁷ t/a, 0.029×10⁷ t/a, 0.084×10⁷ t/a, 1.131×10⁷ t/a and 1.47×10⁷ t/a, respectively. The temporal variation of the SSC in the Ningmeng Reach of the Yellow River was mostly influenced by the decrease of suspended sediment load from the tributaries and reservoir construction, whereas, the spatial variation was mostly influenced by the interception of suspended sediment load in the Qingtongxia reservoir and adjustment of flood discharge in the Liujiaxia and Longyangxia reservoirs. The Ningmeng Reach is located in a subsidized area and the sedimentation in this river reach is the general trend. Human activities may induce channel erosion in certain periods or sub-reaches, but cannot change the general trend.