Studies on urban heat islands(UHIs) have traditionally focused on relationship between vegetation fraction(Fv) and land surface temperature(Ts),which are important parameters to describe characters of ecosystem.The objectives of this study are:(1) to derive Ts and analyze their spatial variations using Landsat ETM+ thermal measurements;(2) to apply linear spectral mixture analysis to estimate Fv of urban vegetation abundance;and (3) to investigate the relationship between Ts and Fv derived vegetation abundance(using) conventional statistics and fractal analysis. Based on examination of a Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus(ETM+) image of Shenzhen city,acquired on February 23,2004,the landscape classification of Shenzhen is conducted on supervised classification and interactive modification,and the applicability of Fv is investigated as an alternative indicator of vegetation abundance,and Ts is derived from ETM+ thermal infrared(TIR) data.To examine the spatial patterns of Ts and Fv,28 transects(profiles) are drawn across through the center of the city on the image.Since these transects pass over various landscapes with different environmental settings,an inquiry into the fractal characteristics of the profiles using the divider method will help to understand the factors shaping the city's thermal and vegetative landscape and lead to the development of UHIs.The use of fractals for analyzing TIR images will improve our understanding of the thermal behavior of different land cover types. Results demonstrate that Ts possessed a slightly stronger negative correlation with the Fv for all land cover types across the spatial resolution(30 to 960 m).Fractal analysis of image texture shows that the complexity of these images increased initially with pixel aggregation and peaked around 120 m,but decreased with further aggregation.Correlations reached the strongest at a resolution of 120 m,which is believed to be the operational scale of Ts and Fv.The spatial variability of texture in Ts is positively correlated with those in Fv.The interplay between thermal and vegetation dynamics in the context of different land cover types leads to the variations in spectral radiance and texture in Ts.It is suggested that the areal measure of vegetation abundance by unmixed vegetation fraction has a more direct correspondence with the radiative,thermal,and moisture properties of the Earth's surface that determines Ts.

According to the theory of economic growth and economic growth accounting models(Barro,1999),we conduct a research on the general economic growth accounting for Shanghai,and in order to analyze the sustainable development problems such as green economic growth accounting,we make a study of the green GDP economic growth accounting models(Asheim,2000).Some important results concerning the calculation research on the economic growth of Shanghai are obtained.Firstly,before implementing reform and opening policy,the achievement of Shanghai's economic growth was mostly supported by the input of capital,human resources and labors.And wage policy ensured the input of human resources because of planned economy,but it failed to cause technological progress.After the reform and opening,the achievement of Shanghai's economic growth was benefited from the technological progress caused by some reasons such as institutional innovation and so on,but interfered by the revenue policy.Secondly,Shanghai's green NNP value is far lower than the GDP value,and the latter is at least 2 to 4 times of the former.The ratio between Shanghai's GDP value and green NNP value was maintained more than 3 times that in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.In recent years,the ratio reduced to a relatively rational level,being around 2 times between Shanghai's GDP value and green NNP value.This shows that people have awared to pay more attention to the environmental problems and resource wasting problems,and have taken actions to protect environment and reduce resource wasting.Thirdly,at present,we believe that,because of the accounting results of Shanghai's green NNP,green GDP should not be used as a unique index of measuring economic development,but it can be used as an index of measuring the effect on environment and the wasting of resource by economic development as well as a supplement for the GDP index.

Greenhouse-gas（GHG） emissions in China have aroused much interest,and not least in recent evidence of their reduction.Our intent is to place that regional pattern of CO₂ emissions and its change in context.A lengthy time perspective is combined with a cross-provincial approach and addressed through two general models,namely the industrial-energy interconnection model and the energy-CO₂ emissions interconnection model.The findings are salutary.First,they suggest that a diversified economic structure is the determined factor in not only the regional economic development but also the changing pattern of regional CO₂ emissions.For instance,the numbers of over-heavy CO₂ emissions at provincial level increased from none to two during the period between 1980 and 2000 as the local economic development dominated by industrial processes in the coastal zones gone rapidly. Secondly,they imply that the more diversified economic structure a region is,the slower increasing in energy use it has.The total energy consumption of East China between 1990 and 2000,for example,had 4% increase,when its ESD values rose from 10.5 to 23,or achieving 36% increase.Finally,together,the findings argued that the stiff structural change of energy use in China makes it very difficult for any region to reduce its CO₂ emissions.It implies that China could have a long way to go in the reduction of its CO₂ emissions if the country still resists in the traditional energy consumption pattern.

The rise of information economy has restructured the competitive advantage of cities in many ways in which cities rise and fall in the global economy.Although the bubble of New(Digital) Economy has collapsed,Internet continues to be a driving force in many places.In these local economies,the leading infrastructure is not highways,ports,rail-ways,or airports,but fiber optic glass network connected around the world.With rapid advances in Internet technology,the spatial framework of telecommunication infrastructure has also been developed rapidly China during the last decade.However,little advances in academic research on Internet,especially the relationships between cities and Internet,are still neither achieving the attention it deserves,nor delivering the quality of empirical research it demands.This paper aims to fill the gap.Firstly,it presents a literature review of communication networks and urban system and recent efforts to measure their structure and performance.Secondly,this paper applies network analysis methods to evaluate Internet connectivity,focusing on the spatial structure and city accessibility of five major Internet backbones in China.The overall Internet infrastructure within China is illustrated in light of the calibration of basic graph-theoretic measures based on gross characteristics.The degree of connectivity of cities included in the networks is measured with the total accessibility matrix(T) and the Shimbel distance matrix(D).The results reveal the construction of new accessibility of cities follows the traditional urban hierarchy.The three national network access points(NAPs) Beijing,Shanghai,and Guangzhou and several regional hub cities are near the top of the accessibility hierarchy.In addition,geographical location of cities plays an important role in the decision-making of infrastructure constructions.Finally,several new themes for further research are highlighted.

Because temperature is a key factor that controls the growth and distribution of vegetation,and there is no apriori reason to assume that ecosystems will respond similarly to changes in the minimum and the maximum temperatures,it is very important to explore the ecological consequences of global warming,especially the changes of the maximum and the minimum temperatures in different seasons,on terrestrial communities. Arid/semiarid biome transitional zones or ecotones are considered to be particularly sensitive areas to directional changes in climate.The desert/grassland biome transitional zone of Sevilleta in central New Mexico,U.S.provides an important region for testing species' different responses to global warming.Based on the data of climate and two dominant plants,Bouteloua eripoda and Bouteloua gracilis,which are collected from the Deep Well station in Sevilleta,this paper studies the effects of global warming on the vegetation at arid/semiarid biome transitional zone with methods of regression and correlation.The results show that the maximum and the minimum temperatures at this zone changed to different directions,that is,the increase of the maximum temperature in the summer and the fall went faster than the decrease of the minimum temperature in the winter and the spring during the study period from 1989 to 1998,which was different from the trend of climate changes that showed the minimum temperature in the winter increased faster than the maximum temperature in summer in other places(such as in North China).There were on significant changes for annual mean temperature. Responses of the two dominant plants(Bouteloua eripoda & Bouteloua gracilis)of this area to temperature changes were different due to their ecological characteristics.The cover of Bouteloua gracilis,the second dominant plant,decreased significantly,with stronger relationship to the minimum temperature of the winter and the spring than Bouteloua eripoda,the first dominant plant.The structure of biome has no significant changes.The author suggests that the structure and function of the transitional zone could be altered if the temperature changes further.So,the identification of key elements of temperature change is very important for understanding and predicting the impacts of global warming on ecosystem.

This study aims at providing a climatological reference of potential evapotranspiration for the second comprehensive assessment of water resources and water resource planning of China.Based on the climatic data from 580 stations throughout the country during 1956 and 2000,potential evapotranspirations are calculated using the Penman-Monteith Method recommended by FAO.The spatial and temporal distributions of the potential evapotranspiration over China and the temporal trends of the regional averages for 10 major river basins and whole country are analyzed.Through a partial correlation analysis,the major climate factors which affect the temporal change of the potential evapotranspiration are also analyzed.Major results are as follows: 1) The seasonal and annual potential evapotranspiration for China as a whole and for most of the basins show declining tendencies during the past 45 years;for the Songhua River Basin there appears a slightly increasing trend.2) Consequently,the annual potential evapotranspirations averaged over 1980-2000 are lower than those for the first water resources assessment period(1956-1979) in most parts of China.Exceptions are found in some areas of Shandong Peninsula,river basins in central and western parts of Southwest China,Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region as well as source regions of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River,which may have brought about disadvantages to the exploitation and utilization of water resources.(3) Generally),sunshine duration,wind speed and relative humidity have greater impact on the potential evapotranspiration than temperature.Decline tendencies of sunshine duration and/or wind speed at the same period appear to be the major causes for the negative trend of the potential evapotranspiration in most areas.

With the outstanding universal value,the precious natural and cultural heritages are the treasures left over by our ancestors.With constant deepening in the knowledge and understanding to this value,especially the aggravated damage to the natural and cultural heritages caused by natural disasters and unsustainable economic growth,the world heritage protection and heritage site development have become one of the hotspots attracting the worldwide attention.Scientific research is an important base for the heritage protection,which can provide the theoretical support for heritage protection and its sustainable development.Thus,to identify the scientific issues is of vital importance in the heritage research.In this paper,the authors discuss some key issues relating to the natural and cultural heritage protection,management and sustainable development systematically,which are as follows:(1) paying more attention to the discovery and protection of the national heritages while applying to be listed on the World Heritage List;(2) harmonizing the relationship between the protection and sustainable development of the heritage sites based on the principle of "dynamic conservation";(3)promoting the synthesized research of natural and cultural heritages;(4) implementing "participatory management" strategy by bringing into full play the role of the neighboring communities in protecting heritage sites;(5) understanding the "world heritage" in a broad sense which should include not only the world heritages accepted by the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage but also ones such as GIAHS,nature reserve,geopark,industrial heritage etc.;and(6) strengthening the scientific research of the heritage protection including the theories and methodology of protection,and sustainable management approaches.

The adsorption isotherms,kinetics and thermodynamics parameters of phosphate on three sediments that are in different trophic levels respectively were studied in simulated condition,and the differences of phosphate adsorption on different sediments were also compared.The conclusions are as follows. （1） The Qmax,K,m,NAP and EPC₀ of phosphate adsorption on the sediments from the East Taihu and the Gonghu lakes were almost the same,and the Qmax,K,NAP and EPC₀ of the two sediments were lower than that from the Wuli Lake,but m was higher.That means the Qmax and K of the sediment from the heavily polluted Wuli Lake were higher than that from the slightly polluted East Taihu and Gonghu lakes.At the same time NAP and EPC₀ of the Wuli Lake were also higher,the risk of phosphorus release of the sediment from the lake was higher,and m was lower.So the polluted state of sediment has significant effect on its phosphate adsorption.For the sediments from the East Taihu and the Gonghu lakes,they maintained a phosphate adsorption-desorption equilibrium state between the sediments and the overlying water,and for the sediment from the Wuli Lake,it tended to release phosphate into the lake′s overlying water. （2） The phosphate adsorption rate of the lake sediment within 0.5 h was the highest,and was 10 times or 100 times higher than that sampled in other time intervals,so the majority of phosphate adsorption on sediment was completed within 0.5 h.The phosphate adsorption rate within 0.5 h of the sediments from the Gonghu Lake was almost the same as the sediment from the East Taihu Lake,and the rate of the two sediments was higher than that from the Wuli Lake.Phosphate adsorption on sediment mainly depends on its physical and chemical properties such as distribution of sediment grain size.In this study,the adsorption rate within 0.5 h had no strong positive correlation with its volume percentage of fine particles less than 63μm.This suggests that the phosphate adsorption on the sediments studied was not only affected by its volume percentage of the fine particles,but also by its other physical and chemical properties. （3） The adsorption isotherms of phosphate on the sediments from the Wuli,the Gonghu and the East Taihu lakes at 283 K,298 K and 308 K were studied.The results show that the adsorption process of phosphate on the sediments was the endothermic reaction as the phosphate adsorption rate increased along with the increase of temperature.ΔH⁰ of the sediments from the East Taihu,the Wuli and the Gonghu lakes were 7.84,15.49 and 8.59 kJ·mol^-1,and ΔG⁰ were 8.50,5.95 and 8.07 kJ·mol^-1,respectively.The effect of phosphate adsorption by temperature was lower for the sediment from the Wuli Lake,and higher for the sediments from the East Taihu and the Gonghu lakes in this study.

After the adoption of the policy of reform and opening-up to the outside world,many changes in politics,society and economy have taken place in the Yangtze River Delta region and have resulted in rapid expansion of urban area.Using multi-temporal remote sensing images,we analysed the spatial and temporal urban dynamic change pattern of the Yangtze River Delta region in the past two decades.The results showed that from the end of the 1980s to the year 2000,the main land use change pattern is the rapid decrease of cultivable land and forest area and the fast expansion of urban area.Urban land use in the Yangtze River Delta presents a concentrated expansion,typically from vegetation landscape to a mixed urban and rural landscape,i.e.,95% from farmland 1.8% from forest land and 1.5% from grassland.Using remote sensing image to categorize land use,monitor land use change,and calculate land use change transfer matrix is a promising method to show distributed spatial pattern of land use and land use dynamic change.There exist different constitutional proportions relating to land use dynamic changes between the first decade and the second decade.The urban sprawl speed is lower in the second decade than the first one.The land use dynamic change affects the eco-environmental change in this region.For example,the urban expansion pattern directly affects the local climate change and the air quality of this region.Analyzing the correlation between the spatial pattern of urbanization and eco-environment in this region,we found that the urban sprawl pattern is one of the direct factors affecting the spatial distribution of regional urban heat islands and spatial pervasion of urban air pollution.By comparing the relationship between the land use change pattern and eco-environment,we can provide sustained decision-making strategy for improving eco-environment,developing local economy,and promoting the social progress.

This paper presents a study on the fractal urban form of Beijing.We use the city built-up area to define the urban form.It includes all the built-up area of houses,squares and roads,but the roads connecting central cities are not included,nor the water and vegetation.The data is obtained from the Landsat TM images of Beijing.Two TM scenes from 1984 and 1999 are used to cover the city and its adjacent areas.Based on the unsupervised classification using the IMAGINE ERDAS 8.6,the authors conducted an aborative correction on the map so that the classification is accurate enough. ESRI ARC GIS 9.0 is used to get the area data.The authors use the area-radius relationship method in this paper.In this view,the fractal dimension is a way to clarify the convergence and decentralization of urbanized area. The authors found that the city of Beijing bears clear fractal characteristics.The computation shows that there exist double scaling range.The first scaling range is good to reveal the fractal evolution of Beijing.The scaling range is 8km in 1984 while it is 14km in 1999.The extension of the scaling range shows that the fractal characteristic in 1999 is better than that in 1984.The dimension values also indicate the building density of Beijing.In 1984,the density remains almost unchanged in a region of 10 km distance from the center(Tian'an Men).In 1999,the building density increases from the center to a region with a radius of 16.5 km.Both of the building densities decrease outside the corresponding ranges of 1984 and 1999.The fractal model from the area-radius relationship method in this paper has important theoretical significance,which needs further studies. The fractal computation in this paper has important practical significance. The scaling range of a city is a special variable that carries individual characteristics.It is also a comparable variable among cities.Based on this,the authors identified a new city definition using the scaling range.The new definition can avoid the subjective and incomparable factors of the ordinary definition method.The scaling range also has important theoretical significance.

"Beijing-1"satellite(DMC+4 microsatellite) was launched on October 27th 2005,which covers a large area and has outstanding ability of continual observation.The vegetation fractional coverage is an important parameter for describing vegetation quality and indicating ecosystem change.In this study,"Beijing-1",SPOT5 and QuickBird images were integrated to detect and analyze the vegetation fractional coverage in riparian buffer zones of Guanting Reservoir.On the basis of integrated detection,scale transforming method was used between three images to improve the precision of vegetation fractional coverage measured by "Beijing-1" image.The concrete methods are pixel decomposability method and statistic model establishment,that is,SPOT5 and QuickBird pixels were used to decompose "Beijing-1" image pixel,and then established the statistic models between decomposability results and vegetation fractional coverage measured by"Beijing-1" image.The results show that:(1) The correlation coefficients of vegetation fractional coverage between "Beijing-1",SPOT5 and QuickBird images are high,which suggests that using "Beijing-1" image to detect vegetation fractional coverage of riparian buffer zones of Guanting reservoir is feasible.(2) Using these statistic models can effectively improve the precision of vegetation fractional coverage measuring from "Beijing-1" image.For reed marshes,compared with the result of using vegetation fractional coverage calculation equation,the mean absolute error of vegetation fractional coverage measured by "Beijing-1" image was reduced by 22.7% after applying statistic models.This is a practice on scale transformation of remotely sensed data.(3) Expanding the application extent,pixel decomposability method and statistic model establishment are feasible in enhancing the application precision of lower spatial resolution remotely sensed data by using high spatial resolution remotely sensed data.The integrated application of multi-scale remotely sensed data is a significant approach to promote the precision of acquiring earth surface parameters on large scale.This has become a development trend of remote sensing technology.

Some of previous studies showed that the drying-up of the lower Yellow River was resulted from decreasing precipitation and excessive industrial and agricultural consumption of water from the middle and lower Yellow River.The analysis for the long-term trend of precipitation is helpful for the rational use of water resources in the Yellow River basin. The Mann-Kendall statistictest is a rank-based,non-parametric approach and has been widely used to estimate the significance of long-term trends in the hydro-meteorological time series such as water quality,streamflow,temperature,and precipitation.The long-term trend of precipitation in the Yellow River basin was analyzed in this paper and the Mann-Kendall test was applied to annual and monthly precipitation time series.The linear regression was compared with the results obtained by using Mann-Kendall test.The results show that 65 of 77 stations exhibited downward trend for annual precipitation.April,July and October contributed the most of the decreasing trend of annual precipitation,and the spatial distribution of long-term trend for typical months is different.In all months except January,February,March and June,the values of trend are negative,exhibiting the decreasing tendency.In all seasons except summer,there is a similar increasing trend in the upstream of the Yellow River,south of the northern latitude 35 degrees.Except the regions in the upstream of the Weihe River and Hohhot the precipitation showed a decreasing trend in the Yellow River basin,especially in the downstream of the Yellow River.Comparing the results estimated by two methods,the Mann-Kendall test and linear regression test,the stations in winter(from December to next February),without trend tested by Mann-Kendall method,are much more than those tested by linear regression method,and the number of stations with trends tested by both methods is similar in other seasons.The magnitude of trend estimated by both methods is also similar in all months except July and December,and the absolute values of trend estimated by linear regression method are greater than those estimated by Mann-Kendall method.

A survey was conducted among 997 city-and-towns selected from 127 counties or county-level cities in Henan province in 2004.Data collected include 4 attributes for each city-and-town,and 3 attributes for about 900 traffic lines and 12 attributes for 127 county-level units.The different attribute values of each city-and-town were converted into the unified index named city-and-town growth equivalent for the sake of simplicity.In the same way,the different length numbers of traffic lines and other indexes in a city-and-town were converted into the linkage intension index,and the development level of its matrix.And here,the other indexes includes passenger traffic,freight traffic,passenger-kilometers,freight ton-kilometers, business volume of telecommunications,number of local telephone subscribers at year-end,number of mobile telephones subscribers,capacity of long-distance call exchanges,number of subscribers of internet service.The paper separately discusses the centralized degree of city-and-town from the following three angles such as the growth of node,and the linkage of traffic network and traffic flows and volume of telecommunications and the level of regional development,and then classifies the study units in the spatial distribution by the corresponding scores.By employing GIS software,this paper divides the spatial structure based on the county unit data,and finds the following results:(1) the core region,including 13 county-level units such as Zhengzhou city,Gongyi city,Xinzheng city etc.;(2) the secondary core region,including 12 county-level units such as Dengfeng city,Zhongmou county,Xinxiang county etc.;(3) the latency core region,including 18 county-level units such as Kaifeng county,Qixian,county,Tongxu county etc.;and(4) the periphery region,including 14 county-level units mainly located to the south of Luoyang city,the south of Pingdingshan city and the north of Xinxiang city.Per capita GDP of the core and secondary core regions,is 2.04 times of the average value in Henan province,but population accounts for 12.22% of the provincial total population,and the GDP occupies 25.93%.In addition to the further development of city-and-town concentrated area in the Central Plains by means of perfecting the city-and-town systems,strengthening the linkages among cities and towns and improving their economic capacities synchronously,more attention should be paid to the improvement of the development level of less developed areas in the future.

In this paper,we analyzed the land use change in Chuxiong city,a plateau area and Shuangbai county,a mountainous area in Yunnan Province,based on their TM images in 1980 and 2000.Four kinds of indexes for land use/land cover,two kinds of indexes for the spatial patterns of regional landscape,the land use type transition matrix and information entropy of land use structure were calculated to examine spatial patterns and dynamics of land use change in Chuxiong and Shuangbai.The results show that,due to human activity,the land use change in Chuxiong was greater than that in Shuangbai during the past 20 years.The built-up area and timberland have increased,but cropland,grassland and water area have decreased in both Chuxiong and Shuangbai.The change of water area and grassland in Shuangbai was faster than that in Chuxiong,the change of built-up area and cropland in Chuxiong was faster than that in Shuangbai.Index for landscape diversity in Shuangbai was lower than in Chuxiong,showing a decreasing tendency in Chuxiong,but an increasing tendency in Shuangbai.Landscape fragmentation indexes were high,the landscape fragmentation indexes in Chuxiong were greater than in Shuangbai,both showing a decreasing tendency.The land use system tended to be unstable in Chuxiong,but oppositely in Shuangbai.The main driving forces of regional land use change in Chuxiong and Shuangbai were natural conditions,economic development,structure of production,level of urbanization and governmental decision makings.Effect of population increase on land use in Shuangbai was notable,but it was not marked in Chuxiong.

The classification of breeding area for oriental migratory locust（Locust migratoria manilensis Meyen） is one of the most important tasks in terms of the monitoring and controlling of the damages induced by the locusts.In this study,the Huanghua region along the Bohai Bay in Hebei Province was selected as the study area and the locust breeding areas were classified based on the Landsat-5 TM images dated on August 14,2003（TMⅠ） and May 28,2004（TMⅡ） respectively.Three different schemes of image band combination and two kinds of classifiers were used in the breeding area classification,i.e.the maximum likelihood classifier and the knowledge-based layered classifier.In more detail,they are 1) the combination of bands 3,4 and 5 of TMⅠplus bands 3,4 and 5 of TMⅡwith the maximum likelihood classifier;2)the combination of bands 3,4 and 5 of TMⅠplus bands 3,4 and 5 of TMⅡand the homogeneity index derived from the image of NDVI_TMⅠas a band which contains the spatial texture information of the images,with also the maximum likelihood classifier;and 3)the combination of bands 3,4 and 5 of TMⅠplus bands 3,4 and 5 of TMⅡand the NDVI_TMⅠas a band,with the knowledge-based layered classifier.The results show that,firstly,there is no obvious difference among these different combination schemes in terms of the overall accuracy of the locust breeding area.Relatively speaking,the overall accuracy of the second combination scheme（89.319） is somewhat higher than those of the other two combination schemes,which indicates that it is beneficial to accuracy improvement of locust breeding area classification if adding the spatial texture information of the images into the classification.Secondly,although the overall accuracy of locust breeding area classification with the third combination scheme is somewhat lower than those of the other two combination schemes,its variation range of locust breeding area classification accuracy among all individual locust breeding area types is relatively small,which means that the knowledge-based layered classifier still has a certain of advantages in the locust breeding area classification.

For the past approximate millennium, the general changing trend in climate is warmer due to the snow fall in summer and winter and snow cover for the whole year in the Western Xia regime,the snow cover for the whole year in the Ming Dynasty,and snow cover without snow fall in the summer of the early Qing Dynasty according to the historic snow cover record of the Helanshan mountains.Also it is confirmed that the period from the Western Xia regime to the Yuan and Ming dynasties witnessed cold climate,and the characteristics of the snow cover reflected climate change agreed well with the characteristics of the climate change in western China.It is found that the time change process and the change regularity are of agreement,and the inference for the minimum limit of permanent snow cover of the cold stage in the 12^th century was given by comparing historic snow cover changes of Halanshan,Tianshan,Taibaishan and Diancangshan mountains. Helanshan recorded the climate change in a specific stage.In the warm stage of the Middle ages,Helanshan presented the characteristic cold and cool climate of the western China,and gave an evidence of the existence of the cold stage in the 12^th century by the snow cover and the other environmental record.It showed the characteristic of both cold and wet,and the decline of snow line.The Little Ice Age was also reflected in the record of the Helanshan mountains,i.e.,it was cold and dry with decreasing in snow line. According to the relationship between the number of the annual lowest temperature（≤0℃） days and the annual mean temperature of the Helanshan Observatory and taking into the consideration of the change in temperature in the specific stage,the inferences that annual mean temperature of the cold stage in Helenshan in the 12^th century was predicted to be 1.5²℃ lower than the present, and the lower limit of the permanent snow cover was estimated to be 3400 to 3500m;the annual mean temperature of the Little Ice Age in the 17^th century was 1¹.5℃ lower than that of the present and the lower limit of the permanent snow cover decreased to 3400 to 3500m were also given.

Along with the socio-economic development,the various contacts between cities and regions are becoming more and more close and complicated.Although the research on regional characteristic and difference was dominant in geography thoroughly,traditional positive research on economic location and contacts was weak in quantitative methods,one of the main reasons was the shortage of statistic data.By use of the gravity model,we calculated the economic contacts intensity between cities in Henan province and intensity between this province and the other core metropolises all over the country,and with reference to the data of highway and railway passenger traffic,we found the strongly linear correlation between economic contacts intensity and passenger traffic.So we can use the percentage of economic contacts intensity of each city to total region to indicate the economic contacts direction and economic location quantitatively.The directions and intensities of urban economic contacts in Henan province show that the formation of Zhongyuan urban agglomeration including Zhengzhou,Kaifeng,Luoyang,Xinxiang,Jiaozuo,Xuchang,Pingdingshan,Luohe and Jiyuan has close internal economic linkages and passenger traffic contacts,and they also show that the contacts and cooperation between Zhongyuan and Jingjinji(Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei),Changjiang delta,Wuhan and Guanzhong urban agglomerations are beneficial to the economic development of Henan Province.

As an important content of the research on global environmental change,the(focus) of the study on land use/land cover change(LUCC) has been transferred from the spatial pattern analysis to the effects evaluation of LUCC on the environment.As the evaluation for land use sustainability belongs to the research on the functional assessment of land use pattern change,the evaluation for land use sustainability is thus an important way in the transformation of LUCC research from spatial pattern analysis to ecological function evaluation. The sustainability of land use is not only the sustainability of land use mode in temporal scale,but also includes the spatial optimization in spatial scale.Taking spatial heterogeneity and ecological holism as its theoretical foundation,landscape ecology has great power in the evaluation for spatial pattern.Therefore,the application of the theories of landscape ecology into the evaluation for sustainable land use is of a great help to the evaluation for sustainable land use in temporal and spatial scales.It is a new field of the research on the evaluation for sustainable land use. Taking Yongsheng county of Yunnan province as a case,we constructed a synthetic(evaluating) index system for land use sustainability,by applying principles of landscape ecology,to make a quantitative evaluation for the dynamics of land use sustainability of the county in 1996,1999 and 2001.We also made two indexes,that is,contributing amount of indexes and obstacle amount of indexes, to make certain the comparative intensity of all the evaluation indexes.The results showed that,in the past 5 years,land use sustainability of all the 18 towns of Yongsheng county are relatively low,with a stable and great spatial difference.And there was a great change in regional land use system in 1999,which made a departure from the aim of sustainable land use.The results also showed that,in all the 18 towns,on one hand,the most important indexes contributing to land use sustainability are the indexes of population density,land use degree,landscape diversity,and multiple cropping.On the other hand,the most important indexes counteracting land use sustainability are the indexes of per unit area total output value of industry and agriculture,per unit area yield of cereal crops,and landscape fragmentation,per unit area yield of economic crops,and per unit area agricultural fertilizer.

The spatial and temporal changes of vegetation cover from 1987 to 2001 over Minqin Oasis,Gansu Province,were studied quantitatively based on the retrieval of vegetation coverage from remotely sensed TM images in the situation of mixed pixels. The result of the study shows that the vegetation cover over Minqin Oasis has greatly changed since 1987,with the increase of the area of the cultivated vegetation（farmlands） by 53.11% and decrease of the area of the medium and high cover vegetation by 25.11%,which indicates that the bush belt around the Oasis is fading away with the constant increase of cultivated vegetation and constant decrease of medium and high cover vegetation,and the long-term ecological security of the Oasis is being threatened severely.The spatial transform processes of vegetation cover in Minqin Oasis are complicated.The spatial transform process for whole Oasis is categorized in a type of reclamation and vegetation degradation,and there are differences for spatial transform processes of vegetation cover among diverse sub-areas of the Oasis,categorized in one type of reclamation and vegetation degradation in the central and southern parts,and another type of vegetation rehabilitation and reclamation in the northern part.The main reasons for the loss of medium and high cover vegetation are reclamation of desertified lands and vegetation degradation.About 42204.81hm²of medium and high cover vegetation lost during the 15 years due to over-reclamation and vegetation degradation in Minqin Oasis,accounting for 81.73% of the original area.The lost vegetation covers are mainly wind protecting and sand binding plants on the edges of the Oasis.The lost vegetation area is larger than the rehabilitated area of vegetation of the corresponding period of time.The lost area of medium and high cover vegetation by reclamation reaches 18776.08hm²,accounting for 44.5% of the total lost area.The decline of groundwater table resulted in by over pumping of groundwater for irrigation is the main cause for vegetation degradation,and the observable rehabilitation of halophytic vegetation in the northern part of the Oasis was probably related to the drastic drop of groundwater table.Controlling reclamation and breeding the steady-going bush vegetation should be the key target for eco-environmental construction in Minqin Oasis.

About 214 trees in 9 sampling sites, representing 5 endemic conifer species,were collected from the western Sichuan province and eastern Qinghai province,China.In this study,we try to investigate tree-ring sensitivity to climate change in order to reconstruct past climate from this region.All the 5 species present distinct ring boundaries with few ABS(absent rings) and are available for cross-dating.They all passed the test by program COFECHA.Statistics for all the 8 residual chronologies also exhibit significant inter-correlation between series and high values of mean sensitivity.These results indicate the usefulness of these chronologies for dendrochronological studies.Pearson correlation analyses were applied to provide a basic estimate of the causal relationships between tree-ring width and climate factors.We found some significant relationships between tree-ring width and temperature as well as precipitation.Regardless of tree species,chronologies in the study area presented accordant variations of which may reveal strong common climate signal.Thus these chronologies are shown to be dependable for building tree-ring network in the near future. However,there was limitation in this study,only monthly mean of temperature and precipitation were available.Also,for this typical subtropical mountain system,meteorological stations are usually located in valleys and biased to represent moisture conditions on the slopes.Thus the estimation of precipitation both in temporal and spatial domain was rather restricted.Further studies,such as wood anatomy,physiology and densitometry,are needed for better understanding the environmental and climatic history in this area.

Human activities have been playing a more and more important role in the environmental changes,especially in the city area where the human activities are most frequent.China is right at high tide of urbanization;and people are putting more and more attention to the environmental problems.Theoretical research indicated that,there is an inverted 'U-shaped' model between the economic development and environmental quality,i.e.Environmental Kuznets Curve(EKC).It means that economic growth helps to improve the environmental quality as the economic development reaches a certain level(the turning point).It has its rationality.From the efficiency of resources utilization and the improvement of the technique,economic development indeed helps to improve the environmental quality.So is there such a rule between urbanization and urban climate? How does urbanization influence urban climate?These directly connect the problem of strategic choice of urbanization in the western development. Through analyzing the influence mechanism of urbanization on the urban climate and the trend of the urban climate changes in about 50 years in Northwest China,this paper studies the influence of the urbanization on the urban climate in Northwest China.And then through setting up the relationship models,it further validates that there exists the Kuznets phenomenon between the urbanization and the urban climate to a certain extent. The study shows that the urbanization has had great influence on the urban climate.The results lead to three main conclusions: 1) This region in urban heat island effect,urban dry island effect,urban rain island effect and urban dark island effect exist in the urban climate;2) Environmental Kuznets Curve(EKC) exists to a certain extent,but can't completely explain the relationship between the urbanization and the urban climate;and 3) the environment improvement in Northwest China is temporary and unstable.

The urban water system is a complete ecosystem that has dual function of ecology and landscape.The water body pollution worsens the water quality and makes the urban aquatic environment lose its ecologic function,such as providing water resource,defending flood,etc.The degradation of water system landscape could lower the image of the city.The water system control can not only be limited to pollution control,but also include water environment rehabilitation and landscape beautification.At present,systemic control is the most popular and adoptive method for water pollution control and aquatic environment repair.Systemic control takes the whole water ecosystem as a research object,and,based on diverse water problems,makes all kinds of aquatic environment rehabilitation methods and ecological engineering measures integrated.But,systemic control emphasizes the ecological aspect of engineering design and neglects the main factor in water landscape.Taking landscape elements into account in water synthesized controll is a trend of reearch at home and abroad,so a new method including factors of landscape should be found out.This paper tries to make the "functional control" as a new concept which brings water systemic control and landscape design together.Functional control is an extension of the concept "systemic control".In virtue of GIS and water quality records the water functional control first gives qualitative and quantitative analysis of the water system problems,then chooses some key positions(like water connecting points,badly polluted areas,lakefront etc.),and then selects suitable ecological rehabilitation methods according to water environment rehabilitative theories,makes those projects ecological and landscaping,and finally gives a macroscopical landscape designing project of the urban water system. This study aims to give a new view that we should think about landscape factors in water control and pollution will never be the only problem that we should take into account.Basing on theories of Water Environment Rehabilitation,Landscape Ecology,Environmental Aesthetics and Ecosystem Services,this paper brings forward a method frame of water functional control,and makes an application of it to the Hanyang water system.The case study shows that through functional control,not only the water quality but also the landscape of the Hanyang water system has been improved,which is important to urban areas.This means that doing water environment repair and landscape design at the same time is better than doing them separately.

With the record of high-resolution of the Chinese loess section at Yuanbao in Linxia,boundary age constituted three age models based on the climatic events,namely the boundary age of MIS1/2 at 2.3m is 11.5kaBP and the boundary age of MIS3/4 at 21.4m is 59.8kaBP.The boundary ages were determined in accordance with the latest research results,i.e.the dating of stalagmite in the Nanjing Hulu Cave.Model 1（0kaBP⁵9.8kaBP）,model 2（0kaBP¹1.5kaBPand 11.5kaBP⁵9.8kaBP） and model 3（11.5kaBP⁵9.8kaBP） were used as the nodal-controlled age.With three models being the nodal-controlled ages,the susceptibility age model and grain-size age model were used to calculate the deposition times of the various horizons of the studied section respectively.A comparative analysis was made on the deposition time of the same horizon calculated by different models with the calculated ages.As viewed from the lithologic characters and the climatic stages,the susceptibility and grain-size age models have some shortcomings,but the stratigraphic deposition time calculated by the susceptibility and grain-size models with model 2 as the nodal-controlled age at the glacial period and the interglacial period is more consistent with the real deposition times of the strata.If some more suitable nodal-controlled ages were interpolated into the major climatic stages to determine the stratigraphic deposition time,the age calculated by the model would be more approximated to the actual stratigraphic deposition age.The usage of susceptibility and grain-size age models at Quaternary period was not suitable.

In Qilian Mountains,Sabina przewalskii is one of the most important intolerant trees on south-facing mountain slopes.In this study,a plot of 50m×15m of the Qilian Juniper community in the central Qilian Mountains was used for stand structure and dendroecological sampling.Within the plot,all trees(>5.0cm DBH) were cored and diameter at breast height was measured.Besides,the amount of all trees and saplings was recorded respectively with their spatial distribution patterns being mapped.A total of 23 trees and 64 saplings were cored and recorded respectively in this plot. The community of Qilian Juniper was very sparse and its compositions could be simply divided into two layers,i.e.the arborous layer and the herbaceous layer.The arborous layer was entirely occupied by Qilian Juniper.The diameters of trees in the plot ranged from 9cm to 33cm,with 78.3% of all individuals falling into the diameter range between 10cm and 25cm.The age structure indicated that most of the trees in this region were less than 250 years old,and there were not any trees with an age of less than 60 years being found in this stand.It was notable that there were large numbers of saplings in the plot now.The radial growth rates of Qilian Juniper of this plot varied between 0.02mm per year and 1.84mm per year,with the mean radial growth rate being 0.62mm per year.Release events in radial growth,indicative of different disturbances,occurred once or more in most of the trees during the last 200 years,with the highest frequency of releases occurred in the 1970s.The result of correlation function analysis indicates that temperature is the main environmental factor influencing tree ring growth of Qilian Juniper in this region,and high temperature could accelerate the radial growth.Besides,precipitation in June and July of the growth season is significantly and positively correlated with the radial growth of Qilian Juniper.The tree-ring chronology displayed a persistent growth increase from the 1970s to now,suggesting a positive growth response to the global warming.Under recent climate warming,it can be concluded that the forest would have regrown rapidly in this region once the anthropic disturbances are well controlled.More extensive samplings and corresponding physiological research will greatly improve our knowledge of Qilian Juniper's growth and regeneration patterns in different environmental gradients.

The δ¹³C annual series in different azimuths of two Cryptomeria fortunei Hooibrenk ex Otto et Dietr（for short CF-1 and CF-3,respectively） tree discs collected from west Tianmu Mountain,Zhejiang Province were determined based on cross-dated tree ring age.The analysis of variance shows that the δ¹³C values in Cryptomeria fortunei tree rings varied along with azimuths significantly.At the same time,we found the differences of the average δ¹³C values among azimuths were up to 0.56‰（for CF-3）¹.34‰（for CF-1） and the inter-annual variations in each azimuth were up to 0.9‰¹.63‰（for CF-1） and 0.6‰¹.1‰（for CF-3）.The δ¹³C variability in space was the same as to the inter-annual.This indicates the study on the azimuth variation of δ¹³C in tree rings has the same significance to that on the inter-annual variation.The statistical analysis proved that correlation coefficients are highly correlated,ranging from 0.4 to 0.87 for CF-1 and from 0.59 to 0.89 for CF-3 at significance level of α = 0.001 among different azimuths,respectively,as well as from 0.48 to 0.89 for the same azimuths between CF-1 and CF-3 tree discs at significance level of α = 0.001.This indicates that local environmental factors resulting in the δ¹³C values varying along with azimuths significantly were similar for the two tree rings.In our study,we mainly analyzed the causes that resulted in the differences in the δ¹³C values at the same azimuths for CF-1 and CF-3 as well as between the different azimuths for both CF-1 and CF-3.The differences of the solar radiation on different tilted surfaces and of the radiant condition（such as radiant intensity and efficient sunlight hours） at the different azimuths on crown of a tree were the most important factors leading to the δ¹³C variations along with azimuths.The site conditions where the trees stand including latitude,longitude and altitude as well as gradient and slope orientation can affect the variations of the sunlight,microenvironment temperature,humidity and soil nutrient along the different radials and thus affect the variations of δ¹³C values of tree rings along the azimuths.So the site conditions where the trees were collected are important factors leading to the azimuth variations of the δ¹³C values in tree rings.

By map overlapping,statistic analysis and buffer analytical methods,data of soil erosion and terrain slope,land use/land cover situation,soil type and distribution,annual average downfall days, buffer zone of a river and buffer zone of a road in Lancang River drainage area of Yunnan in Southwest China′s longitudinal mountain range were obtained under the support of Arcview 3.2 and Arc/Info 8.1;then the corresponding soil erosion synthesized indexes of each factor were calculated.The results indicated that: a) In the case of different slope gradients,soil erosion at 15°²5° is the strongest,at 8°¹5° and 4°⁸° is intermediate and >25° is the weakest. b) The order of the descending degrees of soil erosion of different land use types is steep dryland,hilly dryland,middle coverage grassland,mountainous dryland,high cover age grassland,mountainous paddy field,sparse woodland,shrub land,woodland;and in general,erosion on sloping dryland is more serious than that on grassland,and grassland is more serious than woodland.c)Among various soil types,erosion on yellow soil and lime soil is most prominent,besides them are red soil,yellow brown soil,paddy soil,brown soil,dark brown forest soil,laterite soil,brown soil,lateritic red soil and black clay soil.d)Erosion in river buffer and road buffer areas is more serious than that of the entire region,and is a little stronger in river buffer than in road buffer.e) When the number of downfall days is less than 20 annually,soil erosion degree increases along with the increase of downfall days.Whereas when downfall days exceed 20 annually,erosion degree is relatively low because the antecedent rain wash has swept off loose materials on the earth's surface.Overall,the result can provide scientific basis for preventing soil and water loss and of reducing river and reservoir sediment.

Research on the changing process of landscape in a longer spatial and temporal scale is one of the foci of landscape ecology in recent years.Furthermore,identifying cumulative effects caused by landscape changes is very important for environmental impact evaluation.The Naoli River Watershed was chosen as a study area,and our study focused on wetland landscape changing processes and their cumulative effects in historical periods.We use vemote sensing,GIS techniques and geographical statistics regression for data analysis in this paper.The Naoli River watershed,characterized by rich wetland landscape and great changes in biodiversities in the Sanjiang Plain,China,has attracted global concern in recent years.Wetland landscape was in a very natural state before 1949,which was very rich in landscape types in the study area.And wetland landscape change experienced a process from the preliminary land reclamation phase（1945¹967） to an intermediate land reclamation phase（1967¹983） and then a near-term reclamation phase（1983²002）.As a result,wetland landscape changed in the study area.The direct and indirect cumulative effects were identified by analyzing the changing process of landscape types in the three large-scale land reclamation phases,as well as the impact of human activities on the scope and intensity of wetland landscapes in the watershed.The direct cumulative effects include loss of wetland landscape area,fragmentation of landscape structure and degradation of wetland ecosystem;the indirect cumulative effects caused by wetland landscape change include biodiversity change,hydrological regime change and local climate change in the watershed.At present,the diversity change of wetland landscape has gone over threshold condition. This phenomenon will bound to have great impacts on the regional ecological environment and economic sustainable development in the watershed.

The Funiu Mountain and Jigong Mountain naturalreserves are two famous forest reserves in Henan province.This paper compared the floras of these two natural reserves and calculated the comparability coefficients of the plants.The conclusion is as follows: the floras have certain comparability in the two regions,but they also differ to a certain extent.On the whole the transitionality in Funiu Mountain is stronger than Jigong Mountain,the flora of Funiu Mountain has a more tightness contact with Central China and North China,there are not only tropical and subtropical species but also many species of north temperate zone.Jigong Mountain is even more closely related to the north subtropical plant flora.The characteristics of these two regions are as follows:(1) the plant species and flora in Funiu Mountain are complex,dominated by tropical,subtropical and temperate zone components,while the plants in Jigong Mountain are mostly tropical and subtropical components, with temperate zone species in dominance to a certain extent.(2)Both regions are characterized by various geographical compositions,extensive flora contacts,association with east and west and transition between north and south.(3)There are many species proper to China.Funiu Mountain has close contact with floras of Central China,Southwest China and North China.Floras in Jigong Mountain are more closely related to Central China and East China.(4)Both are the unique species distributing centers of China in Henan Province,especially 80% of Henan unique species are concentrated in Funiu Mountain natural reserve.There are much more plant species in Funiu Mountain than in Jigong Mountain.This is propably related directly to their areas,the impacts of the human activities and the characteristics of transition.Furthermore,based on the comparative studies of the contact and characteristics of the floras in the two regions,we found that there are certain transitional characteristics in them,but the case of Funiu Mountain is clearer than that of Jigong Mountain.Since the two regions have an extremely higher comparability,it is suggested that these two regions should be put into one vegetation zone.However as there must be some differences between the northern slope and the southern slope of the Funiu Mountain,so whether there are close relations of vegetation between the two slopes of Funiu Mountain and Jigong Mountain need to be further studied.

The sand dust precipitation was collectied in Harbin city on Mar.20,2002.The paper deals with chemical composition of Harbin dustfall deposits.The result shows that the major elements of SiO₂and Al₂O₃ and Fe₂O₃,predominate the dustfall Harbin,occupied 77.8% altogether.The contents of the trace elements such as V,Rb,Nb and Ba evidently are higher than those in Lanzhou dustfall,and the elements of Ni,Cu,Pb,Zn,As and Sr are lower than Lanzhou dustfall.The enrichment factor of Ca,Na and Sr is below 1 being deficit elements,and that of Mg,K,Si,Fe,Mn,P,Ti,Co,Ni and V elements is around 1,derived mainly from lithosphere.Part of Cu,Pb,Zn,Cr and Se is derived from other pollution sources.The enrichment factor of As,Cd and Sb is above 10,derived from pollution sources.The elemental compositions of Lanzhou dustfalls are closer to Lanzhou Loess than Harbin dustfalls,judged from discriminant function（DF） and PI.The Si/Al and Si/（Al+Fe） ratios of Harbin dustfalls are greater than the Earth's surface soils of Northwest China,and chemical weathering degrees of Harbin dustfalls are obviously higher than Lanzhou Loess and Lanzhou dustfalls.Based on the analysis of the chemical composition,discriminant function,PI,cosmid ratio of surface soils and chemical weathering index,the results indicate that element compositions of Northwest Loess are similar to Lanzhou dustfall deposits,while they are obviously different from Harbin sanddust.The source areas of Harbin sanddust differ from Northwest Loess and Lanzhou sanddust,and the status of climate and biology and the degree of chemcial weathering are much better than sanddust sources in Northwest.

Resources-based cities are one of the principal types of city in China.Along with the development of market economy of China,these cities now face many difficulties and challenges.Promoting the transfer of their development mode has been an important strategic problem concerning social stability.Related international studies began 50 years ago,but in China it's still on the way and is a hot spot in the academic circle.This paper aims at revealing the eco-environmental problems that coal resources-based cities are facing through a case study of Jining city and providing useful references for the ecological transfer of resources-based cities. As a coal resources-based city,the increased production value of coal and electric utility industry of Jining city was about 49.7% of that of its scalesized industry,and its industrial structure is single.As a result,the main eco-environmental problems are prominent smoke pollution,severe water pollution,ever expanding subsided land of coal mining area,fragile eco-environment and so on.These will directly influence the sustainability of the economic development.This paper analyses the relation between the industrial/economic development of Jining city and its environmental pollution using environmental Kuznets curve quantitatively,and combining the actual situation of the city,forecasts its prospective discharge of waste gas,waste water,solid wastes and the subsided coal mining area.The results show that the economic development of the city is still in the high increase,high consumption and high pollution stage,if it develops at the present way,its discharge of waste gas,waste water and solid wastes will inevitably increase continuously,so will its subsided coal mining area. So Jining city needs to strengthen environment repairing by taking the comprehensive renovation of its subsided land of coal mining area as a breakthrough;demarcates eco-functional districts scientifically and carries out ecological protection and control according to actual conditions of each district;proceeds experimentation and demonstration of a resources-based city and constructs ecological industrial system,so as to make its natural eco-system support economic and social development more effectively.