In remote sensing research, night light remote sensing as an important branch of active development has attracted increasingly more attention from the fields of natural and social science research in recent decades. Different from traditional daytime optical satellite remote sensing that obtains ground object radiation information, nighttime light remote sensing is the acquisition of visible-near-infrared electromagnetic information transmitted from the Earth's surface under cloud-free conditions at night. Compared to the ordinary satellite remote sensing images, ground light intensity information recorded by the night light images directly reflects the difference of human activity. Therefore, it is widely used in urbanization research, extraction of impervious surfaces, estimation of socioeconomic indicators, major events assessment, ecological environment assessment, and other fields. At present, although research results based on nighttime light data are continuously accumulating, there is a general lack of systematic review of these results and the current reviews suffer from incomplete coverage and poor timeliness. Therefore, this article summarizes the research results of nighttime light data in recent decades and examines them from the aspects of data processing and technical approaches, urbanization application research, and parameterization. Finally, we identify the following three research hotspots: multi-source data fusion, application expansion, and short-period surface light monitoring.

The South China Sea and its coastal zone are one of the most active and high potential areas for economic development in the Asia-Pacific region. Affected by global changes and human activities, the resources and environment in the South China Sea region were changing drastically, imposing new pressures on the society, economy, ecology and environment. This article reviewed related geographical research of coast zone, marine and coral reef resources from the perspective of geospatial information. It examined various current works of remote sensing monitoring on the shoreline, the geographical difference analysis of oil- gas reserves and fishery catch, and remote sensing monitoring on coral reef landform and coral bleaching. this article also discussed the existing research results and shortcomings and analyzed the possible focus of future research based on development trends. The results show that the geospatial research on resources and environment of the South China Sea had made many achievements in the large scale rapid monitoring and geographical differentiation of resources so far. Meanwhile, research on the internal mechanism of resource distribution, as well as the environmental impact of resource development, is insufficient. Studies that can be expected to achieve breakthroughs in the future include: multi-scale analysis of spatiotemporal feature of the region and their effects, differentiation and pattern analysis of inter-regional natural and social development, improvement of dynamic monitoring accuracy and timeliness of the South China Sea resources based on the integration multiple-source data, and the comprehensive effects of marine ecology and environment in the process of resource change.

This article reviews the hydrological geography in the Heilongjiang River Basin from four aspects: geographical environment, surface water, groundwater and the water quality. Studies on geographical environment can be illustrated on climate change, lakes and wetlands, watershed regionalization and watershed development. In recent years, the Heilongjiang River Basin has witnessed warming climate, its river basin has abundant lakes and wetland resources, its river basin has numerous protected areas and protected objects on both sides, its reservoirs play a key role for its water resources development and utilization. Studies on surface water can be made on runoff characteristics and flood characteristics. The Heilongjiang River can be divided into seven tributaries and one main stream. Atmospheric circulation anomalies are the direct cause for consecutive torrential rain over the main stream in 2013. Studies on groundwater can be conducted on hydrogeology, groundwater level and trans-boundary aquifers. The Heilongjiang River Basin can be divided into nine hydrogeological zones. The change of the groundwater level has its unique characteristics. Thus, trans-boundary aquifers need to be studied in the future. Studies on water quality can be illustrated on surface water quality and groundwater quality. Prevention and cure work against the polluted water need to be strengthened, groundwater control measures and emergency treatment programs need to be put forward as soon as possible. Finally, hot topics related to surface water quality and groundwater quality are discussed.

Central Asia, which is an arid inland area, has the most severe water-resource problems in the world. This paper reviews the literature on water issues in Central Asia published in the last 15 years (i.e., since 2000), covering the quantity of literature, the research institutes involved, the research approaches, and the major issues in the subject. The following conclusions can be reached based on the literature: (1) Water issues in Central Asia are an important area of geographical research. Many studies from China, Germany, the USA, and other countries have focused on the responses of water cycling processes to climate change, and on the hydrological environment of the catchment. In addition, Chinese researchers have tended to focus their studies on trans-boundary river management. (2) Temperature rise and precipitation increase are the fundamental features of climate change in Central Asia. Terrestrial water storage and river runoff have an obvious decrease as a result of temperature rise. (3) Soil salinization, land degradation and water pollution have been worsened by irrational utilization of water resources, and all of these have increased the pressures on the environment of the catchment. (4) Complicated geopolitics makes it difficult for the international community to manage the trans-boundary rivers in Central Asia. The water utilization situation in Central Asian countries is getting worse, which causes a series of ecological problems and even endangers the stability of social and economic development. Important future directions for studies on water issues in Central Asia include the relationships between population, resources and environment; the interaction mechanism of hydrology, methodological, social and political aspects; as well as the collection of basic hydrological data.

Monitoring plant phenology with remote sensing data has important scientific value for studying the response of vegetation to climate change. A comprehensive analysis on the influencing factors of accuracy of plant phenology estimation based on principles and general technical processes of remote sensing application in vegetation monitoring was carried out by taking into account the following four aspects: the specific vegetation type and its geographical conditions; remote sensing data and pre-processing; techniques used to identify plant phenometrics; and evaluation of satellite-derived plant phenometrics. Potential methods for improving the accuracy of plant phenology monitoring are thoroughly discussed. These include: building high-resolution near-surface sensor-derived phenology observation and sharing network; developing universally applicable methods for noise removal of satellite remote sensing time-series data and reconstruction of vegetation index curves; searching more stable methods to estimate plant phenology; and exploring the possibility of synthesizing ground-based observation, remote sensing monitoring, and model simulation to achieve the spatial scaling-up of phenometrics.

Coral reefs have been formed through accumulation of debris of scleractinian corals and associated organism in shallow water of the tropic ocean, most of which are distributed in both sides of equator of the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. The study of the formation mechanism of coral reefs is very important to understand the tectonic movement of the earth and marine dynamics. Darwin firstly gave the theory of coral reefs’ formation mechanism about 200 years ago, since then many theories have been proposed, which can be classified into 2 groups according to the relationship between the formation of coral reefs and change of sea level. The theories which are related to the change of the seal level include: Darwin’s subsidence hypothesis, Penck and Daly’s glacial-control theory, Kuenen’s glacially controlled subsidence theory, Dietz and Hess’s spreading and subsidence theory, and Morgan’s hotspot subsidence theory. And the other theories which have nothing with sea level change include: Murray’s Sea floor uplift theory, Hoffmeister and Ladd’s antecedent-platform theory, and Yabe and Asano’s Karstic saucer theory. In the past decades, the studies on the revolution of coral reefs in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic showed the factors which affected the structure and morphology of the coral reefs and how the reefs developed in the extreme events. The studies on formation mechanism of the coral reefs in China were started from about 50 years ago. The records of deep drilling in South China Sea shows that the corals reefs in China may form in accord with Subsidence theory and glacial subsidence theory, that is, the development and formation of coral reefs in South China Sea are in the slow subsidence of crust for a long time and controlled by the Quaternary glacial and inter glacial epoch. The formation of the coral reefs is so complicated and one theory could not be used to explain all coral reefs. With the development of the new way for field investigation and the application of new laboratory techniques, more data can be obtained and suitable formation model for specific reefs can be reached.

This paper is a review of non-use values of tourism resources evaluation at home and abroad. According to the time sequence, we discuss the progress in tourism resources non-use value studies from research process and phase characteristics, research area and research object. The results show that: foreign research has experienced three stages, namely, starting, exploring in depth, and enhancing; research objects mainly are national (forest) parks, marine protected areas, nature reserves, cultural heritage areas, islands and etc.; the research contents cover those from admission fees to the willingness to pay for non-use value of tourism resources and assessment correction; the research methods include hypothetical market approach, economic model test metrology and others. There exist significant gaps between the research in China and that in foreign countries. In China, the study objects mainly are natural resources; the research field is narrow relatively; the research method is mainly contingent valuation, which is relatively single, and whose applicability is inadequate. We put forward three suggestions for future research in China: expanding research area and field, improving the reliability of the research methods and enhancing the applied and practical research, so as to coordinate the development and protection of tourism resource, and realize tourism sustainable development.

As one of the most dynamic economic phenomena nowadays, regional integration is considered to be a multi-dimensional spatial phenomenon and a multidisciplinary scientific issue. With the increase in the difficulty of multilateral free trade negotiations, the global free trade system has come to a deadlock. At the same time, many bilateral or limited multilateral regional integration organizations have been triumphantly aroused, which make regional integration become one of the most valuable research issues. The rapidly increasing number of integrated organizations and the deepening cooperation inside the organizations both show that a new round of regional integration tide is emerging. In this context, geography’s unique scale, link and border perspective are important for understanding how regional integration can change the world economic pattern and its impact on national and regional development. This paper reviews the theory and development of regional integration, reexamines the rapid development of regional integration process from the perspective of scale, link and border, and expounds the network characteristics, multi-dimensional connection and multiple borders in regional integration processes. In order to better understand regional and local development, some recent researches are discussed from the perspective of “global-local” links. Some basic understandings are expounded in this paper. The practice of regional integration is showing more and more characteristics of the network, forming a network space driven by state power and based on relationships. The multi-dimensional proximity within the regional integration is the driving force for the rapid development and diversified forms. With the emergence of a large number of regional integration organizations, the construction of global scales also requires more consideration of the roles of regions and the links of multiple dimensions. Regional integration builds a new border, which is essentially based on the relationship between members, relying on the state forces to intervene and regulate trade and other relationships. It is a selective, directional and dynamic network, showing a characteristic of “re-territorialization”. At the same time, the traditional territorial border is still important. Regional integration reshapes the local development model and economic geography patterns of member countries, and its institutional arrangements deeply influence the border region development and industrial geography patterns. This paper summarizes the theoretical and practical characteristics of regional integration from the perspective of economic geography, points out some related problems and some future research trends from the perspective of scale construction, internal links, border effect and multi-dimension analysis for better understanding and practicing regional integration.

The spatial distribution of soil reflects its formation and development. Digital soil mapping is a new and efficient technique to represent the spatial distribution of soil, which has experienced a rapid development over the last three decades. The theoretical bases are the soil forming factor theory and the first law of geography. Researchers have done significant work on the generation of environmental covariates, soil sampling methods, mapping methods, and production and evaluation of soil maps. The application cases are from small areas to big regions, even at the global scale. Future directions for digital soil mapping include: new techniques for depicting environmental covariates, especially for expressing human activities; efficient use of new data and legacy data; the reconciling of pedometric knowledge and mathematic models; and new computation ways supporting the use of big data.

In this paper, firstly, in accordance with the principles of the hydrologic cycle simulation, methods commonly used in the runoff yield simulation were analyzed. On this basis, the rainfall-runoff coefficient of correlation, the storage-full runoff and the runoff yield under excess infiltration applied in the runoff simulations, as well as the methods of isochronic hydrograph, unit hydrograph, the Saint-Venant equations, the Muskingum method applied in the flow concentration simulations, and also parametrization methods of topography, land cover, land use and soil type applied in major simulation methods were analyzed and discussed. In addition, the degree of description of the simulation process mechanism by these parametrization methods of watershed topography, land cover, land use and soil types was discussed and the parametrization methods were divided into different categories, namely: the not clearly expressed category, the rating parameters category, the deterministic parameters category and the expressed by physical processes category. Furthermore, the influence of the applied in different parametrization methods topography, land cover, land use and soil types on the hydrologic cycle simulation results was clarified. Finally, returning to the hydrologic models nature, major drawbacks of the simplified description of complex rational and physical mechanisms existing in the underlying surface parametrization methods in hydrologic models were outlined, and also two directions in the future development of those methods in the hydrologic cycle simulations were discussed.

In recent years, the cruise industry has become one of the most dynamic, rapidly developing and profitable segments in the global tourism and hospitality industry, with millions of passengers each year. China has become one of the most attractive emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Cruise tourism has significant economic impacts on port cities and relevant tourism regions, outputting remarkable employment opportunities and total revenue. However, the development of the cruising sector also brings negative economic, environmental, and social and cultural impacts on cruise destinations and local communities. With the fast development of the Chinese cruise industry, influences of cruise tourism will become far-reaching. It is critical for the Chinese cruise industry to better understand impacts of cruise tourism, particularly the negative side. However, this issue is neglected by the Chinese academic community. Using a sustainable and responsible tourism lens, the purpose of the current article is to systematically examine the negative impacts of cruise tourism by comprehensively reviewing international studies in relation to externalities of cruise tourism. Accordingly, a model or framework of responsible cruise tourism, consisting of governments, non-profit organizations, local communities, cruise passengers, and the cruise industry, is proposed. This article is an attempt to stimulate more attentions from Chinese researchers to the sustainability and responsibility of cruise tourism.

The spatial heterogeneity of urban built environments is a primary challenge in the research of urban pluvial floods in terms of the model representativeness, computational efficiency, and data requirements. The development of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, big data, and remote sensing, provides opportunities for the research of urban pluvial floods, such as efficient approaches and high-resolution data. This study conducted a comprehensive review of the research progress on urban pluvial floods from four perspectives—flood characteristics, mechanisms, data, and research methods, and finally came to four conclusions: 1) Urban pluvial floods have typical features such as short duration, scattered and evolving spatial distribution, chain effect, and sharp increase of losses at the critical scenario. 2) Micro-topography plays an important role in the spatial distribution of urban pluvial floods, and the topographic control index shows the potential of identifying frequently flooded areas. 3) The highly variable rainfall processes are the bottleneck in the near-real-time flood simulation, and the radar rainfall data provide a solution. Internet-based big data provide a new way to extract flood inundation data with high spatial coverage, but still face the problems of quality control and fusion with multi-sources data. 4) Machine learning could be coupled with hydrodynamic models to improve the efficiency of near-real-time flood simulation.

Border regions are an important geopolitical area, also a national gateway and an important trade route. After the proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative and Healthy China, there is a pressing need to strengthen research on health care services in border regions. In this paper, we systematically reviewed the publications on health care services in border regions from 2000 to 2016 in China and abroad. There were 282 articles in Chinese and 359 in English shown by CNKI and Web of Science, respectively. The Keyword Co-occurrence tool of CiteSpace software was used to visualize the keywords of the articles we searched for so as to show the current research trend more clearly. In terms of study areas, overseas scholars mainly focused on the U.S.-Mexico border, while Chinese scholars focused on the border regions in Yunnan Province. In terms of research subjects, overseas scholars mainly focused on the ethnic minorities and women who lived in the border regions, while Chinese scholars mainly studied the minorities living in Yunnan Province. In terms of contents, overseas scholars mainly focused on two topics: 1) health care services and disease control in border regions, and 2) cross-border health care utilization behavior and cross-border medical tourism. In the first topic, the health conditions of border residents who were suffering from HIV and cancer were discussed, and how community health workers and governments managed to deliver intervention to the border residents were demonstrated. In the second topic, the characteristics and the influencing factors of various cross-border behaviors which took place in different border regions were studied, and the development and emerging risks of medical tourism which is a special form of cross-border utilization of health care services were pointed out. In addition, some overseas scholars also highlighted the importance of health care accessibility and equality. Because of the complexity of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of border regions, many non-spatial factors had determinant effects on health care accessibility. In comparison, related research in China started relatively late, and mainly focused on the prevalence, control and influencing factors of various infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV and dengue in Yunnan Province, and the related health care services offered by hospitals. As for research methods, both quantitative and qualitative methods were used by overseas and Chinese scholars, and interdisciplinary characteristics began to show. Quantitative methods are advantageous in identifying the influencing factors of certain diseases or health care utilization behaviors, while qualitative methods perform better in revealing the mechanisms behind phenomena and also in analyzing the interaction between various factors. In general, future research needs to include more areas and discuss health issues in border regions from the perspective of health geography and political geography in the new era. China has many neighboring countries and the geopolitical environment is complex. Research on health care services in border regions needs to be strengthened. In the future, new research methods developed in western countries should be employed based on the Chinese context, such as spatial distribution of health care services and optimization of service layout, and health care service utilization behavior. New conceptual models and emerging theories in border studies need to be combined to perform further research of multidisciplinary characteristics.

As an important link between human and natural systems, ecosystem services are closely related to human well-being and sustainable development. Land use/land cover change (LUCC) is one of the important drivers for ecosystem services change, and it has a significant impact on ecosystem services at the local, regional and global scales. Under the background of ecological civilization construction, it is very important to understand the spatial characteristics, differences and correlation at multi spatial scales. It is beneficial for studying the scale effect profoundly, coordinating the decision-making of multi-level management institutions and alleviating the constraints of scarce ecosystem services on socio-economic development. From the perspective of spatial scale, we summarized the concepts of spatial scale on this topic and introduced the analytical framework for considering spatial scale effect based on the recent theoretical and empirical developments. Then, we systematically analyzed the scale selection basis, features and correlation on the impact of LUCC on ecosystem services at different spatial scales, following the research thinking and process. Furthermore, we evaluated the research approach used to study the impact of LUCC on ecosystem services at both single scale and multi scales. This review put forward the key questions which should be considered in studies on the scale effect as follows: (1) building a research framework combining humanistic factors with natural factors; (2) explaining the scale effect of LUCC on ecosystem services; (3) exploring the effective analytical methods of the scale effect of LUCC on ecosystem services.

China is going through a very special era characterized by rapid population aging, abrupt social and economic transformations, and widespread restructuring of urban and rural spaces. With the factors and mechanisms underlying the aging process becoming increasingly complicated, integration of geographic research on aging with gerontology and other disciplines is indispensable, and it is time to examine the direction of geographical research on aging from the perspective of disciplinary development. Based on an intensive literature review, this article extracts five themes from existing geographic studies on aging in China, that is, the spatial and temporal characteristics of population aging, the social and spatial impacts of aging, interactions of human health and environments, the spatial behavior of elderly people, and spatial planning of senior services. Comments are made on existing studies along these lines respectively. Through a comparison of Chinese and western studies with regard to the socioeconomic backgrounds, policy needs, and research foci, key issues in geographical research on aging in China are raised, including academic framework and theoretical and methodological constructions. Future research emphases are discussed, with the aim to provide a general framework for understanding and studying China's aging process from the perspective of geography.

The drone is a data-driven air mobile agent in the future network environment, UAV remote sensing technology has become one of the leading industries for UAV applications. This paper introduces the development of UAV remote sensing technology within China and internationally, and there is a particular focus on the development of UAV remote sensing technology within China from the "10th Five-Year Plan" to the "13th Five-Year Plan" since the 21^st century. It also focuses on the UAV remote sensing calibration field, the establishment of aerospace calibration field and application verification are also described, including the development of load and system technology of UAV remote sensing system. Secondly, it will introduce the industrial application of UAV remote sensing technology in the fields of national defense, land and ocean island reef mapping, geological disaster monitoring, and emergency rescue. At last, China's advancement in UAV remote sensing technology with regards to intelligent control of networking, accuracy and real-time metric basis, self-organizing redundant fault tolerance of load platform, remote sensing big data cloud processing technology, and the practical application of UAV remote sensing networking will also be discussed. The overall goal of the future development of UAV remote sensing is to establish an unmanned aircraft network observation system with rapid information acquisition capability, to realize the unmanned aircraft networking technology from the project level to the remote sensing industry. At the same time, it also lays a foundation for Chinese national strategic leap in becoming a strong power in remote sensing field.

In recent years, with the impact of climate change, the Arctic has aroused extensive concerns worldwide. In this article, we systematically reviewed the publications on geo-relations in the Arctic from 2000 to 2017 in both the English and the Chinese literature. We identified 289 articles in English and 596 articles in Chinese by searching in Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), respectively. In terms of the number of publications, 10 or fewer papers were published in both English and Chinese each year from 2000 to 2008, but there was a significant growth in numbers after 2009. The Keyword Co-occurrence function of the CiteSpace software was used to visualize the keywords of the searched publications for analyzing the research trend. In terms of contents, the publications in English focused on sovereignty, mainly involving continental shelf, the Svalbard archipelago, and the legal status of the continental shelf. Some studies focused on the economy and feasibility of transportation routes in the Arctic, considering navigational conditions and costs. In addition, the natural resources in the Arctic region, such as oil, gas, and fishery, were major topics in the English publications. By the influence of critical and humanistic geopolitics, the survival, interests, and rights of indigenous population were also discussed. In the Chinese literature, many scholars focused on the geo-relations among Russian Federation, the United States, and Canada. China's participation in Arctic affairs and Arctic governance were often discussed, such as identity construction and cooperation approaches. Being different from the English publications, the impact of Arctic Passages on the international economic order has been paid more attention to in the Chinese literature. Furthermore, many scholars discussed the influence, particularly on the economic field, of developing the Arctic region from a national perspective. In general, publications in English have mainly focused on sovereignty and politics, channel utility, resource management, and indigenous people's rights and interests in the Arctic, while the Chinese publications have paid more attention to geopolitics, transportation, resource utilization, and regional governance in the region. Although some studies were conducted by using quantitative methods, the majority of publications were rather descriptive. The research methods and research questions need to be developed in this research field. The Arctic is a region with strategic significance. In the future, in combination with the development of research methods and international regional development theory, sustainable development in the Arctic and China's participation need to be further studied, and a theory of geo-relations needs to be constructed and applied in the study of the Arctic.

The trajectory datasets record a series of position information at different times, so they become the new data sources to study the laws of human mobility. As a main form of social remote sensing data, trajectory datasets also bring a new individual viewpoint to study geographical phenomena. With the emergence of big data, trajectory data mining becomes a hot topic in geographical information science, urban computing and other correlative disciplines. In this paper, we gave a brief review on trajectory data mining and its applications in cities. First, we listed the data sets frequently adopted by human mobility research, gave the classification and their typical applications using FCD data, mobile phone data, smart cards data, check-in data, etc. Then, we summarized its application in solving cities’ problems from four aspects: (1) the identification of urban spatial structure and function unit; (2) the patterns recognition of human activity and the behavior prediction of human movement; (3) the traffic time estimation and the anomaly detection of intelligent transportation; (4) other applications in urban computing such as in urban air and noise pollution, disaster prevention and rescue, even in intelligent tourism and information recommendation. At the end, we pointed out the challenges and further research directions of trajectory data mining.

As a general term that describes the accumulation of organic matters within specific temporal and spatial scopes on crop land, woodland, grassland, or other types of lands, land net primary productivity (NPP) is considered an important parameter to measure carbon cycle, guide land use, assess ecological security, reflect environmental changes, and indicate the level of food security. The estimation precision of NPP is significantly influenced by the type of models and input of key surface parameters of ecosystems. In recent years, with the continuous growth of remote sensing data and the rapid development of remote sensing data processing technologies, NPP estimation models based on remote sensing data, as compared to NPP estimation using traditional observation data such as climate and soil data with coarse spatiotemporal resolutions, have become very prominent in analyzing temporal and spatial heterogeneity. Based on the Web of Science and CNKI databases and statistical analysis methods, this study systematically reviewed research on NPP and its estimation models integrating remote sensing data in China and internationally. The commonly used models can be divided into four categories: statistical models, light use efficiency models, process models, and coupling models. We examined the mechanisms, differences, suitability, and limitation of the various kinds of models, Based on an analysis of the difficulties and scientific challenges that face integrating remote sensing data into NPP estimation models, research prospects are put forward with regard to model mechanism, influencing factors, data provision, parameter derivation, expansion of spatiotemporal scales, and hardware and software supports.

Urban environmental assessment research has traditionally adopted a method based on field survey, which is difficult to evaluate on a large scale and refined scale. Street view image has a wide coverage, can provide street-level landscape and intuitively reflect the city facade information, and have the advantage of lower cost than on-site data collection, so it provides a large sample data source and new research ideas for urban environmental assessment. Different from the sky view of remote sensing image and the user interaction data of geo-tagged social media, street view image is more focused on recording stereoscopic sectional view of the city street level from the perspective of people, which can represent scenes seen or felt from the ground on a fine scale, so it is more suitable to replace on-site observation of urban environmental assessment. The continuous breakthrough of artificial intelligence technology and its application in various fields make it possible to conduct urban environmental assessment research based on street view image on a wide range of spatial scales. In this paper, we first described and compared three categories of data sources commonly used in urban environmental assessment including street view image, remote sensing image and geo-tagged social media data, and summarized the advantages of street view image in urban environmental assessment. Then we classified the methods used in urban environment assessment based on street view image into the following four categories : methods based on image analysis, statistical analysis, artificial intelligence and spatial analysis. Next, from the urban physical, social, economic and aesthetic environment, we summarized the research and application of street view image in urban environmental assessment. Finally, we pointed out the innovations, limitations and future research directions of the urban environmental assessment based on street view image. On one hand, the application of artificial intelligence represented by deep learning promotes the research progress of urban environmental assessment on large-scale and fine-scale. On the other hand, in the era of big data, the integration of data source represented by street view image, remote sensing image, and geo-tagged social media data will help promote urban environmental assessment research from multiple perspectives and multi-level.

On January 22nd and 23rd, 2016, "High level Forum of the Development of Chinese Human and Economic Geography under the background of change" was held in Beijing. More than 30 professors attended this forum. On the conference, they discussed on the major progress of the development of China's Human and Economic Geography, and the existing problems, restraint factors, opportunities, international path, developing direction, prospects in the development of the discipline. In recent years, Human and Economic Geography has boomed, facing many important opportunities for development. To establish an academic community for joint researches on major issues and collaborative innovation is a significant route. We should embrace domestic and international characteristics, to promote China's Human and Economic Geography to go to the world arena. In the meantime, the construction of various series of talents and the growth of young and middle-aged talents are also of great significance.

In order to break through the segmentation between urban and rural land markets, and achieve the target of integrated land use of ‘mountain-water-forest-cropland-lake’, integrated urban and rural land markets need to be developed. This study explored the mechanism impacts of urban land market, informal rural collective construction land market, and rural agricultural land circulation market on land use/land cover change (LUCC). The results show that, first, the segmentation between urban and rural land markets still existed, and resulted in a great effect on LUCC. Second, the different development degree of urban state-owned construction land market has a direct impact on relationship between land supply and demand, as well as land use structure, and even on the efficiency of land use allocation. Third, the rural collective construction land market has appeared, which accelerated the speed of the transformation of land use types because of the vagueness of property rights and the lack of legal supervision and protection. Fourth, the segmentation of urban land rural land markets affected the sustainability of land use systems and the ecosystem and environmental systems. Finally, on the basis of above results, we thought that the future research will strengthen the analysis of the integration of urban land rural land markets. Moreover, the response mechanism (pattern, process and effect) of the integration of urban and rural land markets on LUCC will be revealed.

Since the launch of the Greater Mekong Sub-region Economic Cooperation Program in 1992, driven by the global natural rubber market and geoeconomic cooperation mechanisms, Laos, the only land-locked country in mainland Southeast Asia is experiencing rapid land cover and land use change (LCLUC) due to the rapid establishment and expansion of rubber plantations. Rubber production expansion in Laos is of great importance for China, the largest country of rubber consumption globally, and the rubber-related LCLUC also causes dramatic socioeconomic and environmental impacts within Laos. Therefore, it is important to review rubber plantation establishment and expansion and related remote sensing and impacts studies reported during the last two decades. In this study, after briefly introducing the production, expansion mechanism, and development potential of rubber plantations in Laos, we systematically summarized the research progress on remote sensing monitoring and socioeconomic and environmental impacts of rubber plantation expansion. The review shows that existing studies lack of updated spatial information (extent and distribution) on the establishment and expansion of rubber plantations at the national scale. Effects in the socioeconomic (livelihoods) and environmental (soil erosion, water conservation, biodiversity, etc.) systems are not fully understood. These issues are also the research directions in the future. This study may help improve understanding of the characteristics of rubber plantation expansion and related impacts, and provide guidance for a sound development of rubber industry. In addition, it provides important information for rubber plantation development in Hainan and Yunnan Provinces in China.

Vulnerability is a hot topic in natural disaster risk research. Vulnerability to storm surges not only depends on the distribution of population and socioeconomic values, but also the frequency and intensity of storm surges, as well as the coastal environment. This article systematically reviewed the progress of research on social vulnerability and physical vulnerability to storm surges, focusing mainly on the physical vulnerability of population, coastal defenses, and buildings. Uncertainties in vulnerability assessment were analyzed, and the application of storm surge vulnerability assessment in the field of rapid loss assessment, insurance, reinsurance, and disaster mitigation and adaptation were discussed. Finally, future avenues of storm surge vulnerability research were presented: (1) Quantitative storm surge vulnerability curves of typical exposure units need to be developed for application in the field of disaster insurance claims and loss assessment; (2) Standardized vulnerability assessment method of storm surge for typical exposure units needs to be established through field survey, physical experiments, and numerical simulation in response to the potential increase of catastrophe risk in the coastal area of China under global climate change.

Change detection based on Landsat time series has become one of the most popular methods of remote sensing change detection. This paper reviews the status of Landsat time series change detection, including comparison of change detection algorithms, Landsat time series construction and accuracy assessment of change detection results. Major problems and challenges of performing Landsat time series change detection are presented. Landsat time series change detection algorithms can roughly be classified into three categories, i.e., trajectory fitting methods, spectral-temporal trajectory methods, and model-based methods. These algorithms are mostly developed based on forest disturbance. Only few of them were used to detect changes in other land use/land cover types (e.g. urban expansion). Their applications in other fields need further verification. In particular, the comparative study of those different algorithms should be strengthened, which would provide better guidance for users to select optimal detection methods in specific fields. These indices commonly used for Landsat time series change detection can be divided into four groups, including spectral band, vegetation index, linear transformation and their combinations. It is often suggested to combine the advantages of various indices to detect different disturbance types. Although change detection methods based on Landsat time series have developed rapidly, many challenges remain. Upon now, the lack of consistent reference data set for accuracy assessment of Landsat time series change detection is the most serious challenge. Confronted with new challenges, new approaches are needed to calibrate the time series change detection algorithms.

It is well known that glaciers in mountains are retreating widely in a warmer climate during recent decades on the Tibetan Plateau (TP). The runoffs from both glaciers and glacier lakes have been increased significantly, and the potential outbursts of glacier lakes have threaten the residence safety in China and the adjacent countries. However, most of the glaciers locate in very distant mountains. As glaciers are difficult to be investigated due to the huge investments and long travelling time of field survey, remote sensing monitoring has been the major approach adopted to understand the changes of glaciers nowadays. This paper has summarized several important items about current glacier studies, which includes: the development of remote sensing techniques on mountain glacier monitoring; the previous concluded results on glacier surface elevation changes in the major mountains on TP; and the problems and research trends of glacier studies based on the remote sensing techniques. Moreover, this paper reveals the glacier surface elevation changes on TP based on the ICESat/GLAS data. It shows that during 2003-2009 the glacier surface elevation on TP has changed by -0.24±0.03 m/a in average and yielding a mass change by -14.86±11.88 km³/a, whose melting water would run into rivers or lakes. The glacier change pattern on TP shows an obviously spatial-temporal heterogeneity, which decreases from the south and east TP toward the inland TP, and then it keeps decreasing toward the north and west TP.

With the globalization of the Belt and Road national strategy, the volume of shipping trade is increasing rapidly. As a result, the problem of the safety of maritime navigation and monitoring has become increasingly prominent. The real-time monitoring of large-scale ships, based on the spatio-temporal data, through target tracking and information fusion is an effective method, but it also faces great challenges. Data association, as the basis and a key step of target tracking and information fusion, has important application value in military and civil fields. This paper summarizes the problems related to data association. Firstly, the data sources for trajectories of the marine targets were introduced and compared, showing its necessity and feasibility. Then two kinds of problems in data association, i.e., measurement-to-track association (MTTA) and track-to-track association (TTTA), were described. Based on the data association methods in MTTA, we abstracted a data association model consisting of state estimation and association judgment, and described the Kalman filter used generally in state estimation. After that, the basic principles and improvements of nearest neighbor (NN), probabilistic data association (PDA), joint probabilistic data association (JPDA) and multiple hypothesis tracking （MHT） were introduced. NN implements the data association using the distance between the measured and predicted values. PDA, considering only a single target, calculates the association probability of each measurement in the circumstance with presence of clutter and target missing, and associates the measurement with the maximum association probability to the target. JPDA as the extension of PDA, suitable for multiple targets, calculates the joint association probability of measurements and targets by joining all targets, and selects the association event corresponding to the maximum joint association probability as the association result. MHT is a multi-scan multi-hypothesis method and has the characteristics of track creation, maintenance, deletion and false alarm. It achieves the optimum in theory by maintaining multiple possible hypotheses generated by each association cycle. The key to the MHT is how to control the scale of the hypotheses by effective pruning in order to improve the efficiency of time and space of the algorithm. With regard to TTTA, two kinds of methods, based on statistics and fuzzy mathematics, were introduced respectively. The statistics methods consist of NN/K-NN/MK-NN, double threshold track correlation, sequential track correlation, etc. The key of fuzzy methods is the construction of fuzzy factor set and membership function. We also introduced the evaluation methods for data association. Finally, the problems in the existing methods, e.g., the application scenarios, and further researches were explained.