Coastal cities are not only regions with frequent natural disasters, but also important regions and strategic centers with high population density and highly-developed economy. Owing to the global warming, sea-level rising, and the interaction of land and ocean, the vulnerability and the natural disasters risk level of the coastal cities have remarkably increased, and the losses caused by natural disasters are enormous. Therefore, the research on the natural disaster risk of the coastal cities has become a focus owing to the importance and the high risk of the coastal cities exposure to natural disasters. Longwan District of Wenzhou City has seriously affected by flood disaster resulted from rainstorm of typhoon and storm surge. Beach aquaculture and fishery in Longwan District are well developed, but the annual typhoon flood season often results in casualties and great economic losses. Flood risk assessment and regionalization research in this region is not only able to make up inadequate studies on flood risk in mountainous and hilly cities, but also able to enrich and develop the theories and methodologies of urban flood risk management. Scenario-based studies on rainstorm flood risk assessment are especially carried out on the basis of mountainous and hilly regions in mediumand small watersheds down streams and flooding scenarios at different return periods in Longwan District, Wenzhou. By calculating the frequency of precipitation of heavy rain in Longwan District of Wenzhou City, the different precipitation and flow depths of different return periods were obtained. With the aid of self-compiled GIS program and flood scenario simulation on the basis of "precipitation volumetric method", and taking consideration of natural factors such as surface runoff, topographic relief and infiltration, this article simulates flood surface level at different return periods, calculates respective flooding areas corresponded to different submerge depths range, and evaluates rainstorm flood risk in Longwan District in terms of flood submerge depths. The paper simulates typical flooding scenario caused by history-recorded typhoon rainstorms and evaluates the risk with the data observed when typhoon "Haitang" occurred in Longwan District in 2005.

Office space agglomeration problem is one of the main topics in urban geography research. Office cluster, as an important form of industry cluster, reflects a characteristic of new economic growth space after urban economies transformation. Furthermore, there is an inevitable outcome of urban development to top-ranked level. On the basis of the locations of 976 office buildings in Beijing city including Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (Yizhuang), this paper uses the kernel method firstly to analyze the respective concentrative degree of the spatial distribution of urban office activities. Then, with the aid of Crimestat software, it distinguishes different order clusters, investigates the present situation of office cluster, and demonstrates its distributional features and the formation causes. The results show that there are obvious office clusters in Beijing city, and three features are identified. The first is that there is remarkable difference between south and north with the Chang'an Avenue as the divide. The first order clusters are mostly situated in the north, and there is also difference between east and west separated by the traditional central axis, in particular they tend to be concentrated east of the axis, presenting a dispersal pattern on the whole with partial concentration. The second is that the first order clusters come along with transportation lines and the direction of long axis parallel lines. The third is that nearly 3/4 of office clusters are concentrated in urban functional expanding area, consisting of four districts in outer city, and that only 1/4 of office clusters are concentrated in inner city, which is different from office activities agglomeration in inner city in the western metropolises. The reasons can be summarized as follows. First, economic function division has promoted the formation of office clusters. Second, the boundaries of administration districts have become the natural obstacles to the expansion of office space. Third, the distribution of office clusters has been greatly affected by urban function. So, CBD, financial street, Zhongguancun and Shangdi are the representative office clusters in Beijing city.

Since the 1980s Chinese cities have experienced dramatic transformation of its land use system from free allocation toward a leasehold system. Recent literature has drawn attention to spatial features of land market in transitional Chinese cities, in comparison to its counterparts in advanced market economies. Nonetheless, research on this issue haven been limited by the lack of systematic data-especially spatial data-on land leasing parcels as well as other related data sources. Based on about 2600 residential land leasing parcel data from 1992 to 2006 and Beijing Digital City integrated data, this paper is processing general evaluation and actual description of the tempo-spatial characteristics of the residential lands' expansion since China launched the market-oriented land-leasing policy in 1992. The authors choose the spatial analysis methods with the aid of GIS, to evaluate the spatial pattern in the downtown area of Beijing. Generally speaking, the residential land market has a "Classic Concentric" overall pattern and an obvious spatial differentiation structure over time. In particular, we studied some major residential districts of Beijing including CBD, Zhongguancun, and Olympic-Park district etc. Based on the analysis, we found that: (1) The residential land-leasing market of Beijing showed a growing trend from 1992 to 2006, with the expansion of the residential lands' number, size, and the flat tendency of residential land price; (2) Residential land price showed a "North high-South low" spatial pattern, and residential land number and size showed an "East high-West low" spatial distribution structure; (3) The high residential land price sections extended from city center to the outside from 1992 to 2006 gradually; (4) The Tianqiao and CBD districts have become the highest residential land price sections of the North-South axis and the East-West axis, respectively. And the residential land price is relatively high in some districts with better locations. We believe our research would enrich the existing knowledge of the emerging urban land market in transitional China, and provide information for further land and housing policy making.

Facing the huge gaps between the urban villages and urban area around them in land use efficiency, landscape, social life and planning control, local developmental states initiate institutional transition—land ownership is changed from collective owned to state owned land, villagers are admitted as citizens and collectives are reorganized as companies to manage their assets. 'Transitional Communities’ thus emerged. Simultaneously, redevelopment of the physical environment of transitional communities is launched. This research aims at identifying the existing problems of land use in transitional communities, and analyzing the hampers for redevelopment. It has been revealed that institutional transition has not eliminated the hampers for redevelopment but aggravated them. This conclusion is based on three facts as follows: 1. land ownership of new 'state-owned land' is incomplete, and could not promote land users to redevelop; 2. legal and illegal land is interwoven, increasing the cost for land assembly and redevelopment; 3. cost and revenue for land use in 'transitional communities' are disequilibrium for different land users, causing the low proportion of public facility provision by the collectives, the high density development of villager houses and low quality of factories and workshops. According to this, the research suggests that, 1. local governments should provide public facilities in which collectives could hardly burden and reclaim the cost by introducing public facility tax, etc.; 2. the governments should punish the former urban villagers for illegal housing development to avoid overuse of the land; 3. complete property rights should be offered to land in 'transitional community' to increase the value of the land and crease incentive for higher and better development; 4. redevelopment area could cover not only previously collective owned land but also some state owned land to make overall plans and take all factors into consideration for redevelopment.

Based on a large-scale household survey conducted in Nanjing in 2005, this study aims to provide a better understanding of poverty incidence in a contemporary Chinese city and poverty concentration in different social groups, and also profiles poverty groups. Covering not only urban working residents, but also urban unemployed/laid-off residents and rural migrants, this study reveals a more realistic poverty incidence than the official figure would suggest. To understand poverty concentration in different social groups, a total of 1370 cases are categorized into urban households without unemployed, urban households with unemployed, and rural migrants. Two types of poverty measures, poverty line and the sense of deprivation, are compared across different social groups to show different patterns of poverty concentration, in particular the variation in three types of households. To capture an initial portrait of the urban poor, the Nanjing study focuses on the most essential elements of their daily lives, i.e. demographic characteristics, access to social entitlements, housing conditions, neighbourhood interactions and social networks. Urban households with unemployed have a similar poverty incidence to rural migrants; and the latter suffer a series of interrelated disadvantages. There are distinct groups of urban poor, each being affected by a particular set of impoverishing factors. Poor urban-registered households are typically characterised by unfavourable personal or household characteristics, such as a large number of dependent household members and prior employment in a state owned enterprise. The impoverishment of rural migrants is largely connected with institutional discrimination such as lack of rights to social security benefits and unfavourable employment opportunities, rural migrants remain as outsiders of the urban society in terms of both living conditions and social welfare provision on the other.

Based on the National Census of Basic Units and an analysis of 161 postal districts in Beijing, this paper studies Beijing's layer structure of manufacturing between 1996 and 2001 and its driving forces.By taking density mutation and total quantity change of manufacturing employment as the criteria, Beijing can be divided into three layers: the central urban area with manufacturing decline has extended to the Fourth Ring Road; the suburban active region of both newly-built and relocated enterprises has rapidly extended to most of the plain areas; manufacturing growth in the mountainous outer suburban counties is still slow.The factor decomposition shows that the evolution of manufacturing layer structure is driven by electric and electronic industries, metal and non-metallic products industries, private enterprises and large and medium-sized enterprises. The adjustment of scale and industrial structure also plays a certain role. We also find the trend of intra-layer diversification and equalization of industries and inter-layer convergence of industrial structure. The middle layer to which the intensification of land use is of paramount importance will maintain its manufacturing superiority in a long period. Urban industries are recommended in the central urban area and ecological conservation should be the premise of outer suburbanization.

The central Jilin Province is one of the most important old industrial bases and major grain-producing areas in China, where the urban-rural development has its typical regional background and uniqueness. It is great practical significant and referenced value to promote the coordinated development of urban-rural system and to establish new urban-rural pattern by discussing the associativity and its regional difference of urban-rural areas. Based on statistical data and surveys of 24 spatial units, by the method of BP neural network, ESDA and GIS, the urban-rural association degrees in the major grain-producing areas of central Jilin Province were evaluated quantitatively, and the spatial relationship and regional difference were also analysed in this paper. The results are shown as follows. First, Moran's I of urban-rural association is -0.1205, which means the regional urban-rural association presents a weaker diffused trend; and the unbalanced development of economy, society and infrastructure is the key factor restricting the harmonious development of urban-rural relationship. Second, the spatial difference of urban-rural development is obvious, and the associativity of prefecture-level municipal districts are significantly superior to county-level cities, and the relationships of economy, society and infrastructure are demonstrated respectively in the spatial structure of "spheres", "cross-type" and "massive". Third, the urban-rural association takes on a weaker accumulated trend as a whole, and lower discrepant regions are mainly distributed along the Harbin-Dalian railway line, but higher discrepant regions are mainly distributed in the low mountains and hills of southeastern regions and the five prefecture-level municipal districts. Moreover, the associativity of economy, society and infrastructure are demonstrating respectively the trend of weaker diffusion, stronger proliferation and stronger diffusion.

Inbound tourism is an important channel for one country (or region) to earn foreign exchange and to solve the employment. The number of inbound tourists and foreign exchange earnings is a main indicator of the country's (region's) tourism development level, while the inbound tourists' tourism consumption level and consumption structure is an important basis to reflect the quality of inbound tourism consumption. This paper takes the cross-section data of inbound tourists' tourism consumption from 1996 to 2005,constructs a series of the characterization indexes and takes an empirical analysis on the changes and the regional differences of the inbound tourists' tourism consumption. The result shows that in the past 10 years, per capita consumption level of inbound tourism has significantly increased, but the consumption is still lagging behind. Chinese inbound tourism consumption structure in "The Ninth 5-year Plan" has more changes,while after "The Tenth 5-year Plan" it goes stable and rational. From the regional differences of per capita consumption, compared with the regional tourism foreign exchange earnings, in the consumption structure of inbound tourists,all kinds of expenditures have shown a steady state, with uneven levels decreased over time. But compared to the level of foreign exchange earnings of tourism, the areas of hosting the more foreign tourists are low in the level of per capita consumption, where the growth of inbound tourists was more dependent on the overall expansion. So,the research conclusion has an important realistic significance to the development of the regional inbound tourism. The research shows that Chinese inbound tourism is still in a large-scale expansion phase. Owing to the effects of consumer inertia, the future increase in tourism consumption level and consumption structure optimization is still faced with many difficult tasks. Therefore, the shaping and improvement of tourism consumption systems and security system will create a relaxed environment for tourism consumption and the optimal adjustment of the tourism products' supply structure will promote the quality of tourism consumption,which will achieve the level of inbound tourism consumption and the simultaneous development of inbound tourism,and achieve inbound tourism development from quantity expansion to quality and efficiency.

Healthy tourism landscape provides fundamental basis for the realization of tourism sustainable development. Assessment of tourism landscape health will be of great significance to identify potential crisis, strategy and decision making for tourism destination management. Based on the summary and analysis of landscape health theory and tourism landscape characteristics, integrated assessment indexes system was established according to the pressure-state-response model. The results of tourism landscape health assessment were classified into five categories through entropy weight-grey relation-fuzzy method. This paper, taking Nanjing Jiangxizhou as a case study, assessed tourism landscape health of 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2007. Results shows that the tourism landscape comprehensive health index decreased during the period of intensive opening up from 2001 to 2002, then the rate of decline slowed down after 2002, and began to increase after 2005, but kept a level of semi-health, hence the relationship between tourism activity and environment still needs to be adjusted. Although the tendency of state index of tourism landscape health exhibited short decreasing and then slightly uprising, under the disturbance of intense tourism activity and environmental pollution, even facing the risk of disappearing. Unreasonable infrastructure land use, agricultural pollution, deforestation and fragmentation contribute more to tourism landscape health change, which should be given more attention.

With regards to the regional differentiation of folk beliefs, most of previous researches focus on the large scale regions in which there are clear differences in dialects. Within the small scale regions which belong to villages in the same town and have no difference in dialects, people still have different gods. In this paper, niche theory and niche breadth measure model are used in the micro-analysis of folk belief differentiation in three different villages in Quanzhou Donghai Town, which are Xunpu, Baoshan and Fashi. The results show that in such small scale regions with no difference in dialects, the most important factor which influences gods' niche breadth is the correlation between gods' functions and the industries in the regions. In the region, the gods' influence, distribution and function changes are all dominated by the law. The Gods' regional differentiation due to the gods' niche breadth correlates with the differentiation of regional industries. Differentiation of regional industries is formed by geographical conditions. Therefore, the regional differentiation of the gods with specific functions is closely related with the natural geographic environment. Agricultural Gods dominate agricultural regions while gods who bless the safety of seafaring dominate regions with industries regards to marine transport and fisheries. In the transitional zone, two types of gods' niche overlap and change with competition. In small scale regions, gods with universal functions have smaller niche breadth than those with functions which are highly related with regional economy. But in large scale regions, gods with universal functions have larger niche breadth than others. In the same region, god's niche breadth changes with changes of god's functions' and regional industries. The same gods in different regions have different niche breadths according to their functions and main regional industries. The results of folk gods' niche breaths which are calculated with niche breadth model accord with the influence and distribution of gods in three villages which confirms the feasibility of applying niche theory to the regional researches of folk beliefs.

Ecosystem research has experienced important progress since the beginning of the 21st century. A series of hot scientific themes have aroused much attention of the academic realm such as biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, ecosystem management, ecological risks and ecological security, the ecological responses and effects of global change. The general trend of contemporary ecological research is multidimensional and can be summarized as deepening the scientific understanding on ecological mechanisms, ecosystem monitoring and modeling across spatiotemporal scales, integrative ecosystem assessment and management with consideration of both socioeconomic and biophysical factors. The socioeconomic development in China is faced with serious challenges for the limited natural resource reserve and disturbing environmental problems. In response to these challenges, large scale ecological conservation and restoration projects have already been implemented across the country, for which many scientific questions in ecosystem research are urgently needed for resolution. This paper proposed some priority areas and important directions for ecosystem science in China based on the integrative analysis of the trends and frontiers of international level ecological research and the practical needs for the relationship between environmental and development in China.

As an important measure to reduce the sediment entering the Yellow River, a great number of reservoirs and check-dams have been built in the Wudinghe River basin, trapping huge amount of sediment. As a result, artificial sediment sink formed, which greatly reduced sediment delivery ratio of the river. The influence of artificial sediment sink on sediment delivery ratio is an important issue in fluvial geomorphology, but so far there has been little research devoted to this issue. Based on data from 1956 to 1996 in the Wudinghe River basin, artificial sediment sink, erosion amount and sediment delivery ratio (SDR) have been calculated, temporal variation in these variables has been analyzed, and multiple regression equations have been established. These results show that (1) sediment yield and erosion amount decreased; (2) artificial sediment sink increased to a peak and then decreased; (3) SDR decreased to a minimum and then increased. This indicates that the temporal variation in SDR is mainly controlled by the variation in artificial sediment sink. To reveal quantitatively how the water and soil conservation measures and other factors influence sediment delivery ratio, multiple regression analysis has been conducted. The multiple regression equation shows that SDR increases with the increases in high-flow season precipitation (P_6-9), the annual maximum 1-day rain amount (P₁), the annual maximum 30-day cumulative rain amount (P₃₀), and the runoff to precipitation ratio (C_r), but decreases with the increases in the areas of land terracing, tree and grass planting (A_tfg) and the area of land created by check-dams (A_c). The increase in A_c makes the largest contribution to the decrease in SDR, and the decrease in C_r makes the second contribution. Among the three indices of precipitation, P₃₀ makes the largest contribution, P_6-9 the second and P₁ the third. In two types of soil-water conservation measures, the effect of A_c on SDR is much larger than that of A_tfg.

Unpaved road is a ubiquitous feature in mountainous areas. Although such roads facilitate the use and management of natural resources, they may result in adverse changes in watershed processes. In particular, they can alter hydrologic processes that influence sediment transport and delivery. In this paper, the Wangjiaqiao Watershed, located in the Three Gorges Area (TGA), is taken as a case study area to understand the impacts of unpaved roads on hydrologic processes, sediment transport, and sediment delivery at small watershed scale from a multidisciplinary perspective. The results showed that roads on the TGA could be classified into 3 classes based on their functions and scales. The event- and physics-based KINEROS2 runoff/erosion model for predicting overland flow generation and sediment production was applied to unpaved roads. Field rainfall simulations conducted in the TGA provided independent data for model calibration and validation. Validation showed that KINEROS2 can be parameterized to simulate total discharge, sediment transport and sediment concentration on small-scale road plots during simulated rainfall events. Differences between measured and simulated values in total runoff and total soil loss were about 3.6%-14.7% and 4.5%-31.8%, respectively. The KINEROS2 model, however, did not accurately predict time-dependent changes in sediment output and concentration. In particular, early flush peaks and the temporal decay in sediment output were not predicted.

Taking the lakes and depressions along the Huaihe River region as the research object, several indexes including the rainfall, runoff, terrain, rivers, land use, population, and economic data, were combined in this study, based on the principles of risk assessment for natural disasters and flood disasters factors such as the fatalness of inducing factors and the vulnerability of hazard bearing body. Preprocessing models provided by GIS software were used to standardize related parameters, and the standardized multi-source datasets in raster format were obtained. Models for evaluating the rainstorm and flood disaster risks were developed with the ModelBuilder tools of ArcGIS9.2 by combining various influencing factors, and the weights of which were determined through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. Then a comprehensive flood risk rating map was generated through the map algebra functions in GIS and the comprehensive index method. The results of the comprehensive risk assessment of storm disaster were validated with the regional rainstorm and flood inundation area in the Huaihe River region in 2003. Statistical analysis shows that flood inundated area was 60.66% in the extremely high risk zone, 33.29% in the high risk zone, and 6.05% in the medium risk zone. Results indicate that the accuracy of the proposed approach reaches 93.95% in middle and high risk areas along the Huaihe River. The high accuracies in this study suggest that the proposed model and the generated comprehensive flood risk rating map yield valuable significance for supporting decision-making on flood disasters.

In the context of global warming and human activities, drought has become one of the most serious meteorological disasters in the world. As a major grain producing province in China, Hebei Province shows great vulnerability to drought. In this paper, standardized precipitation index (SPI) was used as drought indicator and precipitation in meteorological stations of China from 1958 to 2007 was used to calculate the index in spring, summer, autumn and winter. Kriging interpolation was applied to SPI values in each station so that all the values could be spatially and temporally comparable. Based on raster data of seasonal SPI, drought rate and drought probability were calculated to show the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of drought in Hebei Province over the past 50 years. The results showed that spring drought was the most serious event in a year and the drought rate showed a gradually declining trend. Drought rate in summer presented an upward trend, but in autumn and winter it showed slightly declining trends. The 50-year average drought rates in spring, summer, autumn and winter were 30.0%, 26.0%, 27.6% and 26.0%, respectively. Over the past 50 years in Hebei Province, spring drought in the 1970s was the most severe one. The most serious interdecadal droughts occurred respectively in summer since 2000, autumn in the 1960s and winter in the 1990s. Occurrence probability of spring drought was more than 20% in the whole province and drought-prone areas with the probability more than 30% were almost distributed in each city. In most areas, occurrence probability of summer drought, autumn drought and winter drought was from 20% to 30%. In summer, drought-prone areas were mainly located in the north and southwest of Hebei. Drought-prone areas in autumn were mainly located in the western and southern parts and in winter they were mainly distributed in the northern part. In order to do a good job in drought prevention and mitigation in Hebei Province, government and agricultural managers should pay more attention to the droughts that occur from spring to autumn, especially the spring drought. Moreover, irrigation systems should be further strengthened and improved in the mountain farms mainly located in the west and north of Hebei Province.

The Tibetan Plateau is sensitive to climate change, and its detailed trend of climate change is highly interesting. Temperature change is a key content of climate change. Currently, more studies focused on statistical meaning of temperature change, but ignored its biological meaning. In this study, mean temperature of the warmest month (TWM), mean temperature of the coldest month (TCM), accumulated temperature of duration temperature ≥10℃(AT₁₀), duration with mean daily temperature ≥10℃ (DT₁₀), accumulated temperature of duration temperature ≥5℃ (AT₅), duration with mean daily temperature ≥5℃ (DT₅), accumulated temperature of duration temperature ≥0℃ (AT₀) and duration with mean daily temperature ≥0℃ (DT₀) were selected as representative bio-temperature indexes due to clear biological meaning, and their changing tendencies were analyzed based on observation data of 87 stations on the Tibetan Plateau during 1966-2005. The result indicated that TWM and TCM increased significantly with different velocities, and that also it slowed down with different variation tendencies on the spatial distribution. Even contrary variation tendency between TWM and TCM was found at some stations, but its significance level is lower. AT₁₀, AT₅ and AT₀ were ascending with high significance level, with the largest increase in AT₁₀, followed by AT₅ and AT₀. Differences with variation tendency of AT₁₀, AT₅ and AT₀, DT₅ had been greatly rising, followed by DT₁₀ and DT₀. As far as significance level was concerned, DT₁₀ was the highest, followed by DT₁₀ and DT₀. In general, air temperature of the Tibetan Plateau is rising, which can affect ecological niche and eco-geographical boundary, and make structures and functions of ecosystem modified adaptive to temperature change.

The paralleled ridge-valley area of the Sichuan basin have quite important ecological status, but its land use pattern of mountain and hills has been changed by the urban sprawl of Chongqing city in the past ten years. In this paper, the Chongqing Urban Section located in the eastern paralleled ridge-valley area was chosen as an example, and was divided into five subareas according to the northern-southern low mountains patterns to explore how the channels and low mountain obstruct effect influence the construction land pattern expansion and evolution, through comparing and analyzing the pattern of urban land use evolution and the area proportion of urban land of all subareas. The image data of MSS in 1978, TM in 1986, 1995, 2000 and CBERS in 2006 were chosen as a datum source. In 1978-2000, the relatively slow process of urbanization in subareas except Geleshan-Tongluoshan reflects the low mountain obstructive effect fully. In 2000-2006, with the construction of belt freeway, the tunnels across north-south of low-mountain, the river-spanning bridges and the gradual improvement of other radialized highways, urban dynamic expansion degree of the west of the Geleshan and the east of the Tongluoshan is 601.32%, and 143.22%, respectively. Therefore, man-made channels play a significant role in the rapid expansion processes of the construction land, and there is obvious channel effect of the traffic network is in the study area. Furthermore, it is very necessary to do further research about the possible scope of land-use change affected by channels in order to optimize patterns of construction land in the study area. The research results of this paper could provide a basis for the optimization of land use pattern and man-land relationship of the study area.

The Songnen Plain is an important grain production base in China. As a typical vulnerable area of eco-environment, its west part is one of the foci of land use and sandy desertification study. In this paper, Tailai County, a typical sandy desertification region in the Songnen Plain was taken as an example, and a method integrating remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) and field survey was employed to build the dataset of land use and sand desertification for analysis. Remote sensing images included the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) image in 1986 and 2000, and the image with the Charge-Coupled Device Camera (CCD) on the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) in 2005. Moreover, the land use change and dynamic response of sandy desertification were further analyzed by spatial analysis model of GIS. Results showed that quantity and degree of land use remarkably changed at a region level, and the response of sandy desertification was also remarkable. First, the degree of land use change was mainly aggravated, and it increased by leaps and bounds in the period 1986-2000, and slowed down in the period 2000-2005. Second, the general trend of sandy desertification was gradually increasing, at a rate of 40.7 hm²/a in the former period and 8 hm²/a in the latter period. Furthermore, low coverage grassland and forest were distributed in the highest risk region of sandy desertification, and had an increasing trend. Third, the transformation of land use had great impacts on sandy desertification. Although sandy desertification degree of land use unchanged was mainly mitigated, the transformation area of cultivated land and low coverage grassland to sand land was much larger than the area of sand land converted to them, thus it was still at the risk of further increase. The region of land use changed has been suffering sandy desertification since 1986 with two different desertification periods identified. The first period (1986-2000) saw severe sandy desertification, and in the second period (2000-2005) the sandy desertification was weakened greatly. On the whole, land use tended to be unreasonable, although the trend was mitigated, it was still at the risk of further increase in the sandy desertification.

Land use/land cover change (LUCC) is an important content of geographical research on global change today, while spatial simulation on land use change is one of the key content of LUCC. In recent years, CLUE-S (The Conversion of Land Use and its Effects at Small Region Extent) model has been used widely in the world. This paper mainly aimed at CLUE-S model to improve the model in spatial analysis module by incorporating components describing the spatial autocorrelation into a classic logistic model. Meanwhile, Yongding County in Zhangjiajie city, which is one of the typical karst mountain areas in northwestern Hunan Province, was selected as the research area. By using the improved CLUE-S model, this paper simulated and analysed regional land use change in Yongding County. All driving factors such as distance to town, distance to river, distance to road, population density, altitude, slope and aspect were produced with ArcGIS spatial analysis tools. Then the weighting coefficient of every land use type was analysed with SPSS13.0. The results indicated that improved spatial analysis module of CLUE-S model showed better goodness of fitting and higher accuracy of fitting. The distribution of land use types of cultivated land, forest land and residence land areas under the ROC curves (AUC) were increased to 0.827, 0.875 and 0.838 respectively. For a better understanding of the future land use change in the region, the improved CLUE-S model is further put into application to predict spatial distribution of land use change from 2005 to 2020. It is argued that the improved CLUE-S model based on Autologistic method is reasonable to some degree. At the same time, these types of analysis can provide valuable information for government decisions on land use management in Yongding County and similar areas.

Urban fringe is a special area with interaction of urban and rural areas. The study of relative research shows that the authoritative theory and methods for demarcating urban fringe have not formed yet, but they are developing gradually from mere qualitative analysis into the combination of the qualitative and the quantitative studies. And maintaining the integrity of administrative units was considered. This article tries to break down barriers of administrative units and gives more precise boundaries by extracting the range of the urban fringe of Beijing respectively in 1994, 1999 and 2004, and using the catastrophe-point method with the TM satellite images. At first, the urban land use information is extracted from the TM images of Beijing in 1994, 1999 and 2004, according to which the proportion of urban land use is calculated. And then, this article detects the abrupt changes of the proportion of the urban land use in different directions, and identifies the inner and outer boundaries of the urban fringe in Beijing according to the breakpoints of all directions. Based on the data, this article analyzes the spatial-expansion characteristics including the expanding amount, types, directions, areas and intensity, and explores their driving forces. The results show that: (1) the expanding speed was increasing step by step, the expanding amount and intensity were both greater in the period of 1999-2004 than those in 1994-1999, the main expanding directions were the east and the north, and the main type was sprawling outwards. Those expanding areas are mostly in Chaoyang, Daxing, Tongzhou and Changping districts. (2) The expansion of the urban fringe of Beijing was limited not only by the geographical conditions, but also by the socioeconomic factors, such as economic development, industrial growth, urban infrastructure etc. , and policy factors as well, such as urban planning.

The "Eleventh Five-year Plan" divides national functional zones into the basic unit of county administrative division, which is called major function oriented zoning (MFOZ). According to general disposition of national MFOZ, central and provincial governments are implementing MFOZ strategy in the unit of county administrative division. After prefectural and county level governments have implemented national MFOZ, the spatial development sequence should be specified, the development intensity should be limited, oriented zones should be designated and the "red line" areas of spatial governance should be made definite. In the view of the above, choosing a typical county area and exploring its functional oriented zoning, its major function will play a big role in the national's spatial planning in "the Twelfth Five-year Period", and it will provide experience to study the functional oriented zoning which is the theme of MFOZ for the present academic circles. The paper takes Shangyu as an example to study general principles, the train of thought and index system of county area functional oriented zoning. The oriented function zones of Shangyu should follow five principles, which are general principles of development-optimized county area: (1) area extropism; (2) based on population and industry spatial combined pattern; (3) spatial rational regulation and control, and intensive usage of land resources; (4) ecological preservation and construction of areas' integrality; (5) areas relatively concentrated and give consideration to town administrative units. Oriented function zones are classified into two levels: the first level is fundamental zones to make clear next level's development, as well as to adjust and restrict areas' development limits. The basic unit is town and the final result covers the whole county areas. The second level is zones to implement regional policies. The basic unit is natural landscape or plot, and the result does not cover the whole areas. This paper evaluates land development suitability and analyses the spatial distribution of major natural and human factors. On this basis, it estimates the rational value of Shangyu's land development intensity according to the arrangment of national MFOZ. Furthermore this paper suggests a functional oriented zoning plan with 2 levels and 4 types. According to land development suitability evaluation of state technological and economic seedtime, the reasonable value of Shangyu's land development intensity should not exceed 13%.

Industrial isomorphism is one of the bottlenecks to the development of regional integration and industrial promotion in economic areas. Fujian and Taiwan, which have geographical proximities and historical/cultural similarities as well as their comparable stages of economic development in different periods, were chosen to be research objects in this paper. From fields of three kinds of industries, the industry and the tertiary industry, firstly, whose present situation and change of industrial structure were analyzed by using the similar coefficient. Secondly, the trend of industrial structure would be forecasted through such a method as R/S from fractal theory. The results show that the phenomenon of industrial isomorphism in these two regions is obvious. If the three industries continue to develop under the circumstances, the level of industrial isomorphism will continue to increase, and the manufacturing industry will be fluctuant in the rising trend, while the level of industrial isomorphism decreased slowly in tertiary industry, but it will be growing in the future as a whole. However, the appearance of industrial isomorphism between Fujian and Taiwan has its own inevitability. Because of the similarity of resource, economic development and economic connection, it does a great benefit to the occurrence of industrial isomorphism. At the same time, industrial isomorphism reveals a trend that industrial division between Fujian and Taiwan has passed from vertical to horizontal. Therefore, in macroscopic view, the industrial isomorphism may not bring negative influence to the future economic cooperation between Fujian and Taiwan. With the level of the similar industrial structure increasing process, the paper put forward some suggestions on the direction of economic development and the adjustment of industrial structure for Fujian Province.

Due to absence of practical housing standards, the structure of housing market in Chinese cities has been seriously distorted and housing supplies are incapable to satisfy reasonable demands. Therefore, it is of great significance and in emergency to stipulate appropriate standards to guide housing construction and consumption. To this end, this study addressed the issue of housing floor area standard. First, it proposed an empirical framework for analyzing floor area standard, i.e., the problem of determining floor area standard was formulated as an optimization problem of maximizing the utilities of households. Then, it reported an empirical study in Beijing. Using the second-hand apartment house data in the Asian-Olympic Village area, the benefit and cost of households with respect to the size of houses were examined with a hedonic regression approach. It was found that the prices of second-hand apartment houses significantly differed by housing floor areas, and the critical size thresholds were identified by the regression analysis. Based on the results, the standard of appropriate housing size was presented and suggestions were made on the regulation of housing market. Specifically, (1) it would be economically efficient to control the minimum and preferential levels of apartment housing. It is recommended to take 50 m² as the minimum level, and 80 m² for the preferential level. (2) It is recommended to take 50~60 m² as suitable size standard for small families. To encourage stepwise consumption, the government might consider decreasing housing transfer costs by reducing tax or providing stipend for the development of small units.

Along with the improvement of people's living standard and the enhancement of consciousness about environmental protection, the willing to pay (WTP) for environmental amenity has increased day by day. The research on the valuation of living environment has been paid more attentions. However, there are only the qualitative impact studies, but lack of the quantitative impact analysis from the temporal and spatial views. Moreover, the existing studies have offered little theoretical support for urban policy decision-makings. It is these shortcomings that have brought out the inequality in the distribution of real estate appreciation, a waste of location resources as well as the fault of urban land planning and urban decision-makings. In the present study the authors apply hedonic pricing method, market comparative method and spatial proliferation effect theory, bring in the weighted distance, and analyze the temporal-spatial impact effects of large-scale park on the surrounding residential prices exemplified by the Huangxing Park in Shanghai city, and put forward its metric model of value spill over. The research results show that the appreciation of housing prices varies at temporal and spatial scales, displays significant conic curve relation with weighted distance and decreases gradually with increased weighted distance. The appreciation in north-south direction is more than that in east-west direction, and its impact manifests significant cubic curve relation with weighted distance. Its maximum impact radius is 1.59 km, and the strongest impact location is 0.29 km. Finally, some suggestions are proposed so as to determine rationally the location of residential development and to distribute properly land appreciation earnings.

In order to analyze the possible effects of growth poles on Central Rise and Western Development in the central and western China, this paper constructs a spread-backwash effects model based on the theories of growth pole and unbalanced growth, and applies a spatial simultaneous statistical model to a dataset of 942 cities and counties in the ten central and western provinces for the period from 2000 to 2007. The statistical results show that central cities, presented by prefecture or higher level cities, had net spread effects of non-agricultural GDP growth on county-level cities and counties, suggesting that different levels of cities and counties had a tendency to develop economies complementary to each other. However, these larger, central cities showed backwash effects of employment growth on the county-level cities and spread effects on rural counties. Neighboring county-level cities had strong net spread effects on each other in both non-agricultural GDP and employment growths, but the county-level cities exerted negative effects on growth of rural counties, especially in non-agricultural GDP growth. Several important policy lessons are drawn from this study. First, the research findings in general support the growth pole strategy adopted by virtually all of the provinces in the central and western regions. Second, the evidence of backwash effect of large cities on the neighboring cities calls for new policy initiatives to mitigate competition for the same types of workers and professionals. Third, integration and collaboration of economies in neighboring cities should be an important component of the overall growth strategy for each region to fully benefit from a growth pole strategy. Fourth, the research findings also suggest a need for improvement on regional transportation infrastructure and education to close the gaps between the central and western regions and the eastern region.

Urban agglomeration is an advanced spatial organization form of urbanization and plays an important role in regional socio-economic development. Jianghuai urban agglomeration is a new idea proposed by Anhui Province for regional economic development combination of provincial economic development and central China rising. Based on geography theory and the new cask theory and by using city flow and intensity of urban spatial interaction models, the study calculates quantitatively city flow intensity of Jianghuai urban agglomeration and spatial reciprocity intensity between the cities. The study reveals the spatial development direction of Jianghuai urban agglomeration, and puts forward the spatial integrated patterns of Jianghuai urban agglomeration development. The results show: (1) The total value and the average value of city flow intensity of Jianghuai urban agglomeration are lower than those of the other urban agglomerations. As the core of urban agglomeration, the advantages of Hefei city are not obvious in comparison with Wuhu and Ma'anshan cities. Therefore Jianghuai urban agglomeration is a "weak-core type" urban agglomeration. (2) Spatial reciprocity intensity between cities of Hefei is slightly higher than that of Wuhu and Ma'anshan and significantly higher than other cities. Hefei and Wuhu play a more important role in the urban agglomeration, and they are two most important nodes in urban agglomeration. (3) The spatial connection direction appears in a circle-shape which radiates externally around Hefei and expands along the traffic corridor in an axis including He-Xu and He-Chao-Wu expressway from south to north and along the Yangtze River expressway from east to west. (4) Spatial integration of urban agglomerations is achieved through the different stages of development of the regional development layout mode. According to urban flow strength spatial reciprocity intensity between cities, Jianghuai urban agglomeration should be a combination mode of "circle" and "T" types at present; when the long-term development of urban agglomeration is relatively mature, the "dual-core" type spatial integrated pattern can be gradually formed with Hefei and Wuhu as the center, hence Jianghuai urban agglomeration develops coordinately.

There have been abundant studies on both industrial manufacturing safety value and tourism safety, but only little quantitative research on economic benefit of tourism safety, which makes it difficult for the tourism enterprises to calculate the input and the output for safety management compared to that of industrial enterprises. Considering the tourists in Shandong's Changdao Island as the study objects, this paper estimates and evaluates the tourists' safety value with the quantitative concept, the evaluation system and the calculation formula of tourists' safety value that the authors have established; finally it puts forward the quantitative evaluation and measure between inputs and the outputs of safety management in Changdao Island. The main conclusions are as follows: firstly, as most of tourists have positive image about the safety of Changdao Island, this island can provide more exciting activities or activities related to the sea for the tourists to absorb more expenses; secondly, tourism enterprises can decide the safety input according to the potential market scale deducted from the tourists' pay willingness for safety, which will then be transformed to the actual operation benefit.

Presently, two key problems, similar development mode and analogical tourist experience have emerged with tourism development in domestic historic districts. This paper discusses the new thought of tourism revitalization in historic district in perspective of tourist experience. Firstly, based on the deep analysis of tourist experience's essential elements in historic districts, the 6E experience model is established to summarize the tourist experience, including Estheticism and nostalgia, Education and culture, Entertainment and leisure, Escape and relax, Exchange and communication and Emotion sublimation. Meanwhile, how to build up and enhance every single experience of the 6E model in tourism revitalization of historic districts is also explained. Secondly, the application of the 6E model is demonstrated elaborately in the case of Conceptual Planning of Tourism Development in San-Fang Qi-Xiang Historic District in Fuzhou City. Considering the hierarchy and comprehensibility of tourist experience and combined with site environment analysis, San-Fang Qi-Xiang historic district is divided into four function zones: Nanhou old street mall, Warmth and leisure lane, Antai water-front recreation zone and high-class hotel zone for special tourists. The four zones are distinguished by degrees of bustling and tranquility as well as the hierarchy of experience. This paper concludes that it is beneficial to use the 6E model to segment function zones and create new products in tourism revitalization of historic districts, because it helps to revitalize and create a fresh life style with historical continuation in cultural, social and economic aspects. Therefore, it is perceived as a sustainable thought of development.

In order to develop a practical strategy for developing tourism resources and to speed up the "tourism to revitalize Hinggan League" process, it is necessary to define the quantities of tourism resource objects, distributions and combinations. Hinggan League, located in China's temperate forest steppe zone, has a long history of human activities and natural and cultural tourism resources, as well as distinct cultural characteristics of the grassland. In accordance with GBPT18972-2003 resource classification system, with a surveying database of tourism resource objects and a mean square deviation and empirical equation, this paper deals with characteristics and development of tourism resource objects in Hinggan League. Fundamental types of tourism resources have distinctive features of meadow cultures. There are fewer tourism resource objects in the middle part than in the northern and southern parts. Ulanhot has the greatest density of tourism resource objects, and Horqin Right-wing Banner has the smallest ones. Horqin Right-wing Banner has the maximum value D(X) .In order to reduce the development of capital, it is required to select key regional regions to develop. Different fundamental types of tourism resources contain different numbers of tourism resource objects. Horqin Right-wing Banner has an ideal combination model of tourism resources. Combining the tourism industry with tourism resources, the paper gives proposals on tourism developments in this league as well as in the other six counties (or banners). The number and type of tourism resources are the main basis for the direction of the tourism industry. Resource quality and quantity should be considered to make tourism development strategy. High-quality tourism resources have a strong attraction for the formation of well-known scenic spots, such as Arxan scenic hot springs. However, the undue emphasis on the quality of tourism resources is bound to increase over the number of visitors to scenic areas, exceeding the capacity of the tourism environment, which will lead to a sharp decline in the quality of tourism resources. The amount of tourism resources has something to do with the scale of tourism development in the region, and scientific and reasonable development is expected to foster distinctive scenic spots (points). In the region with the concentration of objects, small-scale tour operators can make universal access to more generous returns for the local population, and is conducive to resource conservation.

There are a variety of uncertainties of understanding on climate change, although much important progress has been achieved so far. In this paper, some hot issues related with disagreements are explored on both sides, which could be significant to climate change research. These issues can be listed as follows: 1) the past climate change-whether the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age existed in the past 2000 years or not, whether the global mean temperature of the 20th century was the highest in the latest 1000 years or not, and whether the global warming trend in the last decade has disappeared or not; 2) greenhouse effects-different viewpoints on its mechanism, greenhouse effects on climate change, and effects of water vapor in the atmosphere on global warming. 3) simulation of climate system-differences of the global mean temperature by observed and simulated climate models as well as their shortcomings. 4) 2℃ threshold of the global warming-the physical significance of 2℃ threshold for the earth, and disputation on itself. Finally, it is proposed that five topics on climate change research need to be studied further in the near future.