Central China, including Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan, is the country’s major food production area. This paper analyzes its grain production scales from grain sown area and grain output. By surplus method, it explores fluctuation of grain production and its characteristics with time sequence data of 1978~2006 grain production. First, the fluctuation is a classical one, which fluctuates in the increase and decrease of total grain production, second, it is a short period fluctuation which takes place in 2~3 years, third, except few years, the fluctuation is within 5%. Meanwhile gray interrelated mode is established with gray systematic theory to analyze the influentiing factors of grain comprehensive productive capacity. Irrigation area, grain sown area and disaster stricken area are the major influentiing factors. Based on the characteristics of grain production in Central China, the paper analyzes its influence on China’s grain safety: first, since 1978, Central China’s grain production has been increasing by 2.12% per year; second, Central China’ grain production occupies 30% of average national grain production which has an objective impact on China grain production; third, Central China’s grain production fluctuates to a certain degree but not so much; and fourth, gray interrelated mode indicates irrigation area, grain sown area and disaster stricken area are the major influentiing elements for grain comprehensive productive capacity. Effective regulation and control measures can promote grain production and guarantee China’s grain safety. First of all, the function and status of a commodity grain production base cannot be changed in the central part, and the protection of farmland and agricultural infrastructure should be strengthened; second, stabilizing the current policies and measures, constructing a long-term system to support national grain production, and maintaining and upgrading farmers' initiative; and third, bringing into full play scientific technology and innovation.

The formation and development process of urban agglomeration is the integration and optimization evolvement process of its spatial structure; it is also the reorganization and optimization process of its industrial structure. Researching the well-spatial integration and organization can strengthen industrial cooperation and structural inter-reinforce among cities; which is helpful to seek the optimal industrial competition and cooperation road for urban agglomeration in the process of economic globalization and regional economic integration. Wuhan Urban Agglomeration which lies in the middle economic hinterland in Central China is the bridge and bond of industrial gradient shift from east to west, also the important strategic pivot in the rising of Central China. Based on the analysis of the strategic status of Wuhan Urban Agglomeration, this paper proposes the overall thinking of constructing ecological urban agglomeration, confirm its overall orientation as the important engine of region economic growth, the pivot of interactive development among the eastern, western and middle parts which take the Yangtze River economic belt as the main axis and important center of the advanced manufacturing and service industries in central region; puts forwards the node-axes structure scheme which is composed of "One Core" (Wuhan main core), "Two Rings" (the freeway outer ring circling Wuhan urban district and the expectant freeway outer ring circling Wuhan Urban Agglomeration), "Two Belts" (two eco-barriers which consist of Tongbai-Dabie Mountain in northeast and Mufu Mountain in south), and "Four Axes (four-city and industrial development belts); the circle structure scheme which is composed of core circle, close circle and radiation circle; the cluster structure scheme which is made up of Huangshi-Ezhou-Huanggang eastern industry-city cluster, Xiantao-Qianjiang-Tianmen western industry-city cluster, Xiaogan-Hanchuan-Yingcheng northwestern industry-city cluster and Xianning-Chibi-Jiayu northern industry-city cluster; the spatial morphology structure scheme which is made up of "One Main Center"(metropolis city Wuhan), "One Sub-Center"(super-large cities compositing with Huangshi urban district and Daye urban district), and Seven Nodes (Huanggang urban district, Xiaogan urban district, Ezhou urban district, Xiantao urban district, Qianjiang urban district, Xianning urban district, and Tianmen urban district). Finally, the paper proposes the thoughts on industrial development and contribution including extending the 10 preponderant industrial chains such as automobile industry, opto-electronic industry, iron and steel industry, nonferrous metallurgy industry, petrochemical industry, salt chemical industry, textile and apparel industry, papermaking and packaging industry, construction industry, agricultural by-products industry, constructing 15 industrial clusters and seven characteristic industrial belts which are of important interregional significance, furthermore making the distribution and corporation scheme of industrial development.This paper has the strategic significance and important realistic meaning to the development of Wuhan Urban Agglomeration, Hubei Province and rise of Central Rise China, it is an important guidance for enriching and perfecting the theory of spatial integration and industrial optimization for urban agglomeration, and also providing references to other urban agglomerations in China on achieving the spatial integration and industrial optimization.

Ephemeral gully erosion can be a major sediment source serving as main conduits to convey runoff and sediment from most farmland. Ephemeral gully erosion is similar to but differ from both rill and classical gully erosion.But ephemeral gully erosion is often overlooked, and it is also not estimated with rill-interrill erosion prediction models such as the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation. Soil erosion is increasingly severe in Northeast China with black soils, in which ephemeral gully erosion is an important type of water erosion. However, the existing literature indicated that little research on ephemeral gully erosion has been done in this area.In this paper, ephemeral gully erosion was investigated in spring and summer of 2005 in black soil regions of two small catchments on Heshan Farm of Heilongjiang Province.The aim of the study was to present the characteristics of ephemeral gullies and their seasonal discrepancies and controlling factors. The results show that soil losses due to ephemeral gully erosion fluctuate along the slope, and the high erosivity belts alternate with the low belt.There are also great differences in the morphology, the erosion intensity and controlling factors of ephemeral gully erosion between spring and summer. Ephemeral gully erosion in spring is mainly resulted from snow storm and is significantly influenced by freeze-thaw and snowmelt runoff. Ephemeral gully erosion in spring is slightly severer than that in summer. Ephemeral gully erosion was caused by storm. Compared with that in spring, ephemeral gullies in summer were shorter and shallower, but wider due to the storm characterized by high intensity and low duration. Furthermore, the depth and distribution of ephemeral gully are significantly influenced by tillage practice and crop type, especially in summer.

The most important characteristics of the informal sectors, based upon the general knowledge and existing research, are that they are out of the reach of the formal regulation founded by governments. We found that this is partly wrong for the situation of the informal sectors in the urban villages of Guangzhou City. We chose Xiadu, one of the typical urban villages of Guangzhou, as a study case, and conducted deep research mainly through the methods of field investigation, mapping, interview, etc. We also used some materials from various websites in our analysis. The main economic sectors of the informal sectors in Xiadu are retail, restaurant, barber's, photocopying, and other neighborhood services. One quarter of the informal sectors are outdoor fakers, the other three quarters are indoor shops. Most of the informal sectors are spatially distributed near the entrance from outside surrounding areas to the urban village and along the main roads inside it. The main reasons for the gathering of the informal sectors within urban villages are: loose regulation from the municipal government provided easy business environment; cheap houses provided right space; and good accessibility provided market demand. The everyday surviving state of the informal sectors is influenced by a system consisting of players of the municipal government (the real players are its departments involved in urban management, urban planning, and land use administration, etc. ), local community (or village) autonomy, local ruffian group, the local registered residents of the village, and the surrounding areas' residents. The municipal government, according to its various major political aims, is exerting sometimes direct and sometimes indirect, but the greatest influence on the informal sectors; the local community autonomy protects and supports the informal sectors mainly because of seeking the economic interests from them; the local ruffians are exploiting the informal sectors; the local registered residents of the urban villages support and help the informal sectors because they are renting their houses to them; the surrounding areas' residents are partly customers and partly sufferers (from bad sanitation, noise, and pollution, etc. ) of the informal sector, so they are at most time opposed to it. We conclude that the existence and operation of the system is affecting the real surviving state of the informal sectors in the urban village. It could be understood as a special regulation system different from the generally known regulation, also from that of pure informal governance out of governmental regulation.

With the launch of system reform since the late 1970s, the urban commercial space went through great changes but with less comprehensive researches. Since the increasingly important influence from the consumers on the system is usually ignored by previous relative papers, the purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of the central place system from the point view of the corresponding changes of residents' shopping behavior. Taking Shanghai as the city of case study, the research collected the information of residents' daily shopping activities by questionnaire survey which provided the data base. The spatial characteristics of the residents' shopping activity on the aggregate level are generalized, and then further examined by modeling the spatial structure of shopping trip of different commodities; finally, the eight surveyed communities were grouped into three regions according to the income of residents and their spatial structure of residents' shopping activity was explored respectively to see the sub-system shopping centers of different socio-economic areas. The results conform again the hierarchy of shopping trip space of different commodities in previous researches; what's more, it is also found that the condensation of the spatial structure of shopping trip has showed up, which is a reflection of the change of urban commercial system. For the analysis of last part, a hierarchical model of spatial structure much like Davies' "development and hierarchical sub-system shopping centers" is identified. However, we believe that its formation is actually a result of low income residents’ moving out and the underdevelopment of the suburban local commence, which is quite different from that of western cities.

Now, city cluster has become the principal part of urbanization form of China. The spatial conformity of city cluster is a great strategic matter which must be solved in the urbanization process.At present, the Central Plain city cluster has been developing well, and it has been deemed to be one of the ten great city clusters that China would form. Using geographical theories such as fractal theory about urban special distribution, urbanization imbalance indicator, urban network theory and analysis of urban reciprocity in space and so on, this paper analyzed the spatial combination characters of cities and towns of the Central Plain city cluster.The results show that: (1) the distribution of cities and towns is comparatively dense; (2) the urban spatial distribution takes on a convergence type; (3) the traffic-oriented and sphere layers characteristics of spatial distribution of cities and towns are obvious; (4) the primary urban network structure which has four arteries as the trunks has formed; and (5) the analysis from the angle of urban reciprocity in space, shows that it belongs to the typical "weaker pole and multiple cores pattern". Then, this paper analyzed the ordinary principle about spatial conformity of city cluster, and according to this law, it conceived the spatial conformity mechanism to make the nine cities of the Central Plain city cluster develop harmoniously as a whole. According to the development feature of the Central Plain city cluster itself, this paper considered that in this period, the Central Plain city cluster as a whole should take "sphere layer" pattern of urban spatial conformity; in the local parts, according to the status, it could adopt "axial belt" and "growth triangle" patterns; and in the future when the Central Plain city cluster has been developing maturely, using "double city" pattern would be reasonable. Colligating the above analysis, this paper considered that around 2020, the Central Plain city cluster should strive for spatial conformity as "double core,double circle layers,four axial belts,one growth triangle " as a whole, so that the Central Plain city cluster form the pattern of center centralizing,axial stretching and network contacting.

Through overall reviewing and analyzing History Draft of Qing Dynasty, Actual Annals of Qing Dynasty, local chronicles and other historical books about Northwest China compiled in periods of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, it is concluded that during the Qing Dynasty, there were 62 dust weather events confirmed from historical books about the study area.Through analyzing these 62 dust weather events, it is found that the occurrence of dust weather in Northwest China fluctuated obviously with time. From 1650 to 1710 and from 1810 to 1910, the dust weather occurred frequently but with less frequency from 1710 to 1810 in Northwest China.In terms of season, the dust weather mainly occurred in spring; and in terms of spatial distribution, there were four dust weather frequently occurred regions, including the Guanzhong Plain region, centered around Xi'an and Weinan, the Loess Plateau region Zhenyuan and Qingyang in eastern Gansu , the Hexi Corridor region, Centered around Zhongwei, Gulang, Yongdeng and Shandan, and the Loess Plateau region, Mizhi and Zichang in northern Shaanxi. The occurrence of dust weather in Northwest China during the Qing Dynasty was connected closely with temperature change, but insignificant with precipitation change.

Although eastern China has been keeping a high speed of economic development and urbanization as a whole since China’s reform and opening-up, each province in coastal area possesses different characters in the process of urbanization and its affecting factors in the transition period. On the basis of defining the factors affecting the urbanization process on the new background in the coastal province in China's transition period, this paper examined the different main factors affecting every coastal province by factor analysis using the economic and social statistic data in 2000. The index and data include not only the traditional factors such as economy and industrial structure, but also the new factors such as floating population and foreign direct investment in the context of reform and opening-up. The result obtained show that, the main factors influencing the process of urbanization are different among coastal provinces. The coastal provinces have presented different types of urbanization characters in affecting factors: the urbanization process of Guangdong province was mainly affected by floating factors in transition period such as floating labors; the urbanization process of Zhejiang province and Shanghai-Jiangsu was mainly driven by the integrative increasing of economy; Shandong province showed a traditional type of urbanization mechanism as driven by industrialization. The difference of urbanization affecting factors among coastal provinces indicated that the provinces in China's coastal area had begun to show diversification in urbanization process in the transition period.

Coal-mining cities are confronted with a lot of serious social, economic and eco-environmental problems.Though extensive research on coal-mining cities are from many relevant disciplines, few are from the coupled human-environment system.There are obvious socio-economic and eco-environmental vulnerability characteristics on coal-mining cities.Vulnerability analysis framework in sustainability science has many properties of multi-scale, multi-element, multi-flow and multi-cycle, which presents a new research paradigm for coal-mining city.Based on a detailed discussion about the conception of economic system vulnerability (ESV), the essay establishes an economic vulnerability assessment model of coal-mining cities from the aspects of exposure-sensitive to and response capacity for the gradual depletion of the regional minable coal resources.The conditions of minable resources, industrial and employment structures, which determine their exposure-sensitivity to the depletion of regional minable coal resources, create an exposure-sensitivity index.From the angles of urban economic strength, industrial state, regional and infrastructure conditions, the degree to open up and economic conditions of urban and rural residents, it constructs a coping capacity index.According to the model, the economic system vulnerability of 25 typical coal-mining cities is evaluated and divided into three categories by principal components analysis.The results show that economic system vulnerability of coal-mining cities differs significantly in different development stages, city sizes and regions.The ESV of old coal-mining cities is generally high; the ESV of middle-aged is almost in 3 vulnerability grades, especially concentrated on medium grade; the ESV of young is low.The ESV of coal-mining cities presents obvious regional differences, including north to south and east to west.The high economic system vulnerability of coal-mining cities mainly concentrates on Northeast China.The average score of ESV shows a trend of Northeast>Central>West>East.The ESV of southern coal-mining cities is medium, while the northern region is distributed in three grades.The ESV of different size coal-mining cities shows a trend of big cities>medium-sized cities>mega-cities>small cities.The study provides some lessons for the vulnerability assessment of other subsystems and human-environment coupled system, and also gives a basis for relevant departments to adopt some policies for economic transformation.

Human settlements are the base for human survival and development, the most consanguineous and material geographic space between human and environment. With the urbanization in China, the emphasis on human building settlements is transferred to fringe and the importance of fringe human settlements becomes more obvious. The evolvement of human settlements in metropolis fringe is the result of different kinds of forces in and out of human settlements during the man-nature interaction and follows some rules. Taking Guangzhou as the case, some evolvement rules are disclosed. Firstly, human settlements system evolvement is separated into three phases, i.e. initial phase, metaphase and anaphase with prominent characteristics of urbanization, economy, infrastructure, community, landscape and landuse . Secondly, the conception of human settlements capacity is put forward and with the method of GIS, it is found out that the population density increases and the human settlements capacity approaches to saturation. Thirdly, the evolvement of metropolis fringe human settlements develops with unbalanced periodicity. On the basis of it, using the Verhulst Logistic Equation and Complex Ecosystem Dynamics Mechanism for reference, the phase, life cycle and the sustainable development model of metropolis fringe human settlements are established. The study on the evolvement rules of human settlements in metropolis fringe is of great theoretical and practical significance by disclosing the rules of human settlements development. It tries to construct the elementary theoretical frame of human settlements in metropolis fringe, enriching the theoretical system of human settlements sciences, and guiding the optimization and regulation practices of human settlements in metropolis fringe.

Based on the mathematical statistic method of correlation analysis, the impact of natural factors of climate and topography upon spatial-temporal distribution of seasonal tjale is analyzed, and the response of tjale to air temperature, precipitation and cloudiness is also simulated. The results show that the topography and climate factor have a significant influence on the distribution and evolution of seasonal tjale in Qinghai, the topographic factors include altitude, longitude, latitude, slope, direction of inclination and so on. Since atmosphere is most active and sensitive compared with the others in the climate system, the climate factor and its change have significant effect on the seasonal tjale, at the same time, in that the tjale's response upon the temperature variation is most sensitive, so it is considered that global warming is the primary factor to cause seasonal tjale degeneration. The variation of local climate effect of the increasing of heat island effect brought by the urbanization in Xining and the decreasing of water effect caused by the descending of water level in Qinghai lake intensify the response of seasonal tjale upon climate change to some extent, the seasonal tjale has an evident time-delay upon the response of the air temperature variation at dekad and month scale, while it is not so significant on the interannual scale. At the same time, the response of surface temperature upon the temperature change is delayed gradually with the depth increasing, it shows : more deeper, the delay effect is more obvious.

This paper examines patterns and changes of China's urban systems in terms of air traffic flows since the 1990s. The related analysis approach is mainly based on the gravity model and the fuzzy variable method. The main findings are as follows: Firstly, the pattern, the interaction and changes of China's urban systems conform to the law of"Distance Decay".The global cities, or the mega-cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai have enforced their position nationwide. While in some economic centers of the western region, such as Chengdu, Kunming, and Urumqi, the hub airports gradually grow up into regional centers. Secondly, cities of Beijing, Xiamen, Xi'an, Shenzhen, Guanghzou and Shanghai are evident as regional hubs. Most of these cities are located in the urban agglomerations,such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region,the Yangtze Delta Region,the Xiamen-Zhangzhou-Quanzhou Region, the Pearl River Delta Region, the Guanzhong Region, and the Chengdu-Chongqing Region etc. While cities in Liaoning, Shandong and Hubei provinces, their airports do not show evident regional hubness. And also other cities, such as Nanjing, Hangzhou, Fuzhou and Chongqing have small hubness index, because of the influence of related gateway cities or primary cities, such as Shanghai, Xiamen and Chengdu. Thirdly, the types of changes of China's main economic centers include the following ones: the steady type (eg Shenyang, Shanghai, Nanjing), the growing type (eg Tianjing, Hangzhou, Qingdao), the decaying types (eg Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Wuhan, Xi'an), the "increasing-decreasing" types and the "decreasing-increasing" ones. Generally speaking, cities in the Yangtze Delta Region show strong roles of regional motors, while those in the Pearl River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region show steadiness. Hubness of cities in Liaoning Province, the coastal Fujian Province, the Guanzhong Region, and the Jianghan Region, show slow growth, even remarkable decreasing tendency.

The patterns of spatial interaction and hierarchical structure of Chinese cities have been both shaped by and reflected in the air traffic pattern as air transport industry developed rapidly since the 1990s. Air passenger linkages or traffic flows among cities are used as the basis for identifying hierarchical status of cities-a theme of long-standing concern for analysis in spatial organization. Three specific research areas are addressed in this paper: (1) the spatial structure of intercity air passenger flows; (2) the pattern and hierarchical standing of major Chinese cities in domestic passenger air transport-based spatial interaction; and (3) air passenger dominance and changing urban system structure. Fifty-seven major Chinese cities with scheduled passenger flights and substantial passenger turnovers are included in the study. Principle of dominant flow, or Nystuen-Dacey method, along with Hierarchical Cluster Analysis by squared Euclidean distance, is applied to intercity air passenger data of 1995, 2000, and 2003. This study reveals, first, that directional intercity air routes and interactions are strongly dominated by cities in the East, where the trio of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou-Shenzhen constitutes the backbone of the national air transport network. Cities in the Middle Region lag behind their counterparts in the other two regions in terms of air network importance. Second, measured by dominant (first-order) air passenger flows, a highly concentrated hierarchical system of passenger air transport and spatial organization of cities has evolved in the form of the control of three top-ranked, national command and control centers from 1995 to 2003. Third, under the national hierarchy led by Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou-Shenzhen, the regional and provincial significance of such cities as Chengdu, Xi'an, Kunming, Xiamen and Urumqi is also evident. Fourth, it seems that the hierarchical nature of the patterns of intercity linkages is increasing. The expansion of China's regional airlines and the probable development of the hub-and-spoke network system have the potential to promote further hierarchical connections and organization in China's national air transport network and urban system.

The super-organic concept, which had been suggested by anthropologists, was introduced into the study of cultural geography by scholars of Berkeley School, an influential school of the study of cultural geography in the United States. Wilbur Zelinsky,a geographer of Berkeley School, gave the features of super-organism in his book Cultural Geography of the United States. It is the super-organism that shapes the cultural landscapes on the land of America. This concept, however, has been seriously criticized by the New Cultural Geographers although it had ever-great influence on the traditional studies of cultural geography. The discussion here is focused on the usability and limitation of the concept of super-organism. The correct using of the method of causal analysis,the different usability of the concept of super-organism in the studies of different scales of the cultural landscapes or different social perspectives are the major questions discussed in this paper. Some case studies by Chinese geographers have been mentioned in this paper. They show both the critic standpoint and positive attitude to the super-organism in these case studies. And the authors address that either positive or negative view-angles have their reasons for existence in cultural geography, even the New Cultural Geography leads the trend.

Mongolian Plateau Region is facing many problems in environment and sustainable development including land degradation, soil erosion, water pollution, solid and hazardous waste disposal, land use conflicts and desertification, which have led to social consequences such as urban unemployment and poverty. Those issues are very serious in central part of the region where population density is relatively high and intensive economic activities have caused several problems such as climate change. The central Mongolian Plateau Region covers seven provinces (municipalities) of Mongolia including Selenge, Darhan-Uul, Ulaanbaatar, Govisumber, Tov, Dundgovi and Dornogovi and four sub-provinces of Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China like Huhhot, Baotou, XilinGol, and Ulan Qab. The study aims at comparative analysis of climate changes, impacts on major economic activities and affecting factors in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia using temperature and precipitation data extending from 1940 to 2004 from six stations of Mongolia and 1951~2004 from six stations of Inner Mongolia of China. The results show that in comparison with temperature data in the 1960s, the average temperature has risen by 1.35℃ in the 1990s in Inner Mongolia of China, while it is 1.13℃ in Mongolia. In the period of 2000-2004, the average temperature increase was 1.89℃ in Inner Mongolia and 1.37℃ in Mongolia in comparison with the 1960s, showing a faster temperature increase in Inner Mongolia than that in Mongolia. Mutation test of the changing trend of temperature indicates that temperature mutation usually occurs in the areas with high latitude followed by those of low latitude, and big cities followed by small and medium-sized towns. However, significant change of precipitation was not observed, but periodic changes instead. For instance, duration of precipitation in Inner Mongolia is 2.8 years, while it is 4 and 8 years in Mongolia, and those results reach 95% level of correction test. The climate change has brought about significant impacts on agricultural production, livestock raising and environment, which have been considered as important components of sustainable development of the region in a long run. The results are significant for understanding interaction between climate change, impacts and driving factors, and identifying most important areas for policy intervention, and finally for sustainable use and management of fragile natural resources.

It is very important to research the fractal characteristics of the distribution of transportation network. At present the researches in this field mainly focus on the regional road network and have not attached enough importance to the urban transportation network. There are several different calculation methods of fractal dimension value. Length-radius dimension and dendrite-radius dimension of transportation network of Nanjing city are calculated with the help of the software ArcGis in this paper. Xinjiekou, the transportation hinge of Nanjing city is chosen as the calculation center for fractal characteristics analysis, and the radius value changes between 1 to 9km. The results show that the transportation network of the city has fractal characteristics. The value of length-radius dimension is 1.574. The fractal dimension value of dendrite-radius is 1.3934. It shows that the connectivity of the road of Nanjing city should be strengthened. The box dimension of different districts of the main city has also been calculated at the scale of 50 to 500m in this research and the results show that the value is between 1.3568 and 1.4991. The respective value of each district is 1.4991(Xiaguan),1.4902 (Gulou), 1.4401(Qinhuai), 1.4393(Jianye), 1.4129(Baixia)and 1.3568(Xuanwu). The fractal dimension of transportation network of these districts does not have very good relationship with economic index. It can be concluded that besides urban transportation network, there are many other factors that influence the economic development of the districts, such as the existence of water region and upland, which influence the road construction.How to plan the transportation network of the districts with the present economic condition is still a difficult problem. It has also been brought forward that the accuracy of the fractal dimension value is relative because the order of the road has not been considered. How to assign the weight value to the roads with different orders is very important for future research. There is still no answer to the questions such as in which scale the fractal dimension of the transportation network does not have good relationship with regional economy index, and whether they have good relationship in other regional scale. More researches should be done to get the answer to the relative questions.

Theories concerned with peri-urbanization were reviewed, including the basic concept about the peri-urbanization and peri-urbanized areas, the spatial turn of research realm, the different mechanisms of the peri-urbanization in several typical regions, and the characteristics and the evolvement process of peri-urbanization phenomenon occurring in the coastal region of China. Then, the paper takes the urban fringe area of Putian City in Fujian Province as a case, where the phenomenon of peri-urbanization arises even though the economy is not as developed as many other areas in the coastal region of China, especially the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. Based on the survey on the population, land-use pattern and infrastructures of 309 villages in the urban fringe area of Putian, the paper puts forward the characteristics and the mechanisms of the peri-urbanization taking place in such relatively less developed areas of the coastal region in China.The characteristics of the peri-urbanization in Putian can be concluded in three points: (1) As well as high population density and high non-agriculture rates, the fluidity of population is notable. Unlike the developed area where a great many people are floating from other areas, Putian's population has high rate of both floating in and floating out. (2) The built-up area blends with agricultural area, and the industrial area invades the village. Unlike other peri-urbanized areas where industry buildings are the leading actor, the dwelling house is the main component of the landscape in Putian, which suggests that the peri-urbanization would be mostly recognized on its constructing landscape rather than the functional shifting. (3) The improvement of infrastructure is mainly influenced by the radiation from downtown, hence the modernization of the villagers' living condition is degressive as the distance from downtown increases. The main reasons can explain the forenamed characteristics as follows: (1) Conflict between the population and the land resources is the essential dynamics of the peri-urbanization. (2) Folk capital and moderate-small enterprises, not the foreign investment and large enterprises, act as the main impetus of such less developed peri-urbanization area. (3) Due to the weak central city, the actual city area is smaller than the municipal administrative boundary, and the dual land system of urban and rural exists widely on the fringe of the city. (4) The special culture of strong ancestrial idea and being inclined to parade the wealth advances the symbolization of the dwell house, and the large luxurious house acts as the main body of the landscape.

Beijing' s Nanluoguxiang-South Gong and Drum Lane-has a long history and rich cultural connotations.Along the lane and in the area nearby, there are several academic art institutions and prominent theaters, including The Central Academy of Drama, Beijing Art Association, Chinese Drama Theater, Beijing Seven-Color Children' s Theater and so on.Since the early 1990s when China' s institutional reform towards encouraging the commercialization of cultural undertaking began, over 30 various cafés and bars have emerged, which made Nanluoguxiang a place of interests for tourists and also a space of leisure for local residents.More importantly, it has become the breeding ground of cultural and creative activities for actors, directors, screenwriters and other artists.Nanluoguxiang' s rich resources available in the historical heritage of the old downtown provide many possibilities for creative activities. With the data collected from qualitative interviews and a small sample questionnaire of the field survey, this paper illustrates the appearance and operation of the cafés and bars in Nanluoguxiang and shows the importance of social gatherings.That can bring together all the creative personalities and the formulation of ideas may lead to collective creativity.These individuals form a social network, which actually becomes the precondition for the creative process.The physical spaces of cultural heritages become a hinge for creative ideas.Therefore, the best breeding ground for creative activities is where the creative talents can be attracted.From this points of view, it can be argued that the building of industrial parks in green fields might be useful to breed creative products, but unnecessarily efficient.

The inadequacy in understanding human behavior spatial characteristics is a main obstacle for studying the theories and practice of relationship between man and land in geography. This paper regards human behavioral humanities in influencing culture, customs and policy. factors as to correspond to order, making use of the time-space section analysis method to study the basic mindset of the spatial behavior chosen by flowing people in the Qing Dynasty in southern Shaanxi.The result shows that the human space choice behavior follows the close by principle in customs, rather than superior principle in geographic environment. The general trend of flowing people's behavior chosen is to seek unit time result maximization. The human spatial behavioral choice enhanced the exterior connection of the human behavioral result in different districts and the nature difference in grade and level, and indicated the defect of simple "man-land" cause and effect relation seeking only from the interior of a district or a certain kind of human behavior in a traditional way. Investigating mutually affected relations of the human environmental behavior from the point of view of system or a drainage basin is an important way to uuderstand and grasp the essence and the mechanism of man-land relations.

Recently, under the national new policies of real estates, the commercial-office buildings in Shanghai real estates market are now flourishing. Both the sale price and rent price of commercial-office buildings rise. On the basis of reviewing the existing research at home and abroad, the authors analyze the development situation and features of Shanghai commercial-office buildings, and reveal the rent differentiation of Shanghai commercial-office buildings. By means of collecting rental price samples of commercial-office buildings, which are distributed in the Nanjing Road, the Yanan Road and the Huaihai Road, altogether 24 sample areas, and with the help of multivariate linear regression analysis method, the authors analyze the interaction relations between the rent price of Shanghai commercial-office buildings and geographical location, service facilities, traffic conditions, average floors, average parking spaces and virescent coverage. The regression analysis results show that service facilities and average parking spaces are the main factors affecting the rents of Shanghai commercial-office buildings. The factors of virescent coverage, geographical location and traffic conditions are secondary. The factor of average floors is not remarkable. Finally, aimed at the multi-central patterns of Shanghai commercial-office buildings, some relative issues for further development and administration of commercial-office buildings are discussed.

The triangle method, as an intuitive platform for illustrating sustainability status and trends in economic development, seems to hold promise as an analytical management tool liable to be used by researchers and policy-makers at different levels due to its simplicity and flexibility.Based on the interrelationships among economic development, resource-energy consumption, and environmental pollution, in conjunction with the ecological performance and the triangle method, a definition to sustainable economic development was proposed, and a novel triangle method was designed to evaluate economic development sustainability. This paper selected Chongzuo City, a newly-established frontier trade city in western China, as a research region. Chongzuo City is located in the western zone among the country's three major zones of the eastern zone, middle zone and western zone. It had a total population of 2.3065 million in 2005. It covers a total area of 1.7345million hm² with five counties, one city and one district under its jurisdiction. As a case study, the triangle method was applied to assess the sustainability status and long-term trends of Chongzuo's integrated sustainability development. The results show that the integrated sustainability development in 2005 represents a relatively common state of sustainability, and the seven administrative sub-units in Chongzuo City reflect sustainability positions ranging from weak sustainability, strong sustainability to common sustainability. The sustainability in the southeastern part is better than in the northwestern. The Chongzuo's integrated sustainable development revealed a common sustainable trend during 1985-1990, a strong sustainable trend during 1991-1995, a common sustainable trend during 1996-2000, and a common sustainable trend during 2001-2005, but is lower than the former stage. Chongzuo's unremitting efforts in environmental protection and in the increasing integration of the environmental considerations within the economic development process over the last twenty years are contributory to these status and trends.

From the security of the relationship between human and nature, tourist ecological consumption characteristic and global climate change, this paper puts forward the conception of ecological security for tourist destination, and defines the conception in two ways by broad sense and narrow sense. Based on the theory and method of ecological footprint, it puts forward the ecological security measuring model, and taking the Jiuzhaigou National Nature Reserve (JNNR) as an example, it calculates and analyses the ecological security index and the intra and inter-regional impact on the JNNR in 2004. Four characteristics have been summarized: (1)The total tourist ecological footprint of the JNNR reaches 163514.0248hm² in 2004, an increase of 115.1% in contrast to that of 2002; the per capita tourist ecological footprint is 0.105190274hm² in 2004, an increase of 72.44%; the per capita residents ecological footprint of the JNNR is 0.994925hm² in 2004, up by 3.47% compared with that of 0.9616hm² in 2002.This indicates that tourism developed has produced some influence on the resident's consumption models.(2)The total tourist wastes ecological footprint of the JNNR is 46960.5678 hm² in 2004,the per capita is 0.044543055 hm²,about 42.35% of the total tourist ecological footprint in 2004, and about 99.84% of the total tourist wastes ecological footprint are the CO₂ emissions by the tourists. With the global climate change boiling up, the strict requirement of emission rights of CO₂ and by international society, the rapidly developed trade market of CO₂, and the high sensitivities to the CO₂ about landscape of Jiuzhaigou, monitoring and research into various changes of CO₂ for tourist destinations should be enhanced.(3)The ecological security index of the JNNR is from 1.093158 to 1.159388 in 2004, it is thus ecologically secure now, but the narrow sense of tourist destination ecological security index is higher than the broad sense, indicating that tourism development has not only exerted intra-regional but also interregional impact.(4)The increasing number of tourists, travel distance of tourists, changing consumption model of residents, and the increasing dependency on natural resources by local residents are the main factors influencing the ecological security of the JNNR in the future.

The stoneware excavated not only represent the Neolithic productive level but also indicate a relation between mankind and environment. Nevertheless, we did not give enough attention to them before. Because of the above reason, we discuss the relationship between human and environment from evolvement of stoneware excavated through the unearthed stoneware of the early Neolithic sites in Shuangdun and Yuchisi of the middle-reaches of the Huaihe River, supplemented with evidence of other relics, environmental magnetism and element geochemistry from the archaeological profiles as well. We found if the degree of productive contents would be reflected according to the quantity and the functional combination of stone implements, the order of Shuangdun Site in the early Neolithic age would be tree felling, hunting, cereal grinding, wooden tools processing and grain production, whereas, those of Yuchisi Site were grain production, hunting, wooden tools processing, tools grinding and tree felling. The unearthed stoneware shown that ancient people of Shuangdun Site used sling and other manifold hunting quomodo and got abundant meat during the Holocene Optimum. During the Yuchisi period, hunting level improved, but abrupt climate change and population boom led to the decrease of take.Seen from the wooden implements that the felled trees, during Shuangdun period, were rather small and combined in bundles, and people at that time knew little about the advantage of Maosun structure and built the sheds with sharpened roof. While during the Yuchisi period, the felled trees were relatively bulky and were used for buildings in Maosun structure. It is in the period that ancient people had more negative effects on the natural environment in the middle reaches of the Huaihe River. As far as the production instruments of agriculture were concerned, during Shuandun period, paddy planting appeared, but collection agriculture still occupied a greater proportion.Nevertheless, agriculture during the Yuchisi period was mainly planting complemented with collection agriculture when the unearthed stone implements were obviously related to types of farming and environmental evolution.

The significances of traditional culture and indigenous knowledge in biodiversity conservation and naturel management have been widely recognized throughout the world and, therefore, to conserve cultural diversity has been taken as one of the effective approaches to biodiversity conservation. China is a typical nation with multiple minorities and plentiful minority cultures which are important components of so-called natural and cultural heritage. Taboo, one of the most disputed and complex socio-cultural phenomena, was formed during the long historical natural adaptation and social intercommunication. Although most taboos have been changing or even disappeared along with social and economic development, some also play an important role in modern times. More importantly, compared to laws, rules or legislations, some taboos are more easily accepted by local people in some areas. In this paper, based on the review of many kinds of literatures and field survey in Dong Minority located in Congjiang County of Guizhou Province, the background of taboo formation was analyzed, some typical taboos related to rice-planting such as god and ghost worship, ancestor worship, and water worship, fish worship, frog worship, snake worship and so on, and their significance were discussed from the ecological angle, and the positive effects of traditional cultures including taboo in ecological conservation and regional sustainable development were illustrated.

Recently a new phenomenon of population migration based on mass tourism-tourism migration-has been highly concerned by foreign scholars. In China, though this phenomenon has emerged and is progressing, little importance is attached. In the West, verification analysis is emphasized in the research of tourism migration, which finds expression in the discussion of the relationship between tourism and migration, while leaving the vacancy of the definition of this phenomenon as well as its research system. Based on of analysis the related foreign literature and verification researches, the author defines the concept of tourism migration which is classified into two types of tourism labor migration and tourism consumption migration, and further subdivides the former into entrepreneurial migration and employment migration and the latter into lifestyle migration and tourism retirement migration. And three researching aspects about tourism migration are confirmed: first, behavioral theoretic researches, covering the contents such as demographic features of tourism migration groups, type divisions, behavioral rules, psychological perception and self-cognition; second, motivational theoretic researches, including those on dynamic factors, dynamic mechanism, migration policies and social networks; and third, social impacts researches, with the focus on the culture assimilation and conflict, the impacts on the local area, the evolution and management of the destination and the VFR tourism. Moreover, the central contents of the three aspects are interpreted and eventually the research system of tourism migration is constructed. Finally, proceeding from foreign studies and personal researches, the author puts forward some referential theories such as migratory dynamics, praxiology, sociology, as well as some material study methods such as qualitative methods, quantitative methods and comparative research, long-term station observation, case study and some aspects that need further attention. These studies have preliminarily discussed Chinese tourism migration in theory and methods.

Landforms can be described and quantified into relief classes by parametrization of digital elevation model (DEM). Several algorithms are available for automated classification of landforms, and most of the current approaches are mainly based on regular statistic unit. However, these approaches are not suitable for Chinese traditional classification system of geomorphology. Under the traditional system, integrity of geographical entities is ensured, and dividing lines of landforms are coincident with boundaries of geographical entities, the statistic units of landform classification are hereby not regular. Accordingly, algorithms of automated classification of landforms in this system are more complex, and they are still lack of effective ways to realize the automated classification of landforms under the Chinese traditional classification system. Taking one with another, the auto-classification of landform is mainly enslaved to the shortage of effective methods on the geomorphic unit auto-extration. Aimed at this problem, new quantitative and automatic methods for geomorphic unit extraction were developed in this research. Through searching for conjoint raster, neighboring cells with the same slope class were joined to the same groups. Then mountains were separated from plains by the rules based on the slope and area of the group. Boundary points of mountains were distinguished by model analysis on a reversed terrain in condition of 2-dimension. Subsequently, hydrologic modeling was carried out to extract all boundary points from real 3-dimension topography. After that, basic morphometric classes were extracted by structure lines created from the boundary points. The study shows that the results of geomorphic unit digital extraction and identification reach accuracies comparable to those of handwork. The methods developed in this article fit Chinese traditional classification system of geomorphology, and could help the digital classification of landform from DEM.

Arsenic reserves, mineral resources distribution and arsenic mining induced environmental pollution in China were analyzed. The known arsenic reserves were 3977 kt, and preserved reserves were 2796 kt,of which 87.1% existed in paragenetic or associated ores up to the end of 2003. The total arsenic preserved reserves owned by the provinces including Guangxi, Yunnan and Hunan accounted for 58.0% of the country's total reserves. Moreover, the arsenic preserved reserves in Nandan County, Guangxi Province and Gejiu County, Yunnan province accounted for 17.0% and 10.2% of the total reserves in China, respectively. Large amount of arsenic had been released to the environment in the process of mining and utilizing ore deposits. Up to 2003, the mined amount of arsenic reached 1392 kt in China. The exploited quantity of arsenic in Guangxi, Yunnan and Hunan provinces was 733,342 and 153 kt, respectively, so the environmental arsenic pollution in those areas was at high risk. The amount of arsenic discharged in the form of mining tailings accounted for about 70% of the total mined. A lot of arsenic pollution events had shown that the arsenic sources released from mining, smelting, and processing threatened people's health through contaminated soils, foods and atmosphere. Furthermore, the arsenic calamities often took place in Southwest China where there were rich arsenic resources and intense mining activities.

With the rapid development of the tourism consumption,tourism destination has been broken through traditional development pattern of hospitality and changed from resource and product marketing era to thematic conception marketing era.To construct tourism collaborative union and to promote the development of the industrial cluster has been an important stratagem of tourism development.As a new mode of tourism collaboration,thematic tourism union is founded on the similar spatial perception,modern information technology and uniform brand marketing.Attention Economy Theory,Integrated Symbiosis Theory and Tourism Industrial Cluster Theory are the bases of the thematic tourism union.Based on the analysis of more than 20 examples of tourism union,the types of thematic tourism collaborative union are summarized from four perspectives of geographical linkage,theme style, spatial structure and organization form.Taking the Grand Canal from Jining in Shandong province to Yangzhou in Jiangsu province as a study area,the cultural resources and tourism development are discussed,and "Millennium Canal,Century Scenario" is advanced as the theme of the Grand Canal tourism.Then the development stratagem of the Thematic Tourism Collaborative Union is probed into.Firstly, regional resources,cultural itineraries and tradition should be integrated with the collaborative marketing of the theme of the Grand Canal.Secondly,thematic tourism cluster should be organized to perfect the product system of the Grand Canal.Thirdly,spatial organization system should be developed for service center, core area and favorite itineraries.Fourthly,collaborative safeguard mechanism should be market-oriented and driven by the government.Finally,information platform should be established to support the tourism collaboration along the Grand Canal.

Residents' perceptions and attitudes to tourism impacts have been a hot study issue of both tourism geography and tourism sociology. In foreign tourism studies, the distance between the residents' habitations and tourists' attractions has been taken as a main factor in explaining the differences of residents' perceptions and attitudes to tourism impacts. However, similar studies are not found in domestic literatures in China. Considering the above conditions, taking Huangshan Scenic Area as an example, with the aid of questionnaire survey, using techniques of SPSS and Arc View GIS, spatial differentiation of residents' perceptions and attitudes to tourism impacts bought by Huangshan Scenic Area are revealed. The results indicate that residents in the hinterland of Huangshan Scenic Area show evident spatial differentiation of their perceptions and attitudes to tourism impacts brought by Huangshan Scenic Area. In determinate spatial scale, the intensity of residents perceptions and attitudes to positive tourism impacts wane and negative tourism impacts augment as the distance increases; in a more extensive space, affected by its tourism spatial structure and enclave tourism mode, the spatial differentiations of residents' perceptions and attitudes to tourism impacts brought by Huangshan Scenic Area take on "W-shaped" structure and "M-shaped" structure to positive tourism impacts and negative tourism impacts respectively. Also, the forming mechanisms leading to the above differentiation rules of residents' perceptions and attitudes to tourism impacts were analyzed, which are residents' knowledge of the scenic area, acting mechanism of tourist flows, transportation routes and residents' response to tourism development. It is thought that we can't oversimply deduce that the residents' perceptions and attitudes are "distance decay" or "distance increase". The tourism spatial structure and its subsequent effect should be taken into account when we analyze the spatial differentiation of residents' perceptions and attitudes to tourism impacts. The aim of this study is to reveal the spatial differentiation of tourism impacts, so as to offer some guidelines in optimizing regional tourism benefit and making community-oriented humanism regional tourism development strategies.

In remotely sensed image from rugged terrain the sunny surface shows more radiance than the expected and on the shady surface the effect is the opposite. That is to say, a high variation in the reflectance response for the same land use/land cover types is caused by the irregular shape of the terrain. Therefore, the removal of the topographic effect named topographic correction may be critical in areas of rugged terrain, as a preliminary step to the estimation of land surface parameters for Landsat ETM+ image. And then the concept and goal of topographic correction was briefly introduced and then various algorithms for topographic correction developed internationally were reviewed and summarized. Many researches have been carried out on topographic correction and many topographic correction algorithms have been put forward such as cosine correction, C correction, SCS correction, SCS+C correction, Minnaert correction etc. However, there is no clear consensus on methods that may be universally applicable. The main difficulty in applying topographic corrections is related to the lack of standard and generally accepted models. So a correction test was carried out in this study to compare 11 existing popular methods of topographic correction, including a new one named VECA developed by ourselves, and see how successfully they can be applied to Landsat-7 ETM+ image. The test site was selected on the relatively rugged terrain located on the southern piedmont of the Qinling Mountains. And then visual comparison and statistical analysis were adopted for feasible evaluation of the 11 topographic correction methods, and the results suggested that VECA correction, b correction, C correction, Teillet-regression correction, SCS+C correction Minnaert correction and Minnaert-SCS correction have good correction performance, however, the Cosine-T correction, Cosine-C correction,SCS correction and Cosine-b correction would overcorrect the shaded areas in image; and the VECA and b correction are the most capable ones for removing the topographic effects contained in ETM+ image among the 11 methods, compared with b correction, VECA was not only better in performance on topographic effects removal but also simple in theory and easy for operation. In the last section of this paper, the problems and difficulties existing in topographic correction were discussed, and the future hot points and research focuses were discussed.