The continuous generalization of geographic information poses a huge challenge to the classic geographic information analysis modes. Networked knowledge services will gradually become a new mode for geographic information applications, facilitating to transform the form of geographic computing into social computing. Geographic knowledge services need to connect people, institutions, natural environments, geographical entities, geographical units and social events, so as to promote knowledge assisted data intelligence and computational intelligence. Facing the urgent need for spatiotemporal knowledge acquisition, formal expression and analysis, this paper firstly introduces the concepts and characteristics of spatiotemporal knowledge graph. The spatiotemporal knowledge graph is a directed graph composed of geographic spatiotemporal distribution or geo-locational metaphors of knowledge that is a knowledge graph centered on spatiotemporal distribution characteristics. Secondly we proposes a research framework for spatiotemporal knowledge graph. The framework includes various levels from multimodal spatiotemporal big data to spatiotemporal knowledge services that contain ubiquitous spatiotemporal big data layer, spatiotemporal knowledge acquisition technique layer, spatiotemporal knowledge management layer, spatiotemporal knowledge graph layer, software/tools layer, and industrial application layer. Thirdly this paper introduces relevant research progress from text implied geographic information retrieval, heterogeneous geographic semantic web alignment, spatiotemporal knowledge formalization and representation learning. Combined with application practice, we then enumerate the construction and application approaches of domain oriented spatiotemporal knowledge graph. Finally, it discusses the key scientific issues and technical bottlenecks currently faced in the research of spatiotemporal knowledge graph. It is argued that in the era of large models, constructing explicit spatiotemporal knowledge graph and conducting knowledge reasoning to meet domain needs is still the only way for spatiotemporal knowledge services.
Location description is the natural language expression of human spatial cognition. Since natural language is the primary and basic means of information transmission in human society, location description is an important medium for transmitting spatial location information in human communication. Spatial positioning based on spatial location description is the key to intelligent transformation of location-based services in the era of big data. To solve the problem that the vagueness of location description in different contexts is significantly different and results in difficulty in positioning, this paper proposes a representation method and reasoning mechanism for vague location description. Firstly, by combing the law of human spatial cognition, the types of elements concerned in the description of natural language are clarified. Based on the analysis of the sources of vagueness, a formal representation of vague location description is constructed. Different from the traditional spatial information modeling which focuses on spatial relationship, the formal representation proposed in this paper establishes the vagueness relation and influence among different information factors by the strategy of multi-factors representation. The formal representation also enhances the semantic analysis ability for the vagueness of location description. Secondly, based on supervaluation theory, the reasoning mechanism of vague location description is proposed from three aspects: spatial object, distance relation, and direction relation. Considering the context semantics of spatial location description, the threshold of observation value is used to carry out spatial reasoning. By being super-valued to different contexts, the reasoning results in different situations are obtained. The aim of the reasoning mechanism is to establish the mapping relationship between vague location description and real spatial location. Thirdly, a Question-Answering (Q&A) system is designed to collect contexts of location description, and a case study on the method is conducted. In the case study, a group of users' viewpoints from Q&A on spatial cognition are transformed into the spatial scope in the real world. These spatial scopes can establish the relationship between qualitative spatial concepts and quantitative spatial data, so as to realize the representation of vague location description in GIS. The results show that the proposed method in this paper can adjust the granularity of formal representation of location description in time according to actual application scenarios, and the spatial reasoning results fit intuitive cognition. In the future, knowledge graphs will be introduced to further improve the semantic reasoning ability and positioning accuracy for vague location description.
The new combat style places new requirements for battlefield environment service support. The intelligent service of battlefield environment urgently needs to improve knowledge based on the global multidimensional battlefield environment data. In view of the knowledge modeling problem of intelligent cognition of battlefield environment, this paper puts forward the classification method of battlefield environment knowledge and considers the battlefield environment knowledge graph as a new form of battlefield environment knowledge representation under the context of big data and artificial intelligence. To solve the fragmentation problem of triplet knowledge representation, a temporal hypergraph representation model of battlefield environment is constructed, a multi-level unified graph model combining entity knowledge, event knowledge, influence process knowledge, and service decision-making knowledge is realized, and all kinds of knowledge are represented as a unified knowledge hypergraph network with spatiotemporal and scene characteristics. Finally, the experimental verification is carried out based on the data of map, event, impact process, and combat impact effectiveness. The hypergraph network realizes the correlation of various battlefield environment knowledge from the semantic level, which can provide support for the further realization of intelligent reasoning and service decision-making based on hypergraph.
Natural language is an effective tool for humans to describe things, with diversity and ease of dissemination, and can contain human spatial cognitive results. How to use natural language to describe geographic spatial scenes has always been an important research direction in spatial cognition and geographic information science, providing important application values in personalized unmanned tour guides, blind navigation, virtual space scene interpretation, and so on. The essence of natural language description of geographic spatial scenes is the process of transforming the two-dimensional vector of geographic space into a one-dimensional vector in word space. Traditional models perform well in handling spatial relationships, but are somewhat inadequate in natural language description: (1) spatial relationship description models are one-way descriptions of the environment by humans, without considering the impact of the environment on the description; (2) spatial scenes emphasize traversal-based descriptions of spatial relationships, where each set of spatial relationships is equally weighted, which is inconsistent with the varying attention paid by humans to geographic entities and spatial relationships in the environment; (3) the spatial relationship calculation of traditional models is a static description of a single scene, which is difficult to meet the requirement of dynamic description of continuous scenes in practical applications; (4) the natural language style of traditional models is mechanical, lacking necessary knowledge support. This article proposes a spatial scene natural language generation framework Map2Text (M2T) that integrates multiple knowledge graphs. The framework establishes knowledge graphs for spatial relationships, language generation style, and spatial attention, respectively, and realizes the fusion of multiple knowledge graphs and the generation of natural language descriptions of spatial scenes within a unified framework. The spatial scene description knowledge graph solves the pruning problem of traversing spatial relationships, and establishes the relationship between spatial scenes by building a spatial relationship graph, supporting continuous expression of spatial scenes; the natural language style knowledge graph establishes the relationship between spatial expression and language style, achieving diversified language styles that are appropriate for spatial natural language expression; the spatial attention knowledge graph captures the nuances of natural language spatial expression by establishing an attention matrix based on the interaction state between the subject and object of the spatial scene. An experimental prototype system designed based on the Beijing Forbidden City demonstrates that the system-generated results are close to human travel notes, with more complete content coverage and more diverse styles, verifying the effectiveness of the M2T framework and demonstrating the potential value of natural language description of spatial scenes.
Geoscience Knowledge Graph (GKG) has strong capabilities of knowledge representation and semantic reasoning, thereby becoming a required infrastructure for the development of geoscience big data and geoscience artificial intelligence. However, existing studies on GKG were mainly conducted under the experimental scenarios. Because of a lack of research on the general framework of construction methods, sharing, and application of large-scale GKG for practical applications, it has not been used in practical applications in the geoscience field. For this reason, towards the needs of research and applications of geoscience big data and artificial intelligence for GKG, this paper first studied the construction techniques of large-scale GKG. Then, a general framework for covering the lifecycle of GKG including its construction, sharing, and application was proposed. Taking the big science program “Deep-Time Digital Earth (DDE)” as an example, the practice of developing GKG platform towards the practical application of DDE was carried out. Using this platform, this paper realized the construction of DDE large-scale GKG, the open sharing and application of built GKG, proving that the proposed framework can effectively support the construction, sharing, and application of large-scale GKG. This paper plays an important role in promoting the realization of the practical application value of GKG.
According to the Ministry of Water Resources of the People's Republic of China, the number of casualties in flash flood disasters accounts for nearly 70% of flood disaster casualties in recent years and flash flood has become one of the major natural disasters causing casualties in China. Flash flood regionalization is fundamental for implementing the local measures of the flash flood prevention and mitigation according to local conditions. Using results from existing flash flood relevant physiographical regionalization schemes, and in accordance with the principles of comprehensive, dominant factors, the relative consistency within units, the relative difference between units, the integrity of spatial distribution and the hierarchical divisions, this paper firstly constructs an index system of the flash flood trigger factors and its underlying surface environment for the flash flood regionalization in China. In the combination of top-down and bottom-up regionalization, the hybrid self-organizing-map-based spatial clustering algorithm is then built. Finally, nine homogeneous regions at the first-grade and thirty-three subregions at the second-grade are delineated for flash floods in China. The historical flash flood events and the Geodetector method are adopted to evaluate the developed regionalization schemes. Results show that the first-grade and the second-grade flash flood regionalization schemes in China can respectively provide the determinant power of 66.4% and 75.4% for the spatial distribution of historical flash flood events in the whole country, indicating the developed flash flood regionalization has a good spatial consistency with the distribution of historical flash flood events with different densities. The developed flash flood regionalization not only effectively delineates the regional differentiation pattern of flash floods, but also provides a scientific basis for the implementation of localized flash flood prevention and mitigation measures in China, which benefits for the sound development of flash flood disasters prevention and management in China.
As the third pole of earth, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is an important ecological security barrier in China and an ecologically sensitive area of global climate change. The increasing climate change has posed a major challenge to its ecosystem function and stability. This paper first analyzes the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of the ecosystem pattern of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its key functions including water conservation, soil conservation, windbreak and sand fixation from 2000 to 2020, clarifies the regional differences in ecosystem functions and their importance, and further evaluates the stability of ecosystem functions. And there is no doubt that the stable state will lay a scientific foundation for the plateau to build an ecologically civilized highland and launch protection and restoration projects. The results show that: (1) From 2000 to 2020, the wetland area of the study area increased and the grassland area decreased significantly. The water conservation and windbreak and sand fixation capacity were improved, and the annual change rates were 3.57 m3/(hm2·a) and 0.23 t/(hm2·a), respectively. However, the overall soil conservation showed a downward trend with an annual change rate of -0.16 t/(hm2·a). (2) The core areas of water conservation, soil conservation and windbreak and sand fixation accounted for 12.7%, 13.9% and 14.2%, respectively. The core water conservation barrier areas were mainly located in southeast Tibet, Sanjiangyuan and Ruoergai. The core windbreak and sand fixation areas were concentrated in the central and western parts of the plateau, and the core soil conservation areas surrounded the plateau. (3) From 2000 to 2020, the water conservation, soil conservation, and wind protection and sand-fixation functions have shown relatively high stability in the southeastern and central parts of the plateau, while relatively weak stability in the western part of the plateau. Combining stability assessment and ecological protection and restoration practices, we can divide the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau into three major categories of 16 ecosystem function zones and carry out differentiated ecological protection and restoration for different core ecosystem functions and zones.
Educational attainments of talents are different, and exploring the spatiotemporal distribution of talents with different educational attainments and its driving factors is of key significance for formulating different kinds of talent policies and optimizing the high-quality economic development pattern of the urban system. Using data of the 2005, 2010 and 2015 population sample surveys of China, this study examined the differences in the spatial and temporal patterns of China's talents with college, undergraduate, and graduate degrees from 2005 to 2015 at the prefecture level, and used a spatial econometric model to explain the driving factors of these differences. The results show that: 1) The spatial distribution of China's talents with different educational attainments was highly uneven, and talents with college, undergraduate, and graduate degrees were mainly concentrated in the municipalities, provincial capitals, and independent plan cities. There was also some concentration of talents with college and undergraduate degrees in resource-based cities of the northwestern region, such as western Inner Mongolia and northern Xinjiang. The level of uneven distribution of talents increased with the increment of educational attainments and the unevenness was alleviated through time, but the degree of its alleviation decreased with the increase of educational attainment. 2) The dynamic agglomeration of talents showed the Matthew effect—the higher the proportion of talents at the beginning of the study period, the greater the increase of the proportion of talents during the period. The intensity of the Matthew effect of dynamic agglomeration of talents gradually increased with the increase of educational attainment. 3) The concentration of China's talents with college, undergraduate, and graduate degrees was mainly economic driven, and salary played the most important role in influencing the concentration of talents with different educational attainments. The reduction of regional salary gaps in China had caused a decrease in the level of uneven distribution of talents with different educational attainments. The rapid growth of service industry and improvements in social amenities such as secondary education, medical service, and transportation had also promoted the agglomeration of talents with different educational attainments. Nevertheless, environmental factors such as elevation and green leisure space did not significantly boost the agglomeration of talents in China. The role of both economic development and social amenities in promoting talent agglomeration showed a tendency to increase with increasing educational attainments.
As an important part of dynamic protection and adaptive management of agricultural heritage, the early-warning is of great significance to the maintenance of agricultural heritage values and the sustainable development of agricultural heritage sites. In view of the current situation that the theoretical research and practical work on the early-warning of agricultural heritage protection are lagging behind, on the basis of defining the concept of early-warning of agricultural heritage protection, and conbined with the analysis of attributes and characteristics of agricultural heritage, the paper offers the basic principles of constructing the early-warning evaluation system of agricultural heritage protection. Based on the "Pressure-State-Response" model (PSR) and the Delphi method, we selected three first-grade indicators, 11 second-grade indicators and 21 third-grade indicators of the early-warning evaluation. Because of the fuzziness of early-warning evaluation of agricultural heritage protection, the study puts forward the technical route of early-warning evaluation by using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, and divides the early-warning level into four scales (no warning, light warning, medium warning, and severe warning) according to the determined warning degree range, and comprehensively uses the principles of air pollution warning classification and traffic signal warning lights to intuitively reflect the warning situation by blue color, yellow color, orange color and red color. The results show that the given index system and method of evaluation can effectively and quantitatively evaluate the early-warning status of agricultural heritage protection, and thus lay the theoretical and methodological foundations of establishing scientific early-warning system and mechanism for agricultural heritage protection.
Tourism community residents are the ultimate guardians of heritage, but their heritage responsibility behavior has not been concerned. Based on the fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) method, this paper constructed a complex causal model of residents' heritage responsibility behavior with internal driving factors and social embedding factors as dependent variables. This paper took the Pingyao ancient city community as an example and made an empirical analysis based on the questionnaire survey results. The results show that: (1) There are eight condition configurations that can promote the formation of residents' heritage responsibility behaviors, among which residents' heritage responsibility behavior attitude, place attachment, relational embeddedness, political embeddedness, and cultural embeddedness are the necessary conditions for the formation of heritage responsibility behaviors. The above variables have more substantial explanatory power for residents' heritage responsibility behaviors than other variables. (2) Five modes can drive residents to form high-level heritage responsibility behavior, and a single variable cannot achieve high-level heritage responsibility behavior. The formation mechanism is characterized by multiple configurations and systems. The original coverage of the core existence mode of behavioral attitude, place attachment, political embeddedness, and cultural embeddedness is the highest. The original coverage of the configuration with missing minor conditions is lower than that of the configuration without missing minor conditions. (3) The factors affecting residents' heritage responsibility behavior are complicated and interactive. The lack of a single factor is not the bottleneck to form heritage responsibility behavior. Subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and structure embeddedness in different paths have different effects on heritage responsibility behavior. When subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and structural embeddedness are insufficient, the implementation of heritage responsibility behavior can be improved by promoting residents' place attachment, political embeddedness and cultural embeddedness. Finally, this paper has important practical guiding significance to perform heritage protection for the government and managers of cultural heritage sites.
With the development of industrialization and urbanization, the production mode of small farmers has been unable to adapt to the demands and transaction traits of the large market, which has hindered the sustainable development of agriculture and the continual increase of farmers' income. Therefore, the central government of China made a series of policies to encourage the development of new agricultural management systems and cultivate new types of agribusiness (NTA) to promote the development of small-scale agriculture and the income improvement of small farmers. However, in reality, due to problems in the cooperation mode and mechanism, many NTA companies failed to play a leading role in improving incomes of small farmers. Relevant research needs to be strengthened. Taking the tea industry of the Anxi Tieguanyin Tea Culture system, the Globally Important Agricultural Cultural Heritage, as an example, this study used in-depth interviews and literature research to obtain relevant data and analyzed the four types of cooperation modes between NTA and small farmers related to tea industries in Anxi county to reveal the reasons for the choice of cooperation mode done by NTA based on transaction cost theory. The results show that the NTA can reduce the transaction costs at the market side and the supply side depending on stabilizing the supply of tea raw material quantity and quality by cooperating with small farmers. The cooperatives set up by the principal person of enterprises have a higher management efficiency, which can realize multilateral win-win situation. Industrial bases, development orientation and resource bases are all important factors that influence NTA's cooperation mode choices between them and farmers, leading to the phenomenon of multiple modes existing in one place. Effective supervision mechanism is the key to ensure long-term win-win cooperation between NTA and small farmers. In Anxi, NTA established a supervision mechanism between enterprises, cooperatives, farmer members or different households, and the reward-punishment mechanism, which is a reward for conscientious performance and a social punishment for breach of contract to achieve a long-term cooperation among them. The NTA can effectively promote the protection of important agricultural heritage systems by choosing appropriate mode and mechanism to cooperate with farmers.
Traditional villages are an important field for the inheritance and protection of Chinese traditional culture. As the core carrier for the continuation of local cultural lineage and the presentation of regional characteristics, cultural landscape genes are continuously produced in the process of socio-economic development and cultural renewal. Taking the Dong minority chorus of Huangdu village as an example, this paper adopts the qualitative research method of participatory observation and in-depth interview, and constructs an analytical framework of "landscape gene-space production" to study the process and mechanism of traditional village cultural landscape gene production. The research shows that: (1) The production of the Dong minority chorus in Huangdu village can be divided into three stages: "prototype generation", "structural reorganization" and "meaning restoration". The cultural landscape gene shows a process of change from following the perception of original values to fulfilling the transformation of tourism consumption and finally conforming to cultural identity. (2) The production of cultural landscape gene presents the structural mechanism of "shell-intermediary-core", the capital circulation of government and market in time and space scales promotes representations of space as the shell, the power behavior of elite groups in daily life supports representational spaces as an intermediary, and local villagers, as the main body of the village, carry the core of production to realize the expression of cultural authentic practice. (3) Capital goes through resource capitalization, capital spatialization and space capitalization in production to realize its triple cycle; power under the influence of elite groups, completes the construction of behavior logic through discourse representation, skill discipline and identity; villagers focus more on the practical expression of endogenous actions, from simple participation under intergenerational inheritance to resistance and protest under tourism consumption, and finally play a cooperative role under the call for heritage conservation.
Cybergeography, an emerging subfield of human geography, has received increasing attention over recent decades. In particular, the digital transition of cities and the rapid rise of the digital economy have provided an impetus to the development of Cybergeography in China. This study attempts to provide a literature review of the research progress in Cybergeography in China over the past two decades regarding its disciplinary characteristics, main branches, and evolutionary paths. Through a bibliometric analysis and knowledge graphs based on a large number of Chinese articles (8,735) in geographic journals from the database (CNKI), we concluded that Chinese Cybergeography is mainly encompassed in the fields of urban geography, economic geography, tourism geography, geographical information science, and other disciplines, and the main institutional contributors include the Nanjing University, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, East China Normal University, Hebei Normal University. Chinese Cybergeography can be classified into five independent but interconnected sub-areas: (1) urban network analysis based on information flows; (2) online consumption behavior and their spatial impacts on urban space; (3) internet visibility and tourism flow; (4) smart cities and communities; and (5) digital economy and its interactions with spatial organizations. Chinese Cybergeography has experienced four phases: the embryonic stage during the initial 21st century, fast development period (2006-2013), flourishing period (2014-2019), and transition period (since the outbreak of COVID-19). Chinese Cybergeography has evidently become highly diversified and interdisciplinary through this period, with its research focus expanded from the early stages of "informatization level" and "regional differences" to hot topics, such as "flow space," "digital economy," and "smart city." Thereafter, we pointed out that Chinese Cybergeography has achieved fruitful achievements in the past 20 years and even has international leadership in some fields; however, compared with the rich and colorful theoretical establishments in the West, various problems and challenges are still present. For example, a relatively old-fashioned disciplinary thinking based on the absolute space concept currently exists, while limited attention has been paid to research on virtual societies and metaphor space, as well as the critical discourses on cultural and social consequences of digital transition. Furthermore, the big data method also tends to be overused in existing research, whereas the fieldwork-based approach has largely been neglected. Finally, we provide prospects for future research on Chinese Cybergeography by proposing that, in response to the digital and intelligent transformation in today's world, there is an urgent research agenda to establish China-characterized Cybergeography by incorporating Western establishments in theories and Chinese demands in practice. On the one hand, enriching the current research perspective is necessary by incorporating epistemologies from critical and humanistic geography. On the other hand, Chinese Cybergeography needs to keep up with the development and changes in social practices to continuously expand the research scope, such as focusing on the impacts of emerging digital technologies (such as artificial intelligence and metaverse) on urban and regional development. Therefore, Chinese Cybergeography can aid decision makers in promoting urban digital transformation, development of the digital economy, and coordinative development among different regions and cities.
As a typical representative of advanced producer services, banks can be used to characterize the spatial structure of urban networks through the headquarters-branch connections and the implied capital flow process, which can guide the exploration of financial market connectivity and coordinated regional development. In this paper, the financial linkages of 26 representative banks in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) were transformed from city scale to county scale urban network using the interlocking network model, and the structural characteristics and influencing mechanism of urban network are discussed using the Social Network Analysis and Geographically Weighted Regression model. The results show that: 1) The Pearl River Estuary in the GBA is a dense area of financial linkages. The level of financial linkages on the east bank of the Pearl River is generally higher than that on the west bank of the Pearl River, and the hierarchical expansion to the peripheral space is continuous or progressive. 2) The clustering and accessibility of the overall network perform well. The whole network presents a typical "small world" effect. Guangzhou Tianhe, Guangzhou Yuexiu, Foshan Nanhai, Foshan Shunde, and other nodes are of high gradability and proximity, and they are also important intermediaries for financial connections in the GBA. 3) Most of the nodes with high gradability have higher effective scale and efficiency, and have the advantage of structural holes. The peripheral spatial nodes have a high restriction degree. The network mainly relies on some nodes in the core or sub-core subgroups to generate financial linkages, while the financial linkages among most nodes of the edge subgroup are weak. 4) The variables negatively correlated with the total number of linkages are population density, economic development level, and government control behavior. The variables that are positively correlated with the total number of linkages are the degree of transportation convenience and social consumption ability. The relationship between the demand for financial services and the level of openness to the outside world and the total linkages is complex and has bidirectional effects. An additional contribution of this paper is as follows: 1) The preference for location choice of APS enterprises represented by banks is higher for geographical agglomeration in local markets, and the financial relationship at the county scale is more important for the location choice of bank branches within cities. 2) The differentiated urban network structure characteristics revealed by the heterogeneity of bank branches provide a reference value for the appeal of different types of bank branches.
Urban creative networks, as distinct forms of production networks, differ from inter-firm-based urban networks. It is featured by flexible production, "temporary cooperation" and being "people-centered." This study attempts to address the concept of the urban creative network in theory, and based on the basic database of Chinese digital music, it integrates the social network, Geographical Information System (GIS) spatial analysis, and econometric model to empirically analyze the structural evolution characteristics and influencing factors of the creative cooperation network of Chinese singers in the past 40 years, which enriches the theoretical and empirical study of urban networks from the perspective of creative individual connections. The results suggest the following: (1) The scale of Chinese urban digital music collaborative networks grows rapidly and shows the characteristics of low density and a "small world", and network density is negatively correlated with network scale, with obvious social network properties. (2) The collaborative network as a whole presents a "core-periphery" structure and the development trend of polycentricity and high-centricity cities are mainly located in the eastern region, with relatively low centrality in the central and western cities, and gradually forms a triad structure of Beijing-Hong Kong-Taipei. (3) The evolution of the digital music cooperation network is characterized by both path dependence and path creation, and the main form of network extension is hierarchical diffusion, with the early high-intensity links between Hong Kong and Taiwanese cities gradually being replaced by mainland cities. (4) The coverage of city ties in the cooperative network expands with an uneven spatial distribution, and high-intensity ties are mainly concentrated in the eastern cities. Over time, the core cities' control over network resources through inter-high-intensity ties weakened. (5) The cooperative network has an obvious community structure, and the communities of this coproduction network appear to be expanding, grouping, and hierarchical, with dual-core and multi-core models as its main spatial organization modes. (6) A negative binomial regression model analysis shows that the scale of the urban economy, industrial structure, and the level of the network economy have significant impacts on the network structure, while the roles of human capital, opening up, urban administrative level, and traffic accessibility are not evident, indicating that the Chinese music cooperation network has obvious endogenous mechanisms and local embeddedness. The findings of this study provide in-depth theoretical and policy insights for understanding intercity interactions and promoting the development of creative industries under the influence of the creative (digital) economy. First, a study on city networks based on the production networks of digital creative industries should focus on the characteristics of creative production networks and the role of creative actors (people). Second, policymakers should fully understand the characteristics of digital creative production sector actors and production modes when formulating policies for the development of digital creative industries and choose development paths that fit the advantages of local resources to realize industrial development. Finally, we propose a future research agenda for urban creative networks.
Smart city construction will have a profound impact on urban development and regional pattern, and it is necessary to explore its impact on new urbanization and regional market integration, so as to provide empirical evidence for accelerating the construction of smart cities. Based on the panel data of 238 prefecture-level cities from 2005 to 2019, this study considers the establishment of the national smart city pilot as a quasi-natural experiment and includes it in the analysis of the factors influencing market integration. The multi-period difference method was used to empirically investigate the influence of smart city pilot construction on market integration at the prefecture-level city level. The conclusions are as follows. According to the calculation results, the degree of inter-city market segmentation in the whole sample period from 2005 to 2019 showed a trend of shock decline, except that the degree of inter-city market segmentation increased in 2008 and 2009. The benchmark regression results show that although smart city pilot construction can promote economic urbanization, social urbanization, and environmental urbanization of the pilot cities, it is not conducive to market integration among cities. The conclusion that smart city construction will intensify market segmentation remains valid even after a series of robustness tests. The influence of smart city construction on inter-city market integration varies according to city level, city size, and city location, which is mainly manifested in the fact that it significantly inhibits the market integration of low-level cities, small and medium-sized cities, and inland cities, and significantly promotes the market integration of big cities and coastal cities. The influence mechanism shows that narrowing the information infrastructure gap not only helps in playing the role of smart city construction in promoting the development of new urbanization but also promotes market integration among cities. Narrowing the gap in public expenditure is conducive to the promotion of smart city construction for social urbanization and alleviates market segmentation among cities. Promoting the development of secondary industries can enhance environmental urbanization and ease market segmentation. Therefore, in the context of building a national unified large market, the pilot construction of smart cities should pay full attention to the negative effects of the "digital divide" between regions, encourage some localities with conditions to strengthen the construction of smart cities independently, and prevent the "digital divide" between regions from widening. This study further enriches the research on the factors influencing market integration at the city level and simultaneously provides some references for urban digital transformation and the development of new urbanization.
Agriculture has been making a new turn toward digitization in developed areas. However, in the underdeveloped ethnic regions of western China, does digitization represent a valuable opportunity or a serious challenge? In this article, Litang County, Sichuan Province, located in the western high plateau region, was taken as an example, and text analysis of multi-source data was performed, including of policy documents, planning texts, website information of agricultural companies and government departments, and materials based on semi-structured interviews with local authorities and leading agricultural companies, with the purpose of discussing the dynamic mechanism of agricultural digitization in underdeveloped western counties. It was found that agricultural digitization in Litang has the following three typical characteristics: 1) full-chain digitization, that is, a closed-loop structure of data is formed through enterprise data centers, local data management platforms, and e-commerce platforms from various links such as vegetable and fruit breeding, planting, condensation logistics, and product sales; 2) multi-agent promotion, that is, agricultural companies, retailers, government departments and their agents, as well as social organizations, cooperate and promote each other in agricultural digital infrastructure construction, data technology application and data management, and agricultural resources integration; 3) coordination within and outside the county, namely timely response to the national rural revitalization strategy, corresponding poverty alleviation policies and local planning goals and action plans, coordination between the matching aid units and local departments and institutions in terms of the dual goals of economic benefits and poverty alleviation, and coordination between agricultural companies, social organizations, platform institutions and farmers, and other stakeholders within and outside the county. This study contributes to the establishment of a four-dimensional analysis framework of natural environment-market-institution-technology based on the institutional analysis of economic geography and enriches the research on economic geography in the field of agricultural digitalization. The main conclusions are as follows. First, the special natural environment in the high plateau area has shaped the constraint conditions and advantages of agricultural development in Litang, which encourages local companies to adopt a differentiation strategy, enter outside segment markets, and create a new evolutionary path using biological and digital technology. Second, the application of digital technology is not only beneficial to meet the needs of remote consumers for production information but also to provide feedback on timely changes in market demand for local agricultural companies, which is conducive to the adjustment and optimization of the decisions of agricultural producers. Technology investment increases production costs, which can be achieved by entering middle- and high-end markets to increase revenue. Third, the digital transformation of leader companies is not only the result of responding to or embedding national and local agricultural digitization strategies, but also puts forward potential requirements for the adjustment and optimization of local institutions and production organizations. Government and leadership companies jointly promote agricultural digitalization. In addition, the national matching poverty alleviation policy enables local governments to obtain scarce resources such as technology, capital, and market opportunities through external support, effectively reducing the risks and costs of digital transformation for leader companies, farmers, and other local production actors and promoting the spatial agglomeration of digital elements and resources through the external economies of the production network. However, it is crucial to take advantage of external support to cultivate local entrepreneurial talent and increase human capital for sustainable local development.
Digital city is one of the main requirements of three-dimensional (3D) real scene and leads the direction of future smart city construction. Digital city usually uses the 3D model of the real scene as the spatial data volume and integrates the object-linked data of various sensors to achieve virtual-real fusion. The integration of spatial data volume and object-linked perception data is the key to digital city applications. Visual sensor is an important sensor type which is widely used in urban life, such as surveillance cameras, vehicles, and other devices. The key to digital city application is registering the visual sensors with virtual 3D model accurately. The purpose of spatial registration for visual sensor is to estimate or optimize the position and orientation of the visual sensor and to get the accurate spatial position of any object in the image. It is one of the key technologies for applications such as Augmented Reality and Video GIS. Currently, the spatial registration methods for visual sensors can be divided into hardware-based and vision-based methods. Due to the popularity of vision sensors, vision-based registration methods have been widely used. However, in digital city applications, seasons and weather always change, there are often large differences in appearance between the real image taken by visual sensor and the image of virtual scene. Therefore, the accuracy of outdoor 6 Degree of Freedom (DOF) position obtained by existing methods is usually insufficient, resulting in low registration accuracy of the visual sensor. In order to improve the accuracy of visual sensor spatial registration in digital city scene, this paper presents a method of virtual-real registration for digital city scene with structural semantic information in urban area. Firstly, the virtual perspective image of digital city scene is obtained, the plumb line which contains structural semantic information is extracted from the target image, and the properties of global constraints of the plumb line is used to restore the camera's position accurately and achieve the registration of monocular image in the virtual digital scene. Experiments show that this method achieves accurate registration of virtual and real images with large differences in appearance. Compared with the existing methods, the position and orientation errors are reduced by 35.9% and 39.3%. This method can effectively optimize the initial pose and improve the registration accuracy of visual sensors in digital city scene. A lightweight cloud-edge registration framework is designed and can be used in image geolocation tasks based on portable devices.
Ecological well-being performance (EWP) is the ecological efficiency of improving human well-being. Analyzing the spatial and temporal patterns and driving effects of EWP can help reveal regional differences in ecological efficiency of human well-being enhancement in China and its causes. This study analyzed the evolution of the spatiotemporal patterns of EWP in China based on a comprehensive subjective and objective well-being perspective, and used the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) method to reveal the driving effects of EWP changes and the determinants of economic growth effect in China. The results show that: 1) The changes in EWP in China in 2006-2018 relied mainly on the effect of economic growth, but the overall level of EWP decreased due to the constraints of environmental well-being effect and social well-being effect. Among the determinants of the economic growth effect, technological progress played the most important role. 2) The differences between the mean values of EWP of southern and northern provinces in China had increased from 0.762 to 1.005, showing a spatial variation of high in the south and low in the north. The economic growth effect value in the south was much higher than that in the north, which was the main reason for the widening of the north-south differences in EWP in China. 3) The change in EWP in China as a whole appeared to be driven by economic growth, with only Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai showing a change driven by economic growth + environmental well-being improvement. There was a significant regional heterogeneity in the determinants of the economic growth effect in the southern and northern regions and in eastern, central, and western China. The results of the study can provide reference suggestions for promoting the coordinated regional development of EWP in China.
Identifying the status quo, spatial differentiation and influencing factors of farmland has practical significance for optimizing and adjusting the spatial utilization pattern of farmland to guarantee the regional food security. Based on the 0.51-1.02 m high-resolution images of Google Earth, this study obtained the farmland area in 2018 and analyzed its spatial variation and causal factors on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by visual interpretation, GIS-based spatial analysis and geographic detector model. The results show that: 1) In 2018, total farmland area on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was 133.73 million hm2, decreased from east to west and from south and to north. Of the total farmland area, 33.27% is concentrated in the Yijiang Lianghe valleys of Tibet and the He-Huang valleys of Qinghai, while 76.02% and 75.41% are distributed within the range of 1600 m from roads and 5000 m from rivers, respectively. 2) Under the influence of topography and climate, the farmland shows a scattered and relatively concentrated spatial differentiation characteristic. Most farmland is concentrated in the zones between 3500-4000 m of elevation, 6°-15° of slope steepness, 400-600 mm of annual precipitation, and 0-5℃ of annual temperature, respectively. In other areas, the farmland area is small and mostly distributed in a point pattern. 3) The spatial distribution of farmland on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was jointly influenced by natural factors including topography, climate and soil, as well as socioeconomic factors of GDP, population and location, ect. In particular, duration of sunshine hours and precipitation in the growing season, and slope steepness had the greatest influence, and generally determined the farmland spatial distribution on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Obtaining accurate land cover information in cloudy mountain areas are severely impacted by cloud contaminations, the scarcity of field validation points, and the complexity and fragmentation of landforms. Taken the Southeast Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a typical cloudy mountainous area and ecological transition zone, as study area, this research first extract the spectral features, radar features, textual features, topographic features through the spectral data, radar data, DEM data and auxiliary data based on the Google Earth Engine and filed observed data. Then we built the random forest model and made feature reduction using recursive feature elimination, in order to improve the accuracy of land cover classification by using multi-source remote sensing data effectively. Results showed that: 1) The feature numbers reduced from 58 to 38 after feature optimization, classification accuracy (overall accuracy 93.96%, Kappa coefficient 0.92) slightly improved compared to unoptimized (overall accuracy 93.11%, Kappa coefficient 0.92); 2) Topographic and radar features played an essential role in the land cover classification of mountainous cloudy areas. If the topographic features and radar feature were excluded, accuracies would decrease to 88.98% and 92.48%, respectively. Topographic features would influence the classification accuracy of most land cover types, while radar features had more impacts on bare lands, construction lands, and shrublands. Textual features and sequential features could only help to increase the accuracy of land cover type with significant textual features and temporal variations. More accurate land cover information can be detected by combing the random forest and feature optimization algorithm, while also provide a more efficient and faster way of integrating multisource data, thus making contribution to land cover classification of the cloudy and mountainous area.
Accurately quantifying the spatiotemporal pattern of grazing intensity on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is crucial to improving our understanding of the driving mechanism of alpine grassland change, and is of great significance for maintaining regional ecological security and promoting sustainable development policies. Based on the data of livestock inventory at the end of the year and environmental covariates (e.g. population density in pastoral areas, growing season NDVI, annual precipitation, annual mean temperature, and settlements), the gridded grazing intensities on the QTP in 2000, 2010, and 2020 were simulated by geographically weighted random forest (GRF), and the regional differences in the interpretability of environmental variables were then analyzed. The results showed that grazing intensity maps predicted by the GRF could mirror the spatial distribution of grazing intensity on the QTP, compared with the classic random forest model, the R2 was higher, and both the mean absolute value error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) were lower. The grazing intensity was generally higher in the southeast and lower in the northwest of the QTP. The areas with grazing intensity of less than 25 sheep units/km2 in the northwest part accounted for about half of the QTP. Compared with 2000 and 2010, the grazing intensity of the QTP in 2020 showed a trend of overall decrease but local increase. For example, compared with 2010, the areas of grazing intensity decreased by higher than 1 sheep unit/km2 in 2020 accounting for 61.69% of the pastoral area. The population density in pastoral areas was the most important factor explaining the spatial heterogeneity of grazing intensity, and its relative importance was higher in the western QTP and lower in the eastern QTP. On the contrary, the relative importance of both precipitation and growing season NDVI was higher in the northwest part and lower in the southeast part of QTP. Our results provide scientific references for sustainable grassland management and ecological safety barrier construction on the QTP.
The function of water production is an important manifestation of ecosystem service. Water resources and ecosystem have two-way influence. Dynamic identification of spatial differentiation characteristics and driving factors of water production service is of great significance to adjusting infrastructure allocation, optimizing water resources management and protecting regional ecosystem. Taking the Qinghai Lake Basin as the research area, based on the land use of the 8th phase of 1985—2020, combined with terrain, soil and meteorological data, the localized modified InVEST model and geographical detector method were used to simulate the basin water production service, evaluate the spatial differentiation characteristics of water yield, and analyze its spatial heterogeneity attribution. The results show that the change range of water yield in the Qinghai Lake Basin from 1985 to 2020 is 1.168 to 8.152 billion m3. The change trend is obvious, it is the "W" type change trend of falling first and then rising, and then rising after falling; The spatial distribution of water production depth is high in southeast and low in northwest, High-value areas are all concentrated in Haiyan County; On a vertical gradient, Water production capacity decreases with increasing altitude; Geodetection results showed significant differences in the ability of single factorial to explain spatial differentiation of water production services, In different partitions, the explanatory force of climate factors is the most significant; the influence degree of spatial differentiation of water production service is determined by multiple factors, and the interaction explanatory force of precipitation and actual evapotranspiration is the dominant factor.
Risk identification of ecosystem services (ESs) supply and demand are essential for optimizing ESs management. However, few studies focused on balancing ESs supply and demand in complex mountainous areas. In this study, InVEST model, supply-demand ratio coordination degree model, and spatial autocorrelation were used to quantitatively evaluate the supply-demand matching relationship of typical ecosystem services in Bailongjiang River Watershed in Gansu Province. Based on the identification of supply-demand risk, ecological management zones were delineated, and targeted management strategies were proposed. The results show that: 1) From 2002 to 2018, only the total food demand showed a decreasing trend, while the total supply of food, the entire supply and demand of water conservation, and soil conservation showed an increasing trend. In terms of quantity matching between supply and demand, only the whole food supply in 2002 and 2010 was less than the total demand, and the other services showed a surplus. 2) As to the spatial matching type of supply and demand, the dominant type of water conservation was high supply with low demand. The soil conservation was high supply with high demand and low supply with low demand, and food provision service was low supply with low demand. 3) Water conservation services' supply and demand risks are concentrated in the densely populated areas east of the Zhouqu-Wudu section of Bailongjiang River. The supply and demand risks of soil conservation services are mainly in the mountainous areas in the north of Diebu, the east of Dangchang, and most of Wudu and the risk areas of food production supply and demand are concentrated in the east of the watershed and the north of Zhouqu. 4) The BLJW can be divided into five levels of supply and demand risk areas according to the relationship between the supply and demand of the ecosystem. This study proposed an integrated management framework for the balanced spatial allocation of ecological and environmental resources, thus providing a new perspective and approach for enhancing ecosystem services and high-quality regional development.
The Lixia River Plain, consisting of a great number of small lakes and swamps, spread widely in the north of Jiangsu Province in history. After 1570, the flood of Huaihe River entering Lixia River Plain continued to increase, which caused great changes in the distribution of lakes and drainage pattern in the region. After 1596, the flood from the Jinghe River and the Ziyinggou River entered into the Guangyang Lake, and then flowed through the Sheyang Lake into the sea. The waters in the southeast of Gaoyou all converge in the Luyang Lake. After 1681, due to the southward shift of the Guihai Dams, floods converged in the middle of the Lixia River Plain and overflowed from the south to the north. As a result, the Dazong Lake and other lakes were connected and merged as a whole. Due to the decrease of flood, the Guangyang Lake was divided into several scattered lakes. Whether the Guihai Dams were opened or not, it would directly affect the hydrological environment of the Lixia River Plain, and thus form two completely different lake distribution and drainage patterns in the flood period and normal period.
The Northwest Frontiers Military and Political Documents from the Song Dynasty is an important Heishuicheng document of Chinese secular literature collected in Russia. It has 109 pages, covering topics including grain and grass loan, Immigration, personal lawsuit, military supplies application, etc. Some of the geographical information contained in this document are not to be found in traditional historical records of the Song and Tangut (West Xia) frontiers. Based on analyzing the relevant geographic terms and information, the author finds out the new situation and new problems including the administrative system, crop transmission, traffics, city-village system and so on, in this paper. They are further used to enact the mutual confirmation between excavated documents and traditional historical records, to complete the missing parts in traditional historical records, and to enhance the understanding of the historical geography and social conditions of the Song and Tangut frontiers.
The Sacred Mountain and Holy Lakes located in the grand Yarlung Tsanpo Valley in the southern part of Ali Region, Tibet, that have been listed in the Preparation List of World Heritage Sites of Natural and Cultural Heritage include the Mount Gang Rinpoche, the Lake Mapam Yutso, the Lake Lana Tso. The four rivers originated in the vicinity are the Senge Kabab (the lion river), the langchen Kabab (the elephant river), the Macha Kabab (the peacock river), and the Tsangpo Kabab (the horse river), all which are the source of several world-famous rivers, such as the Indus River, the Ganges River, the Yarlung Tsanpo River and the Brahmaputra River.
In the ancient tradition of China and India, the Gang Renboqi mountain and its surrounding lakes and rivers had extremely important symbolic meanings, and they were the geographical landmarks indicating the center of the cosmological world. In the historical period, there were four ancient divine worldviews being formed around the Sacred Mountain and Holy Lakes in Ali, Tibet.
The first one is recognized by the local Bon religion of Zhangzhung culture in Ali area; the second one is the cosmological world center of anavatapta, which is recognized by Buddhism; the third one is the cosmological world center of Kunlun Mountain and Yao-chi, which is recognized by the ancient Chinese Book of Mountains and Seas; and the fourth one is the cosmological world center of Kailash (Kailasa), which was recognized by Hinduism. The four cosmography systems originated independently, formed their own special cognitive systems, and communicated and merged with other systems in history.
The integration of the Kunlun Mountain cosmological world view and the Buddhist Anavatapta cosmological world view happened around 1 500 years ago, and the new world view had a wide range of impact on ancient Chinese cosmography. In 1720, this world view was projected on the surveyed map, and the ancient subjective cognition was finally located into the concrete geographical objects of the Sacred Mountains and Lakes.
Ban Gu’s notes in Hanshu Dilizhi contain extremely rich geographical information, recording more than 300 rivers. The main sources of these notes on rivers come from Book of Rivers written in the period of Emperor Ming in Han Dynasties as well as statistical documents submitted by various administrative divisions. At the same time, regarding the various viewpoints in Confucian classics, Ban Gu researched the rivers recorded in Shangshu Yugong and Zhouli Zhifangshi and made excerpts to be included in Hanshu Dilizhi. In addition, a few of notes by other scholars were incerted into the notes in the centuries to follow when the text was widely disseminated.
