Water saving is an effective way to ease water shortage. At the same time it relates to the complex situation of cognition and awareness on social psychology. Questionnaire surveyed 312 high school students in Beijing is designed to evaluate their present situation of water saving knowledge, awareness and behavior. Further, a systematical analysis on the interrelation between water saving knowledge, awareness and behavior has been conducted in order to provide scientific support to establish more effective water management measures. The result shows reliability index (Cronbach’s α) values of water saving knowledge, awareness and behavior scales are 0.82, 0.77 and 0.84 respectively. Advanced analysis finds out high school students are generally lack of exact quantitative cognition of water conservation. Consequently, they are not able to figure out the reasonable degree of water use. And TV is the main source of their obtaining such knowledge. To a certain degree, high school students are sensitive and have sense of response to water scarcity as it has been widely recognized. Although they can perceive changes of water resource condition, water conservation is still like a slogan rather than deep understanding. As a result, those students need improvement of their water saving behavior. Comparing changing one’s own water use behavior and others’, the analysis shows the frequency of the former is over a half while the latter occurs very rare. Water saving awareness is significantly impacting water saving behavior. But it turns out that water saving knowledge has no statistical significance to water saving awareness. Meanwhile, water saving knowledge is proved to have direct impact on water saving behavior, and through water awareness it produced a mediator effect which can also impact water saving behavior. Proportion of both impacting effects of knowledge is 9 ∶1.

Development and utilization of solar energy play a vital role in reducing the fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for human being. Solar energy, which is considered as one of the most significant renewable energy resources in the future, plays a vital role in mitigating global warming. Therefore, it is extremely necessary to figure out the spatial and temporal distribution of solar energy resources in certain regions, as well as its stability so as to better develop and utilize such renewable resources. Based on daily data of solar sunshine and solar total radiation from 27 metrological stations from 1958 to 2008 and 163 radiation stations from 1961 to 2008 such as Xi’ning, Lanzhou, Xi’an, etc., our study analyzes the characteristics of the spatial and temporal variations of solar energy resources of Northwest China for the past about 50 years through completely regularized spline methods. The results indicate that the characteristics of the inter-annual and seasonal changes of solar energy resources are almost the same. According to the sunshine hours and solar total radiation, central Qinghai Province is regarded as the most abundant solar energy region, while the regions, such as southern and southwestern Shaanxi Province, belong to the unavailable region of this kind of resources. Over the past 50 years, the annual total radiation of Northwest China has decreased clearly, and the annual sunshine hours have dropped off slowly. Among 163 metrological stations, the days which the daily sunshine hours were greater than 6 hours of a month during the past 10 years added up to 45-327, of which 15 sites are more than 300 days. Solar energy resources of the southern Shaanxi Province and Urumqi are most unstable, where the K value (the index of stability of solar energy resources) is 12.21, while the border area, including the northern Qinghai Province, and the interactive zone of Qinghai, Gansu and Xinjiang, belongs to the most stable area, where the K value is 1.27. Our study suggests that the stability of the solar energy resources is consistent well with the distribution size of resource potential, that the most stable area always has the largest amount of total radiation and the longest sunshine duration.

Atmospheric water vapor is a kind of potential water resource. It has important strategic significance for the realization of the sustainable use of freshwater resources. Ground-based GPS atmospheric water vapor tomographic technology provides quantitative basis for the study of atmospheric water vapor resources three-dimensional distribution. The technology is also important for the rational development and utilization of water vapor resources. This paper introduces the basic principle of ground-based GPS atmospheric water vapor tomographic technology; and division of ground-based GPS tomographic network is one of the critical issues for the technology. The paper discusses the methods of dividing ground-based GPS tomographic network home and abroad. It also summarizes the three main algorithms of the technology used commonly. Finally, the paper gives the existing questions of the technology and suggestions of future development.

Since 1999, the government of China has carried out an awfully ambitious conservation program for "win-win" objective of environment refinement and poverty reduction becoming self-sustainable. The program was famous Grain for Green Project, for which the government of China spent more than 4300 billion yuan and 27 million hm² of slope cultivated land was converted to forest and more than 100 million farmers took part in the program from 1999 to 2008. So we adopted the revised model of land use pressure index to the assessment of Grain for Green Project on the county-level food security from 1999 to 2008 based on case study in Mizhi, Qingjian, Zizhou and Wupu counties. Supposed food subsidies to compensation loss of farmers conversed of cropland to forest land in the form of grain for framers conversed of forest land to cropland, the results indicates that the effects of Grain for Green Project on Mizhi and Zizhou counties, which have a population density of 150-180 people per km² and implementation conversion of 1.44-1.58 ten thousand hm² of cropland to forest land,are obvious; but that of Qingjian County with a population density of 110-120 people per km² and implementation conversion of 0.4 ten thousand hm² of cropland to forest land and Wupu County with a population density of 170-190 people per km² and implementation conversion of 0.4 ten thousand hm² of cropland to forest land, are little influenced. In a word, the effects on food safety for counties with different population density and different conversion scale are different in the Loess Plateau hilly region. The government will choose the results to establish long-term, stable and effective food compensation mechanism, in order to consolidate gains of Grain for Green Project in the future.

This paper studies UHI(Urban Heat Island) spatial and temporal changes in central city and Binhai New Area in Tianjin with Landsat TM/ETM+. Thermal band data from TM/ETM+ has higher spatial and temporal revolution. As a result, it can be used in UHI studies of small research areas, such as city. Several methods can be used to retrieve from TM/ETM+, such as light temperature, single-channel algorithm and mono-window algorithm. This paper retrieved land surface light temperature (LSLT) of Tianjin from Landsat TM thermal band data from four dates in 1987, 1998, 2004 and 2008. In order to avoid errors resulting from different seasons, absolute LSLT is transferred to comparative LSLT by means of normalizing. And then the comparative LSLT was classified into distribution maps. The proportion of temperature class is also calculated and plotted. The result of analysis of maps and plots shows that UHI mainly occurred in central city, Binhai New Area, and areas along the roads between two areas. From 1987 to 2008, UHI is also becoming larger and harder. The effect of UHI in central city is aggravated and then decreased. The effect of UHI in Binhai New Area started from scrath, from less to more, and experienced obvious changes. Especially effect of UHI in Dagang District started from scrath, from less to more and then kept constant. The distribution map of 1987 shows that there are two abnormal high temperature areas in Dagang Reservoir and southwest of Tianjin. The reason for the former abnormal area is precipitation deficit in the period between spring and summer. The reason for the latter is the naked land due to harvest of wheat and low content of chlorophyll in mature crops. Since 1998, there has been a strip of high temperature area, which was caused by extending built-up areas along the roads between central city and Binhai New Area. Finally, one of the reasons for UHI temporal changes in both central city and Binhai New Area is built-up area increasing.

Carbon cycles of two steppes in Xilin River Basin were studied using biogeochemical cycle compartment theory. The major results include: 1) For the soil-palnt-atmosphere system of fenced Leymus chinensis steppe, the net carbon fixed by the plant compartment was 165.50 gC·m^-2 during the growing season, the net emission from soil compartment was 174.36 gC·m^-2,so the net carbon fixed by the system was -8.86 gC·m^-2. In general, the input and output of carbon were nearly equivalent. The plant compartment was approximately balanced, too. 2) For the soil-plant-atmosphere system of fenced Stipa grandis steppe, the plant compartment fixed 130.04 gC·m^-2 during the growing season, the net carbon emission from soil compartment was 128.28 gC·m^-2, therefore the net carbon fixed by the system was 1.76 gC·m^-2. The carbon input into plant compartment far exceeded the carbon output in wet year and it would become balanced in drought year. 3) The turnover of carbon element in Leymus chinensis steppe is larger than Stipa grandis steppe, which is caused by the more suitable geographical conditions. Water content is the main affecting factor of carbon cycles in Inner Mongolia steppe.

Because of the cultivated land loss due to rapid urbanization process and arable land deficiency, the Chinese government has paid much more attention to the recultivation of rural habitat. Various forms of land consolidation projects of rural habitat have been carried out in China since 2000, which not only affect the land resources allocation for urban and rural area, more important is to create new rural settlements. How to evaluate comprehensively and scientifically the effect will be an important theoretical issue.Metropolis suburb is one of the typical regions in carrying out land consolidation of rural habitat, which is characterized by the combination of saving and optimizing the construction land as well as promoting urbanization. Taking the projects of Jinnan District in Tianjin City, Shuangliu County in Chengdu and Jinshan District in Shanghai as typical cases, the paper analyzes the impact of land consolidation on rural habitat. The data come from the planning and planning implementation, statistics from village committee and sample survey of households classified from 2006 to 2007.The most significant impact on farmers of rural residential land consolidation is to improve the living conditions and living environment, and on government is to optimal use of land resources and to promote rural development. Based on the analysis of effect mechanism above, the paper sets up an effect evaluation indexes system for land consolidation of rural habitat in metropolis suburbs, including 15 indexes to evaluate the impact on farmer’s living and produce, land resource use and economic benefits. Empirical results show that: 1) Comprehensive evaluation order is the project of Jinshan, Jinnan and Shuangliu. 2) The three cases have similar effect on farmer’s lifestyle. Land consolidation of rural habitat in metropolis suburbs can better the farmer’s living conditions; however, the additional living cost will increase their burden. Impact on employment, income, and the impact on social security is not universal. 3)The three cases proved that land consolidation in rural habitat is an important way to increase cultivated land area and use construction land resource more intensively. The rural construction land can be saved by 58%-82%, the rural construction land per capita can be saved by 31%-84%, and the rate of new arable land is generally more than 30%. 4) The sustainability of the project is open to question because of higher risk of government investment; there is a big regional difference in farmer’s relocation compensation standards and the cost for new house; farmer in Jinshan and Jinnan districts have better ability to move their house.In general, the level of regional economic and social development in metropolis suburbs are fit for land consolidation of rural habitat, however, its effect is affected mainly by the relative size of government’s financial ability and farmer’s income level. The right loss of farmer’s residence land is also an important impact factor, and Shuangliu’s project has the less loss than the other two cases. However, it is difficult to quantify the loss.

Ecosystem health has attracted considerable attention from different disciplines in recent years. Until now, nearly all types of ecosystems have been evaluated by the criterion of ecosystem health. However, its definition, analysis and evaluation still remain a disputed issue not only to focus on its general concept but also on operational practice. As a result, these disputations have caused confusion and limited the further research in the field of ecosystem health. In this paper, we attempt to introduce a new perspective to the concept of ecosystem health; with the aid of modern statistical methodology, such as factor analysis and normal distribution theory, we provide a conceptual approach to the assessment of ecosystem health. By using a simulated dataset, we evaluated 100 ecosystems and found 11 unhealthy ones. We develop a new way to quantitatively analyze and assess ecosystem health and our conceptual framework could be applied to various categories of ecosystems.

A better understanding of the spatio-temporal characteristics and driving mechanism of population and residential land change in rural China under rapid urbanization and industrialization is the important premise for constituting feasible policy and strategy promoting the farmland protection and new countryside construction. This paper systematically analyzes the overall trend, regional patterns and coupling types of China’s rural population and residential land change, using rural demographics from China Statistics Bureau and land-use data from the Department of Land and Resources of each province. The results showed that: since economic reform and open-door policy adopted in 1978, resident population in rural areas and agricultural household registration population have entered the transitional period of rapid decrease in 1996 and 2001, respectively. However, rural residential land continues to expand significantly. The benign pattern of the co-evolution of population and residential land in rural areas has not appeared, and the land utilization tends to be extensive, especially in northern and eastern coastal provinces. The root cause for rural residential land use plight is the dual-track institutional system which has long existed between urban and rural areas. Under the relatively common institutional background of migration and land management, combined differences in natural and geographical conditions, levels of economic development, history and social culture and other factors resulted in the dynamic patterns of population and residential land change in rural China. Based on improving the control system of rural land use, propelling the comprehensive consolidation of rural settlements scientifically according to local conditions is an integrated approach to coordinate the numeric change of population and residential land in rural areas, protect farmland, add quota of construction land and promote the new countryside construction. Breaking the urban-rural dual-track structure and coordinating urban-rural development are necessary guarantees of realizing above objectives.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the effects of the main meteorological factors on the yield components of the early rice in Hunan Province. The correlation analysis between meteorological factors and rice yield components were conducted, with the data from 2003-2009 at 7 rice growth areas in Hunan Province. The main results are as follows: the tiller number was positively correlated to the daily average temperature (DAT), daily maximum temperature (DMAT), hours of sunshine (HS) during the 23rd-27th days after rice transplanting, and negatively correlated to the relative humidity (RH) during the same stage. The DAT, DMAT, daily minimum temperature (DMIT) and HS during the 33rd to 41st days after rice transplanting were positively correlated to the productive tiller percentage of early rice. The DAT averaged from the 9th-1st days, DMAT averaged from the 9th-4th days and HS averaged from the 10th-5th before initial heading were positively correlated to the grain number per panicle (GNPP), whereas the RH during this period was negatively correlated to the GNPP. The DAT and DMIT averaged from the 14th-9th days were positively correlated to the seed setting percentage (SSP), contrarily, the DMAT average from the 9th-5th days and the HS from the 9th-5th days before initial heading were negatively correlated to the SSP. The 1000-grain-weight was positively correlated to both of the RH average from the 25th-20th days before initial heading and the HS from the 14th-20th days after initial heading, and it was negatively correlated to the DAT of the 25th-20th days before initial heading and the DMIT of the 17th-22nd days after initial heading.

At present, three-dimensional land use has become a new model in city spatial expansion. Firstly, combining theory with practice,this paper describes the utilization of the aboveground and underground space in the West Zone of Zhongguancun, which is a classic example of three-dimensional land use in China. Then, it analyses the current situation occurred with the absence of relevant laws in establishing the aboveground and underground land rights in this zone. Starting with the representation, it gives the reasons of matter link by link and explains the crux of the matter is that the defects exiting in the system of establishing the aboveground and underground land rights in China, including rights system, obtainment of right, cadastral management and registration system. Finally, aiming at the defects proposed in this paper, it puts forward the corresponding policy proposals,including to create partitioned right to use construction land for completing the aboveground and underground land rights system, to add ownership allocation in all aspects of space utilization, to formulate cadastration standard in space scope, and to improve the existing registration system and connect the old and new regulations. The aim for figuring out those measures above-mentioned is to complete the system of the aboveground and underground land rights system and improve the level of land intensive utilization.

Based on the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data during the period 1948 to 2008, the precipitable water content of atmosphere, relative variability of water content, moisture flux and moisture flux divergency over Sichuan region are calculated, stability and exploitability of water vapor resource over the Sichuan Basin region are studied. The result indicated: the stable characteristics of water vapor content is closely related to water vapor content, water vapor content is stable in southeastern part of the high water vapor content and is unstable in the northwestern region of the relatively low water vapor content. Time series of yearly atmospheric precipitable water over the Sichuan Basin is that the change in summer is small and winter is great, eastern is small and western is great. From 1948 to 2008, the regional average yearly atmospheric precipitable water presents a tendency of up-down-up-down. Most moisture concentrates in the lower troposphere primarily from the Bay of Bengal and in the mid and upper layers, the vapor flux comes from mid-latitude westerlies as well as the tropical West Pacific Ocean. Southeast of Sichuan is the strongest water vapor convergent region in spring, fall and winter. The climatological distribution and variation of circulation and the atmospheric humidity have revealed advection and convergence of atmospheric water vapor transport over the Sichuan region, so as to instruct artificial precipitation better.

As both China and India are two countries with huge population and energy consumption, how to meet the increase demand for energy with the quick increase of population and economic growth and how to provide energy security supply are urgent issues under consideration. It has important practical and reference meaning for China to analyze the biomass energy policy of India. Since 1993 when China first became the net crude oil import country, the imported amount crude oil of China was only 290×10⁴ t in 2004, the dependency of imported crude oil was only 1.9%. In 2009, the imported amount crude oil of China was 21888.5×10⁴ t, while the dependency of imported crude oil increased to be 52.5%. The increasing dependency for international oil market gives the big risk and challenge for Chinese energy security supply. China has made great achievements on biomass utilization during the period of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, but there still exists some problems, the main problems are unreliable raw material source, unstable operation and management cost, lack of overall planning, electricity grid connection problems in some areas and needs to improve and match for related policy and operation details. All the above problems affect the development of Chinese biomass industry development. Indian government actively supported the biomass utilization technology, including make full use of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to support biomass CDM projects. The number of biomass CDM projects occupies 1/3 of total India registered CDM projects. The reason that Indian government paid so much effort to develop small scale biomass CDM project came from the consideration to diversify energy security supply and to eliminate poverty. India’s effort to develop biomass project under the perspective of diversify energy supply and to support rural sustainable development has reference meaning to China.

Based on the crop growth and soil water content observed experiments in Lhasa Plateau Ecosystem Research Station, this paper used SHAW model to investigate the characteristics of water consumption and soil water deep percolation and deep soil water recharge of spring naked barley land. Then, the paper also discussed the prospective of the suitable irrigation scheduling according to the comparison of water consumption and water deep percolation and deep soil water recharge under sufficient irrigation and nonsufficient irrigation. Major results are reported as follows:1) Total water consumption of spring naked barley is estimated to be 450 mm. Hereinto, tillering to shooting, shooting to tasseling and tasseling to grain filling are the dominating water consumed stages, the water consumption of which accounts for 72%. So,it is important to ensure water supply in this stage.2) In the dominating water consumed stages, precipitation only covers 58% of the water requirement of spring naked barley, so, supplying irrigation is necessary. But, the existing irrigation scheduling enhances soil water evaporation and causes huge deep percolation.3) If the amount of 50 mm water is irrigated in the planting-emerging and shooting-tasseling stages respectively and 60 mm in the tasseling-grain filling stage, the total irrigation amount reduces 125 mm, deep percolation will reduce 81% (131 mm) and deep soil water recharge will increase 55% (44 mm). The prospective less irrigation would reduce deep percolation greatly and promote water recharge from deeper soil layer. Therefore, the prospective less irrigation should be extended.

In the Modern Yellow River Delta, the runoff of the Yellow River decreased year by year, as a result of increased irrigation in the upper reaches area. The recharge of precipitation infiltration became the main fresh water source of shallow aquifer in the Modern Yellow River Delta. Accurate evaluation of the recharge of precipitation infiltration is the precondition to exploit groundwater rationally. Based on data loggers installed in boreholes of typical topographic areas in the Modern Yellow River Delta, groundwater table depth was read every thirty minutes. Combined with daily rainfall of 2004, the feed coefficients of precipitation infiltration were calculated by Matlab programming and the temporal and spatial varieties were analyzed to make the main factors clear. It is concluded that: 1) groundwater table depth changed mainly within 2 m below surface; 2) the features of rains and penetrability of land surface were the most important aspects decided the value and the temporal and spatial varieties of the feed coefficients of precipitation infiltration that increase with enlarging of groundwater table depth; 3) the annual feed coefficient of precipitation infiltration was 0.186. The groundwater recharge from precipitation is up to 7.4×10⁸ m³ accounted for 3.7% of the runoff of the Yellow River Delta in 2004.

Monitoring and assessment for vegetation cover is the foundation for evaluating protection measures, environmental management and global changes. Having taken Hulun Buir grassland for example, we used SPOT_VGT NDVI data from 1998-2008 to reflect the spatial and temporal characteristics of vegetation and its dynamic changes by analyzing average annual NDVI, annual maximum and minimum NDVI(MAX, MIN), the annual relative range RREL, and the date of maximum and minimum NDVI(DMAX, DMIN). The results showed that the relationship of different regions’ vegetation cover in the study area is as follows: main woodland region>grassland-arable land-forest transition>main farmland region>main grassland region, the study area vegetation cover was weakening, the best period vegetation cover was advancing during these years, vegetation cover of grassland-arable land-forest transition and main farmland region had less seasonal changes, vegetation cover trend to be stable, whereas, the main grassland area’s DMIN pushed back and had more seasonal changes in vegetation cover, its ecological environment becomes less stable.

With the national concern for grain security, coastal salt wasteland of the improvement and utilization attracted attention again. Experiment shows: the comprehensive land use pattern of raised-land and shallow pond significantly reduced salt in coastal saline-alkali land. Desalinization efficiency is up to 47% on raised-land where was the silty saline-alkali land before in Huanghua city of Hebei Province. During the growing stage of oil-sunflower on raised-land, two times of sea ice water irrigations make the difference in soil desalinization efficiency. Taking sea ice water irrigation in July as a case, per square meter 0-120cm soil layers drained 2.70 kg of salt, compared with the salt wasteland the soil layer drained 6.15 kg of salt, and compared to no irrigation of raised land the soil layer drained 3.76 kg of salt. Generally, the raised land P_T was significantly higher than the sea ice water irrigation P_TW. Therefore, the raised land using in the coastal saline areas with drought saline field can control salt of micro plant area, with the sea ice water irrigation to protect the crop water requirement, it can build a safety environment for agricultural cultivation. This study offered the reference for coastal saline-alkali land and wasteland improvement, raised land-shallow pond utilization, construction of ecological agriculture and the safety irrigation of sea ice water.

Reference evapotranspiration is an important component of the thermal balance and water budget during the water cycle of the earth surface; it is subjected to climate change directly. The research on reference evapotranspiration changes could help us understanding the characteristics of climate change and regional water cycle. Based on the observation data of temperature, wind, vapor pressure and sunshine hours collected from 124 weather stations from 1961 to 2007, the reference evapotranspiration in Northeast China was calculated by using Penman-Montieth model. Spatial-temporal characteristics of reference evapotranspiration and its causes in Northeast China were evaluated by space and time series analysis method. The results showed the reference evapotranspiration has continuously decreased at a rate of 4.4 mm/decade in Northeast China, but the annual mean temperature has increased at a rate of 0.38℃/decade. In the 1960s to the 1990s, the trend of reference evapotranspiration declined, and the trend of rising was significant in the 21st century. The average of spring and summer reference evapotranspiration in Northeast China decreased at a rate of -4.2 mm/10 a and-2.2 mm/10 a. There was a slight increase in reference evapotranspiration in autumn and winter at the rate of 0.3 mm/10 a and 1.6 mm/10 a in the recent 47 years. For spatial distributing characteristics of the average annual reference evapotranspiration, two-thirds of the region show decreasing trend especially in Chaoyang region of Liaoning Province, and one-third of the region show increasing trend especially in the south of Liaoning and the east of Jilin. The reference evapotranspiration was increased suddenly in spring from 1969, in summer from 1963, in autumn from 1963 and in winter from 1990. The correlation analysis of meteorological factors indicated that the most important factors which could influencing the reference evapotranspiration were sunshine duration and wind speed. Besides the meteorological factors influencing reference evapotranspiration, great concern has been given to the geographical location, land use, vegetation coverage and human activity.

In this paper, we used data of the days and duration time of sandstorms and 98 weather stations of eastern part of Northwest China together with the methods such as EOF, REOF, t-test, Mann-Kendall and wavelet analysis to analyze the spatio-temporal distribution and evolution law and the cyclical characteristics of each climate area on the days and duration time of sandstorms. The result indicated: the sandstorm days were more in the north and less in the south of the eastern part of Northwest China. Being influenced by macro-scale weather system, the main manifestation of the sandstorm days was abnormal in the entire area, but there was regional difference. The sandstorm days in eastern part of Northwest China could be divided into four climate areas. They were Hexi Corridor-Alashan area, Ordos-Ulan Buh area, Qaidam-Chaka cold area and Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Loess Plateau area. The number of sandstorm days in eastern part of Northwest China was reducing in recent a 40 years. There was a 4-year cycle in all climate areas. The jump of sandstorm days took place in the mid to the late of 1980s. The source area of the jump of sandstorm days was in desert areas and their correlative areas, and the jump spread from these areas to the remaining areas. There were different distribution characteristics between duration time and sandstorm days . The longest (shortest) duration time of sandstorm was not in the areas where the sandstorm days were the most (least). The duration time has different change characteristic in different climate areas. The difference existed in the time of jump between duration time and sandstorm days. The jump of duration time of sandstorm did not take place in the Hexi Corridor-Alashan area and Ordos-Ulan Buh area where the sandstorm days were more. And the change rate of duration time of sandstorm increased after the mid 1980s. There was the tendency of the duration time of sandstorm changing longer after the 1990s.

The urban land per capita always inspires researchers working in the fields of urban planning, geography and urban/regional planning, because it is a basic parameter for urban planning and land use planning. In 1991, the standard of urban land per capita came into operation, which has become one of the important indexes for judging whether urban planning is reasonable at the different levels in China. However, after the rapid urbanization and economic development of 20 years, can the standard still meet the increasing demand of urban land in this country? In response to the question, this study discusses the differences of urban land per capita for 80 countries with the largest population in the world, using the data from the Demograhia website, FAO and World Bank, etc. Furthermore, the factors causing the differences are examined, using the cross-sectional data of these countries. The results show that urban land per capita has a positive relationship with land resources per capita and GDP per capita. And the latter has more influence on the differences than the former. In addition, the percentage of arable land and permanent crop land to the total land also has a relationship with urban land per capita. In China, urban land per capita will increase with economic development and might approach 165 m² in 2020, which is higher than that of the present level (155 m²) and much higher than the upper limit of the standard of urban land per capita (120 m²).

As industrialization and urbanization accelerates, the contradiction between limited cultivated land resources and the expansion of construction land and ecological land is becoming increasingly acute. By Lawrence curve, models of gravity center and level classification division and other spatial analysis technique, this essay conducts an in-depth study of the spatial distribution pattern of the total cultivated land changes in China based on the national land use data between the 1980s and 2000. The main conclusions are as follows: Firstly, the total cultivated land increased 28374 km² during the past ten years, with an increase of 25328 km² in dryland, accounting for 89.26%, and 3046 km² in paddy, accounting for 10.74%. Secondly, China’s cultivated land was mainly distributed in Heilongjiang, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Henan, Shandong and other northern and central provinces. The total cultivated land had reduced in 19 provinces including Jiangsu, Guangdong, Hebei, Shandong and Zhejiang, etc. While the rest of 13 provinces such as Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Xinjiang, etc saw an increase in the total cultivated land. Thirdly, we found that 88% of the nation’s cultivated land was distributed in the southeast of Hu Huanyong’s line, occupying 40% of land area by measurement of cultivated land indices. The spatial distribution pattern of China’s cultivated land could be appropriately classified as high degree of sparse areas, low degree of sparse areas, general transition zone, low concentrated areas and high concentrated areas. Fourthly, the types of China’s cultivated land changes could be considered as such seven major types: high growth areas, moderate growth areas, low-growth areas, general transition area, low degree reduction area, moderate degree reduction area and high degree reduction area guided by cultivated land changes index and gravity centers curve of cultivated land changes. This paper aims to reveal the spatial distribution pattern and changes of China’s cultivated land by applying the spatial analysis methods. It puts forwards that spatial distribution and division of the level of cultivated land changes with consideration of quality of cultivated land should be further explored.

Mineral resource exploitation has important impact on regional economic development, industrialization level and urbanization. Taking Xinjiang as an example, this paper analyses the basic feature of mineral resource exploitation, economic development, industrialization level and urbanization. On this basis, dynamic computation model is established to discuss the relativity of mineral resource exploitation, economic development, industrialization level and urbanization by the method of Granger causality test and co-integration analysis. The conclusions are as follows: Over the years, the development of mineral resources has affected economic development, industrialization and urbanization level. Whenever the mineral resource exploitation index increases by 1%, it will lead to a 0.24% increase of industrialization level and 1.25% increase of urbanization level. Mineral resource exploitation is the causation of development of industrialization level and urbanization level, urbanization level and development of industrialization level is the causation of mineral resource exploitation; economic development and urbanization level is the causation of mineral resource exploitation, but mineral resource exploitation is not the causation of economic development. At present, resource superiority is the favorable condition to the development of Xinjiang’s economiy, which is not plunge into the trap of "resource curse". The four systems of mineral resource exploitation, economic development, the level of industrialization and the level of urbanization interact, and jointly promote the mutual development in Xinjiang. How to perfect land provision system to meet the demand of economic growth,industrialization and urbanization at present are very pressing strategic issues.

The analytical approach based on the willingness of compensators and acceptors provides an efficient tool for studying eco-compensation mechanism. By using an artificial society model of land use change, this study takes into account of the roles of a governmental agent and enterprise agents, as well as several factors such as flood risk, ecosystem conservation and labor transfer policy. Taking a township in the Poyang Lake region of Jiangxi Province as a typical case where wetland restoration policy has been implemented since 1998, this study performs a detailed simulation of the decision-making process of farmers, enterprises and government agents under different social, economic and policy conditions. Some useful emerged phenomena and patterns can be found from micro to macro levels in the evolutionary process of the artificial society model. It is demonstrated that if the government gives farmers a certain amount of economic compensation, the farmers will voluntarily restore their farmland into wetland. The costs of compensation and the time for finishing the task of wetland restoration are different under different conditions, and the mechanism of enterprises’ participation is beneficial for both the government and farmers. Furthermore, it is shown that developing local economy and enterprises and promoting shifting agricultural labor force to non-agricultural industries all are positive mechanisms for effectively implementing the policy of wetland restoration. Finally, it is demonstrated that artificial society model provides an effective approach for understanding the complex microscopic interactions between compensators and acceptors in the process of wetland restoration.

Based on field investigation, laboratory analysis and SPSS software, this paper took Shouguang city of Shandong Province as a case, systematically analyzed the distribution, variation and relevance of soil nutrients to research soil nutrient change under different land use types. The results showed that there was an obvious order in the distribution of soil nutrient content under different land use types: the distribution of organic matter was vegetable land>irrigable land>garden>farmland>saline-alkaline land; the distribution of total-N, available-N, K, P and Zn was vegetable land>garden>irrigable land>saline-alkaline land>farmland; the distribution of pH value and exchangeable-Mg was saline-alkaline land>farmland>irrigable land>garden>vegetable land; the distribution of exchangeable-Ca under different land use types was saline-alkaline land>farmland>irrigable land>vegetable land>garden; the distribution of available-B was garden>vegetable land>saline-alkaline land>irrigable land>farmland; the distribution of available-Fe was vegetable land>garden>irrigable land>farmland>saline-alkaline land; and the distribution of available-Cu and available-Mn was garden>vegetable land>irrigable land>saline-alkaline land>farmland. The variance of nutrient content between irrigable land, vegetable land and garden was comparatively low, and the variance of nutrient content between farmland and saline-alkaline land was similar. Except for pH, the variance coefficients of the other 12 kinds of soil nutrients under different land use types were all comparatively high, of which the highest variance coefficient was for available-P. Except for exchangeable-Mg and B with other nutrients, the relevance among the others was almost significant or marked significant. The relevance between pH value and the other soil nutrients was significant or highly significant negative correlation, while the relevance of organic matter with other nutrients showed significant or highly significant positive correlation.

An integrated indices system for the evaluation of farmland quality was built based on the definition of farmland quality connotation. Using this method, the dynamic change of farmland quality between 1995 and 2005 in Hubei Province was analyzed. The research results indicated that the comprehensive quality of farmland in Hubei Province shows an increasing trend although it varied from year to year. The components of the comprehensive farmland quality, i.e., the background quality, economic quality and ecological quality varied differently. The farmland background quality performed a slow and gentle change from 1995 to 2005 with a small annual variation; the economic quality increased markedly from 1995 to 1999, and then showed a downward trend after 1999; the ecological quality showed a steady downward trend with the decreasing rate reduced in recent years; and the comprehensive quality kept a stable increasing trend before 1999,and then decreased from then on. The leading factors that induced the farmland comprehensive quality change are economical quality and ecological quality, due to changes related to different socio-economic and resource environment management during the different phase of development in Hubei Province. In contrast, the background quality had little effect on the change of comprehensive farmland quality. The method developed in this study can comprehensively reflect characteristics and process of farmland quality changes.

Temperature and each component of water resources in Mu Us Sandy Land were analyzed based on the precipitation and temperature data from 1961 to 2007. Combining of TM images and CBERS images, from climate change and community water balance point of view, the change of vegetation cover and its cause in Mu Us Sandy Land for nearly 20 years are analyzed. The results show that: Over the past 50 years, the trend of warming in Sandy Land is significantly changing with the rate of 0.33 ℃/10 a. The regional variation range of mean annual temperature is 0.16-0.50 ℃/10 a. The warming degree in southeast is stronger than that of in northwest. The various components of water resource in spatial and temporal distribution are uneven: P and Δw are more and E is strong in northwest while which are opposite in southeast. A decreasing trend of P,E and Δw has emerged which roughly experienced three changing stages. For nearly 20 years the changes of vegetation cover and climate in Mu Us Sandy Land are closely linked. In order to adapt to the climate change the construction of artificial vegetation must take into account the issue of sustainability.

To study the effect of anthropogenic cone picking on the seed bank and seedling bank of Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) in the major forest types in Lesser Hing’an Mountains, mixed broad-leaved Korean pine forest, Korean pine plantation near the mixed broad-leaved Korean pine forest, Dahurian larch (Larix gmelini) plantation, white birch (Betula platyphylla) forest and spruce-fir forest were selected. In each of these forest types, sample belts with the size of 10 m×240 m were made to study the seed bank and seedling bank of Korean pine. The results showed: 1) The amount of Korean pine seed bank differed greatly with forest types. The largest amount of seed bank was shown in the mixed broad-leaved Korean pine forest, followed by the Dahurian larch plantation, spruce-fir forest, Korean pine plantation and white birch forest. 2) Seeds that were cracked or destroyed by rodents and other animals accounted for 81.9%-90.4% of the seed bank of those major forest types; intact seeds were only found in the mixed broad-leaved Korean pine forest and Dahurian larch plantation, with 4.3% and 4.9%, respectively. 3) Korean pine seeds were mostly distributed in the 0-10 cm soil layer (71.4%-91.3% of the seed bank of those major forest types). 4) The density of Korean pine seedling bank was the highest in Dahurian larch forest (1613 seedlings·hm^-2), lowest in Korean pine plantation (167 seedlings·hm^-2), Korean pine seedling density in the mixed broad-leaved Korean pine forest (293 seedlings·hm^-2) and white birch forest (854 seedlings·hm^-2) were 1/68-1/9 and 1/9-1/4.5 of the seedling bank before cone picking, respectively. 5) For the age class distribution, before cone picking, in the mixed broad-leaved Korean pine forest, the amount of Korean pine seedlings decreased as the age class increased, the age class distribution showed a reverse J-shaped distribution; in the white birch forest, density of the Korean pine seedlings was relatively the same in each of the age class. After cone picking, in the mixed broad-leaved Korean pine forest, density of the Korean pine seedlings was relatively the same in each of the age class; in the white birch forest, the age class distribution of Korean pine seedlings showed a reverse J-shaped distribution.

There are lots of factors influencing the water resources system, making it difficult to calculate water resources system risk accurately with a single index. In this paper, on the basis of discussing the risk transfer process and the risk factors from environment, economy and society, the index system for assessment of water resource system risk which consisted of 20 practical indexes in total from four characteristics was established. A model was established on the basis of the index system to assess the water resource system risk, system counterforce ability and risk damage. Parameter calculation of risk and the risk classification is easy to implement with the model. The water resource system risk in Beijing was evaluated with the index system and the model in this paper. The results show that the water risk index is 26.97%, lower than the risk-causing rate which is 57.13%, the difference that does demonstrate the importance of the water system counterforce ability is caused by the water resource system counterforce ability. The main risk-causing factor and system counterforce ability factor are the rate of water shortage and the water guarantee rate, being 0.4261 and 0.6476 respectively. The risk results show that Beijing falls in the second category, to guard against the risk, restrictions on the use of water resources and management of water environment should be taken into effect.

There are great regional differences in the distribution of energy resource and economic development level in China. We selected two explanatory variables including primary energy output and external dependence degree of energy as the resource abundance index, and established the panel regression model based on the data of 30 provinces (not including Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan due to no data) from 1997 to 2007. Then we analyzed the relation between energy resource and economic growth in recent ten years, and demonstrated whether the "resource curse" hypothesis is applicable in China. The results showed that energy resources bring about the negative effect on economic growth, namely, the existence of the "resource curse" phenomenon. However, the absolute value of regression coefficient is very small, that means there is unobvious "resource curse" effect. Moreover, the negative effect decreases over time, indicating this phenomenon has being faded out. Specially, some provinces with abundant energy such as Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Shandong Province, have cracked the "resource curse", whose economy increases rapidly. It implicated that the "resource curse" effect could be avoided, only if foundation for development and institutional arrangements are improved effectively by policy and technique measures in regions with abundant energy resource.

In the previous studies, based on the division of minimum polygons of river basins, a rapid assessment of soil erosion approach is proposed, and it performs well in the Yellow River Basin. On the basis of the soil erosion assessment results in the Yellow River Basin, the soil erosion vulnerability is analyzed. The factor of "life span of soil available for erosion" is taken to characterize the potential hazard, and the soil erosion potential risk is analyzed based on the potential hazard and vulnerability. Through comparing the soil erosion potential risk with soil erosion intensity, it indicates that taking both of them into accounts will be helpful to make more reasonable decisions in soil and water conservation and ecological protection. In the end, the transformation relationship between the soil erosion risk in the Middle Yellow River and the flood risk in the Lower Yellow River. The transformation effects of sediment disasters in the basin should be paid more attention.