Land safety of urban resident area is threatened by many disaster factors with different evaluation criteria, and the developing of GIS-based multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) method is the key of suitability evaluation for disaster prevention. Ordered weighted averaging (OWA) is a multi-criteria evaluation procedure, which can generate a wide range of decision strategies through calculating order weights and criterion weights. The calculation method of order weights based on rank-order approximation, and the construction method of comparison matrix for criterion weight based on analytical hierarchy program (AHP), are introduced. The difference in decision strategy between OWA and other GIS-based MCE methods, such as Boolean overlay and weighted linear combination (WLC), is analyzed through analyzing OWA evaluation procedure. Furthermore, the method to establish evaluation criteria based on distance is investigated. As an example, GIS-based OWA method is applied to Tangshan City. According to the data of geological disaster in Tangshan City, evaluation criteria for every disaster factor based on distance is constructed, and attribute values of disaster factors are fuzzy quantifiers; comparison matrix is calculated based on AHP, criteria weights and consistency ratio are obtained; order weights based on rank-order approximation are calculated, and land-use suitability affected by geological disaster factors in Tangshan City is calculated with OWA. The differences between OWA results and WLC results are analyzed. Through comparsion with the distribution of floor area ratio of residential areas, some advice is proposed for rational development of land resource in Tangshan City. Residential areas should be developed in the northwestern part of Tangshan City, where the suitability is relatively high, and moderate-low floor area ratio should be suitable for the middle part of the city in order to avoid the disaster-induced loss.
It is a key step to deepen the understandings about the structure, functions and processes of regional resources and environment by using spatial, quantitative, multi-scale and temporal analysis, and there are many obvious advantages to study on the spatial pattern, spatial difference and the related ecological & environment characteristics by using remote sensing technology. As an independent geographic and ecological unit, the status of Mongolia Plateau ecology system and its changes have great effects on the environment of North China and even the whole East Asia, which makes it necessary to develop certain research works in the whole Mongolia Plateau in both theory aspect and practice aspect. In this study, based on GIMMS NDVI dataset of 1982-2003, the new Mongolia Plateau NDVI Dataset using MVC method was constructed and the stability in the time scale was also assessed. Then three spatial statistic methods including Moran coefficient, semi variance function and fractal analysis, were selected to investigate the spatial pattern and spatial differentiation of NDVI in Mongolia Plateau. The results show that: (1) The NDVI in Mongolia Plateau shows positive spatial autocorrelation in the whole region and similar NDVI are apt to aggregate together, which means the vegetation cover of Mongolia Plateau is generally intact and little fragmental. The NDVI distribution pattern is indeed clear; (2) In spite of the effects of both structural factors and random factors, the spatial distribution pattern of NDVI in Mongolia Plateau is mainly controlled by the structural factors which induce 88.7% of the total spatial variations, while only 11.3% of the total spatial variations is induced by the random factors; (3) There exists a clear anisotropy about NDVI distribution pattern in Mongolia Plateau, and there are higher spatial autocorrelation in the Northwest-Southeast direction which means those points with similar NDVI value are mainly distributed along Northwest-Southeast direction. Generally, the radius of NDVI patch is about 1178km, and the length-width ratio of those patches is about 2.4. According to the research, temporal NDVI study based on spatial statistics method could not only explore the NDVI spatial pattern & spatial difference but also indicate the geographic essences of NDVI and the relevant spatial statistics parameters.
The relationship between the residential area extracted from multi-source remote sensing images and the population data at the three levels of city and prefecture, county and village in Sichuan province is discussed in this paper. This includes the following steps. Firstly, the rural and urban residential areas are extracted from Landsat TM images in Sichuan province, and the rural residential area and its building land are extracted from Quickbird Images in Juntun town, Xindu district, Chengdu City. Secondly, the residential areas for each unit of the three levels are obtained by overlaying and statistical analysis. Thirdly, the correlation relationship between the total residential areas and the total population, urban and town residential areas and the non-farm population, and the rural residential area and the farm population are analyzed respectively for city and county levels. The non-farm population strongly relates to the urban and town residential areas for city level with the correlation coefficient of 0.962 and county level with the correlation coefficient of 0.791.The non-farm population estimation models based on the urban and town residential areas are formulated respectively for the city and county levels by using regression analysis, whose judgment coefficients are respectively 0.926 and 0.625. Finally, the correlation relationship between the rural population, rural residential area and its building land are analyzed at the village level, and their correlation coefficients are respectively 0.806 and 0.825. The farm population estimation models based on the rural residential area and its building land are formulated by using regression analysis, whose judgment coefficients are respectively 0.65 and 0.68. It is shown that Landsat TM images are suitable for the estimation of the non-farm populations on a large scale, and Quickbird images are suitable for the estimation of the farm population on a small scale.
Using monthly mean air temperature data from 101 meteorological stations during 1961-2003 in the entire Inner Mongolia and the method of Rotated Empirical Orthogonal Functions (REOF), we implemented a regionalization according to consistency in air temperature variations of the four seasons, and analyzed seasonal and regional differences of air temperature variations. The seasonal air temperature changes indicate an apparent east-west difference in Inner Mongolia. The air temperature fields of spring, autumn and winter could be divided into two regions, namely, the West Region and the East Region, whereas the air temperature field in summer could be classified into three regions, namely, the West Region, the Southeast Region and the Northeast Region. In terms of the interannual variation, the seasonal air temperatures in each region experienced an obvious transition from decrease to increase during the recent 43 years except the Southeast Region in summer, and the turning points appeared either in the middle and late 1980s (in the East Region of spring and summer, and in the East and West Regions in autumn and winter) or in the early and mid-1990s (in the West Region of spring and summer). Dealing with the linear trend, the slope and significance of increased temperature trends in the East Region are larger than in the West Region during spring and summer, whereas the slope and significance of increased temperature trends in the West Region are larger than in the East Region during autumn and winter. Generally speaking, the most significant temperature increase appeared in winter and summer and then in spring, and the slightest temperature increase was shown in autumn.
This paper projects future change in provincial climate-sensitive components of energy consumption of China, which resulted from the anthropogenic climate change and socio-economic development. The climate scenarios for 2020-2029 and 2050-2059 are obtained from seven IPCC AOGCMs simulations. The result shows that, by 2021-2030, the degree-days increase, compared with 1990-1999, in the south of China and decrease in the north of China. The situation for 2050-2059 is very similar to 2020-2029 in spatial patterns but the change magnitude is bigger. To climate-sensitive components of energy consumption, for 2020-2029 the increment is the largest in southern China and eastern coastal region, including the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. For the 2050-2059 scenario, the increase occurs in the south of China and the Bohai Sea Rim, while the decrease occurs in the center of China, part of western China and the north of northeast China. The special change value of climate-sensitive components of energy consumption of provinces in the same climatic province is different because the change of climate-sensitive components of energy consumption depends on not only climate change but also socio-economic development. Compared to the 2020-2029 scenario, provinces with a rising trend in climate-sensitive components of energy consumption increase in number in 2050-2059. Future climate-sensitive components of energy consumption still need further study due to the limit of present data and methods.
Public perception of climate change can support the development of adaptation strategy. By comparing the questionnaire survey results with climate data, this paper revealed the perception difference to the local air temperature and precipitation in the Guanzhong area. The results show that: (1) the local residents' perceptions of temperature and precipitation changes are in accord with, and proportionate to the real data; (2) the residents' perception intensities to the local temperature in the eastern and western Guanzhong area show an increasing trend with the aged becoming small, while the central part is opposite; the perception intensities to the precipitation, the central and western areas are a decreasing trend,while the eastern is opposite; (3) The deviations exist between the resident's perception and the real data changes. In contrast to the real data, the consistent ratings of the residents' perception to temperature changes in the eastern, central and western Guanzhong area are 37.5%, 75%, 37.5%, respectively; to the precipitation changes' consistent ratings is 50% each.
Taking the middle and upper Tao'erhe River Basin as a study area, this paper analyzes variations of runoff, precipitation and temperature, etc. for the period 1961-2000. Time series analysis of characteristic parameters is used to examine the influences of climate change and land use and land cover change (LUCC) on runoff. And the response of runoff to water resources development (extraction for use) is estimated quantitatively based on the comparison between the observed and natural runoff data of Taonan hydrological station during 1961-2000. Some conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) The observed mean annual runoff is 38.2 m3/s for the past four decades, showing a trend of decrease - increase - decrease. The interannual and seasonal variations of runoff are greatly notable and the mean monthly runoff shows an unobvious trend according to the analysis result with the Kendall method. Over the period, annual precipitation has increased slightly to 427 mm. December's mean precipitation has increased significantly by the analysis result with the Kendall method. The mean annual temperature is 5.48℃ with a much greater value in the second half of the period (1986-2000); (2) The annual natural runoff is positively correlated with annual precipitation, and negatively correlated with annual temperature, and these relationships become weaker over time. Therefore, the increase of annual natural runoff coefficient under the same precipitation frequency may have mainly resulted from the decreasing vegetation cover. A wet year would have more impact on runoff than a dry year; (3) Water resources development decrease the annual runoff depth by 21.2 mm during the period 1986-2000, accounting for 37.1% of the mean annual natural runoff over the 40 years.
The SWAT is a physically-based distributed hydrological model. Its runoff generation mechanism is more practical. The methods adopted in the process of runoff including surface runoff, interflow and groundwater flow are applicable to various conditions of climate and underlying surface. In this study, the SWAT (Version 2005) is applied to the Kuye River basin, one of typical watersheds with plentiful and coarse sand in the middle reaches of the Yellow River with arid and semi-arid climate. When the model in the Kuye River basin was developed, automatic calibration method within the SWAT Version 2005 was used to calibrate the model. According to the stream flow hydrograph at Wenjiachuan station, the mouth of the river, the parameters were further adjusted. Then, daily and monthly discharges from 1980 to 1985 have been simulated in the study area, and observed data series of three hydrological stations (Wenjiachuan, Xinmiao and Wangdaohengta) are used to evaluate the simulated discharge series of SWAT. The effects of physical mechanism for streamflow generation processes have been analyzed and discussed. The result shows that the relative error of water budget is about 10%-20%, while the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (Ens) is relatively low, with Ens of daily series being about 0.2 and monthly Ens around 0.6. Preliminary analysis of simulation results showed that the SWAT is not effective to simulate the discharge of interflow, baseflow and spring flood in the Kuye River basin. In addition, it is proposed that the SWAT runoff generation mechanism in arid and semi-arid regions need to be further investigated.
In recent years, regional vegetation water use has been a new and "hot" field in ecology, hydrology and water resources, especially in the arid and semiarid regions. Economic development of the Yellow River Basin is based upon energy, heavy chemical industry, grain and cotton. These activities, combined with climate change, have resulted in a shortage of water resources. In this paper, an eco-hydrological model was constructed to simulate the regional vegetation water use. The patterns of eco-water use by vegetation in Sanmenxia area of the Yellow River were studied using RS and GIS technology, TM data, meteorological data, observed data and vegetation and soil texture information. On the basis of the patterns of regional vegetation water use, the availability of green water are analyzed for different vegetation types. The results are as follows: due to the variation of climate and land cover, the eco-water use of vegetation has had a trend of decreasing-stable-increasing in Sanmenxia area since the 1950s; different vegetation types have different patterns. Forest, shrub, grass and farmland were chosen to compare eco-water amount, indicating forest>corn field>shrub>grass. Among them, the forest has the highest utility of green water, followed by grassland, shrub and farmland. Based on these calculations and analyses, the countermeasures suggested for high-efficiency use of water and land resources are: to adjust vegetation structure and crops structure to realize optimal allocation of water resources.
Residential development is a major driving force in the dynamics of urban land use and ecosystems. The type and rate of land development depend on the complex interaction among the stakeholders and their responses to the environmental consequences after a development decision is made. This paper introduces a framework of a coupled human and natural system and uses a multi-agent model to simulate the complex interactions among land stakeholders with respect to the decision making process for local land development. The human system was built on a multi-agent model, with each class of agents representing different types of landowners, homeowners, municipal government, and commercial developers, respectively. The decision making process of each agent class was modeled using an agent-specific multi-attribute utility function. The complex interactions among different classes of agents as well as among the agents of the same class were simulated with a given time lag in sequence. The natural system was built on a cellular automata platform, where the land cover transition rules were governed by a landscape model (MOSAIC) and a patch model (FACET). The environmental quality indices to be used as feedback to the human system were generated from a hydrological model and a habitat model. In each lifecycle of simulation, human decisions on land development were passed to the natural system, which in turn generated environmental indices to be considered by the concerned agents (such as homeowners and the government) in the land-related decision making in the next cycle. Using a fast-urbanizing region in northern Texas as the study area, the model was run to produce simulations with a 25-year time span. Preliminary results demonstrated the ability of the model in simulating real dynamic situations at the qualitative level. It revealed a cyclic trend of interactions among agents, which was also observed in the real situation, with landowners and homeowners being the most active agent types. In addition, this study tested several land management strategies and revealed that considering landowner values when targeting available open space for preservation may lead to more effective growth management strategies than solely purchasing land based on opportunity or ecological factors. Extensive efforts are also required when applying this modeling framework to different socioeconomic and cultural settings, such as China.
Both rapid urbanization and industry conversion based on the life cycle of resource have great effects on the land use change and pattern of mining cities. So, land use change in mining cities was a special process strongly affected by the human-land relationship. Therefore, based on LANDSAT TM remote sensing images in 1987, 1994, 2000, 2003, 2007, and on maps of urban land use status in 1994 and 2003, database was established on land use of the mining city--Xuzhou urban area. Then features on the process and pattern of land use change were disclosed by using quantitative change models such as dynamic degree, intensity, LUD, LUC and spatial analysis methods including gravity center changes, interpolation analysis, spatial differentiation and fan analysis. Further, the mechanism of land use change was analyzed. Results show that: (1) Farmland keeping reducing and built-up land keeping increasing was the main characteristic of the land use change. Therefore, on one hand, we should meet the need of rapid urban land expansion, on the other hand we should strengthen arable land protection. (2) The spatial distribution of built-up area expansion showed the step character from separated patch increasing, radial infill expansion to allometric expansion and double-center evolution. Further study should be done on the time-space pattern of land use in mining cities. (3) Land use change resulted from several factors. Natural conditions will take effect a long time. Mineral resources were always playing an important role in the shape and the evolution of land use. Economic factors, such as industrialization, urbanization and adjustment of industrial structure, were the leading force of the land use structure evolution. Under this background, city spatial planning, especially the rational planning of the industrial zones, economic development zones and the new city zones were the important force of built-up expansion evolution. Transportation, especially rapid transit network was a strong traction force of land use changes. (4) Land use pattern was affected by the distribution of the mineral resources and spatial pattern evolution of mining city land was affected by the life cycle of mineral resources. Mineral resources together with natural conditions and economic factors always had great effects on mining city land use. As mineral resources exhausted, adjustment of land use structure should be speeded up in mining cities. (5) Methods need to be improved for further study on the characteristics and the mechanisms of mining cities.
In the hilly-mountainous area in central China, agricultural land intensity is decreasing due to seasonal or all-year abandonment. This causes marginalization of agricultural land despite farmer-benefiting policies. By theoretical and empirical analysis, some reasons are found out as follows: 1. During the industrialization and urbanization process, farmers benefit more from urban employment than staying in farming. 2. The agricultural ecological environment of hilly-mountainous area is so bad that the farmland's marginal revenue decreases; 3. The farmer-benefiting policies are not the intended incentives in the hilly-mountainous area; ecological policies does not accord with agricultural policy, which aggravates local marginalization of agricultural land. Marginalization of agricultural land is rational behavior by farmers, but the process is significant to national food security and ecological construction. Marginalization of agricultural land in the hilly-mountainous area is driven by the multiple factors. In order to solve the phenomenon we must commence from the nature, economy, policy and so on to improve the agricultural environment, innovate agricultural organization system and technology, transform traditional farming, develop modern highly-effective characteristic agriculture, and increase marginal revenue of the farmland. In the meantime, national agricultural incentive policy should accord with ecological protection policy. The governments should adopt different subsidy methods in different areas, that is to say, they should adopt more special subsidy policies in the hilly-mountainous area under fragile ecology conditions.
Decomposition of litter plays an important role in carbon turnover and nutrients cycling in wetland ecosystem. Tide is the key feature for the estuarine tidal wetland. The wetlands of the Minjiang River estuary region are one of the major estuarine tidal wetlands in the southeast of China, and the Shanyutan is the largest wetland in the Minjiang River estuary region. Litter decomposition, nutrient dynamics and influencing factors of two native species (Phragmites australis and Cyperus malaccensis) and one exotic invasive species (Phragmites australis) were studied using mesh bag method in two sites under different tidal water submergence conditions. One site was near the tide ditch, and the other is far from the tide ditch in central Shanyutan wetland. The results indicated that: (1) Frequent tidal water submergence had no significant effects on the litter decomposition rates of three plants. (2) Frequent tidal water submergence accelerated the N and P loss of Cyperus malaccensis and Spartina alterniflora, however, it had little effect on Phragmites australis. (3) The order of litter decomposition rate was Cyperus malaccensis＞Spartina alterniflora＞Phragmites australis, with rates of 0.003166-0.005280 d 1, and the time of 95% dry mass of litter loss ranged from 1.56 to 2.61a. (4) C concentrations had only a little change, and the major pathway of C release was mineralization during the 280 days; there was an upward trend in N concentrations, at the end of the experiment, N content had a net loss and the major pathway of loss was mineralization; there was an obvious fluctuating downward trend in P concentrations at the end of the experiment, P content had also a net loss and leaching losses were responsible for much of P loss. (5) Litter quality was a main factor influencing the litter decomposition rates of the three plants. Litter decomposition rate of Cyperus malaccensis with the lowest C/P was the greatest.
Two concepts of ecological footprint component index (EFCI) and bicapacity component index (BCCI) are proposed based on ecological footprint (EF) and entropy methods in this paper. EFCI and BCCI in China 1949-2006 are calculated, and predicted with autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. The results show that: 1) Over the last 57 years, EFCI in China has constantly increased with fluctuation, being 0.0081 in 1949 and 0.0285 in 2006, respectively. BCCI has slowly decreased with fluctuation, but increased in some years. For example, BCCI is 0.0264 in 1949, 0.0147 in 1983, 0.0169 in 1984, and 0.0132 in 2006, respectively. 2) Many tests (including ADF and PP unit root test of residues, fitting forecast and real series) show that ARIMA (2, 1, 1) model of EFCI, ARIMA (1, 1, 1) model of BCCI are their optimum prediction models, respectively. The forecasts calculated from 2007 to 2010 indicate that EFCI will increase to 0.0293 in 2007 and then fall to 0.0280 in 2010, while BCCI will decrease to 0.0129 in 2010. The relationship between EFCI and each of the selected ten influencing factors with prominent correlative coefficients is analyzed. A model between EFCI and the ten factors is constructed based on partial least-squares regression (PLSR) method in order to explore their sequence of correlation influence. The results show that the positive correlation sequence is urban population, primary industry output value, total population, total value of imports and exports, and tertiary industry output value. The negative correlation sequence is government consumption expenditure, rural population, resident consumption expenditure, per capita GDP, and secondary industry output value. The modeling of the abundance indices is a useful tool for a better understanding of the dynamics of EF component, and enables short-term quantitative recommendations of ecosystem management. The effective approaches which could boost up sustainable development in China may be adjusting population structure, boosting primary industry and international trade development, holding down resident consumption and government consumption expenditures, and moderate growth of GDP including secondary industry.
It is valuable for the harmony between human society and ecosystem to analyze the responses to eco-immigration and their reasons from the viewpoint of herd family according to herd family interviewed data, RS images, physical geographical and socioeconomic data. In this research, we selected Maduo County in the source region of the Yellow River as a case study. Based on rangeland degradation data for the period 1977-2004, meteorological data in the past 28 years, grazing pressure index data between 1988-2004, interviewed data of 144 herd families in two recent years, we obtain the following results: (1) The rangeland degraded extensively over the 28 years, the percentage of degraded area in all rangeland was over 43% and degradation of pasture was more serious in cold season than in warm one. The degradation ratio showed an increasing trend. (2) The degradation was caused by the integration of a dry-warm trend of climate change and rangeland overgrazing. (3) The immigrant families are mainly composed of the aged, or families without livestock, with 48.5% and 68.3% of the immigrant ones respectively, due to the profit difference between the eco-immigration and socioeconomic situations of herd families. The herd families with middle and young ages and more livestock are unwilling to move out of this region. Furthermore, the percentage of immigrant households that share one rangeland certificate with parents or brothers in the immigrant family is 54.5%. Therefore, it is hard to decrease overgrazing through eco-immigration in terms of the eco-immigrants' family structure.
Resource-based cities are of great concern in China. Little literature has been published on the understanding of their functions. This paper attempts to define five functional categories of these cities, most of which are dependent on mining to varying degrees. City function features are composed of four elements, i.e. , to superior function, specialised sectors of the city, functional intensity and functional scale. The first element is defined as a ratio of the number of mining employees to that of industrial employees. The other three are defined after Zhou Yixing and Sun Zexing (1997). The category of samples are modified after Liu Yungang (2006). Five functional types of cities are identified, i.e., super specialized mining cities, multiplex mining cities, super specialized industrial cities, multiplex industrial cities and trade cities. These represent progressive functional diversification of the resource-based city. Although cities have shown a trend towards diversification, most remain within their original categories, and functional transition appears to be a long-term process.
Urban is the engine of economic growth. With the rapid development of urbanization process across the world, the dynamics of city-size distribution has been a hot topic. The heat debates centering on the optimal city size have exerted impacts on the urbanization courses in China. From several different perspectives, this paper investigates the spatio-temporal dynamics of city-size distribution in the Yangtze River Delta during the period 1984-2002. Empirical results show that the evolution of urban system in the Yangtze River Delta has undergone primate, rank-size and primate distribution patterns. The primacy of Shanghai was the lowest in 2002, but the whole pattern of urban system in the Yangtze River Delta shifted to primate distribution pattern again, which to a large extent reflects the corresponding adjustments of urbanization guidelines in China in the 21st century. In term of the relationship between city size and city growth, the whole urban system takes the form of convergent growth, which means the initial smaller cities grow faster than larger cities. However, the difference in city growth is not significant. From the long-term tendency, the number of cities over two times of the average size will greatly decrease to about 6%, and middle-sized cities will dominate the urban systems in the future. Generally speaking, it will take about 16 years for a non-city area to develop into a city with half of the average size. On the whole, the change of city-size distribution in the Yangtze River Delta is becoming much even, but the tendency of spatial polarization and concentration is not the case. The spatial agglomeration in southern Jiangsu and Hangzhou Bay rim continues to be strengthened with the deepening of the policy opening to the outside world, which contrasts with the relative quiescence in northern Jiangsu and southern Zhejiang.
Urban development has its own spatial and temporal process. It is important to study urban spatial expansion for properly realizing the urbanization process and optimizing the urban distribution as well as increasing economic competitiveness and land use efficiency. Many decision makers and scholars have paid more and more attention to the phenomenon of urban expansion in Western countries since the 1950s and in China since the 1980s. This article aims at the mutual effect of urban expansion and economic competitiveness. Firstly, the article analyzes the inherent correlation between urban expansion and economic competitiveness by agglomeration economy and efficiency of urban land use as well as urban sprawl on the basis of urban geographical theory and new economic geography theory. Secondly, by designing seven indicators, the comprehensive urban expansion index is calculated by drawing lessons from Western countries and the regional disparity of urban expansion in Shandong Province is examined. Thirdly, economic competitiveness and its spatial difference are evaluated by using the statistical data. Fourthly, the inherent correlation between urban expansion and economic competitiveness in Shandong Province are studied by applying method of correlation analysis. Fifthly, some conclusions are drawn: (1) the more developed city has the more compact urban structure and higher population and employment density; the less derdeveloped city has lower population and employment density as well as more unreasonable land use structure. (2) The city needs to expand rapidly when its population and land size are small and the degree of its expansion will have effect on the more economic product and runs more effectively when it reaches the higher urbanization level. This is respectively embodied in the prefecture-level cities and county-level cities in Shandong Province. Finally, some ways to realize urban smart growth in Shandong Province are proposed, which include taking the step of the compact urban development and distribution in varied level cities, optimizing and upgrading of the industrial structure, strengthening industrial cluster in the sprawl of county-level cities and as well as reinforcement of megalopolis construction.
Post and telecommunications have a significant effect on both economic and social development. This paper analyzes its spatial disparities in Guangdong Province based on the data of business and infrastructure of post and telecommunications in every city of Guangdong. It explores the changing trend of business volume from 1980 to 2006 using the Geordie coefficient, and then chooses 1985, 1995 and 2005 as typical years to analyze the spatial patterns of post and telecommunications development level by factor analysis and cluster analysis in SPSS software. The results are expressed in Arc View GIS. Finally, an index P is constructed to show the rate of development of the cities in Guangdong Province. The conclusions are drawn as follows. Firstly, spatial disparities of business volume of post and telecommunications have increased with a core in the Pearl River Delta. There was a single center in Guangzhou in the 1980s, to which Shenzhen was added in the early 1990s. During the mid-1990s, two sub-centers of Foshan and Dongguan emerged. Thus the pattern became multi-polar. Secondly, increasing development was also imbalanced and went through the transition from "equity-inequity-equity" with the Geordie coefficient ranging from 1.574 in 1985, 1.870 in 1990 and down to 1.115 in 2005. At the same time, the core area was sprawling. Similarly, post and telecommunications developed faster in the cities of the Pearl River Delta than in the surrounding area. There were many cities that were developing faster than the average rate of the Pearl River Delta for the province. Furthermore, by multi-regression analysis, the main factors affecting post and telecommunications development in Guangdong Province are foreign investment, tertiary industry development and urbanization as well as policy making. However, population density, transportation infrastructure and fixed assets investment do not exert significant effects on the post and telecommunications development.
As a rising metropolitan region, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region has an extremely important strategic position in the regional development pattern of China. During the past several decades, the spatial structure of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region has greatly changed. The research on that can not only help reveal the spatial characteristics of the regional economy, and the trends of their evolution, and determine the regional development stage, but also bear important implications for regional planning. Agglomeration and dispersion of population are the fundamental reasons for the evolution of regional spatial structure. People are the main micro-economic actors, so the authors choose the evolution of the spatial distribution of population as the research focus. This paper analyzes the population growth of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region from 1990 to 2000. By using three classes of variables, this paper studies the influencing factors on the population growth of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region and its disparity. Three main conclusions are as follows: (1) The population grows faster in the southern part of the region than in the northern part. The distribution of population densities shows that the agglomeration of population in the region has become more evident. (2) The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan region has a polycentric spatial structure. There exist two high-density corridors within the region in 1990 (the Beijing-Tianjin corridor, and the Beijing-Baoding-Shijiazhuang corridor), and three (with the Beijing-Tangshan corridor as the newly added one) in 2000. (3) The econometric analysis indicates that the natural conditions and the economic factors have significant impacts on the population growth. The lower elevation values, the faster growth rates of per capita GDP, the faster development of the tertiary industry and the larger market potentials can lead to the faster population growth. The model also shows that although both the natural conditions and the economic factors have important impacts on the population growth, the influences of the latter are much greater.
This paper analyzes market potential as an indicator of market accessibility and its effects on regional development in Northeast China, based on district-level data. The results indicate that market potential index (MPI) degrades from the southern part to the northern in Northeast China. The market potential index has a significant leap between the Liaodong Peninsula and other parts of the region. Such a geographic distribution of market potential affected the spatial concentration of manufacturing sectors. Then it contributes to the intra-regional disparity of the economic development in Northeast China. A significant spatial correlation between market potential index and intra-regional economic performance has been observed. Such a spatial correlation verified that market accessibility is one of the determinants which affects intra-regional economic development. Contribution share of market potential from exportation and out-northeast areas occupy a large portion of the total market potential index. This result indicates that Northeast China can benefit from its market accessibility. However, now production growth of most industries in Northeast China is induced by local consumption. Such an inconsistency makes it clear that the future development of Northeast should enhance economic cooperation with out-northeast areas and reinforce industrial competitiveness based on its market accessibility. As recently the economic centers have limited effects on leading regional development, it is important to enhance market attraction power of the economic centers in order to promote the economic development of Northeast China.
Along with the rapid development of socioeconomy and the great improvement of people's standard of living, to provide high quality public service and build a harmonious society is a primary task of the government. Fair space is the key principle of public service. It involves spacial accessibility and spacial attainability, and the former is the foundation and precondition. In this paper, based on the public product layout decision support system, we take an example of the hospitals in Yizheng city, analyze the spacial effect of different distribution of them from the aspect of accessibility, and provide powerful support for optimizing the supply of public product. And moreover, it gives a good sample of quantitative analysis on the public product layout. Through the case study of Yizheng city, we think there are two basic indices to measure the fair space of public product. The first is quantity index. For Yizheng city, we choose the accessibility of half an hour as quantitative target to optimize the public product layout. The second is quality index. We choose accessibility's distributing frequency and cumulative frequency of five minutes' interval as quality standard. In other words, for the same accessibility of half an hour but different distribution, it means different fair space. Therefore, it is a further study on the conception and methodology of fair space.
R&D investment motives and location selection by Japan and Korea in China have a strong correlation with their direct investment in China. Early Japanese R&D investment motives were production-based. They have subsequently moved on to resource-seeking, strategy-driven and techniques for market motives and so on. By comparison, Korean firms are mainly motivated by market-orientation and policy making. Japanese firms prefer R&D cooperation with universities, while Korean firms are more inclined towards joint R&D with local firms in China. Spatially, the R&D institutions of Japan and Korea in China are concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta and the Bohai Sea rim with the core cities of Shanghai and Beijing, respectively. Korean R&D investment is still in its infancy, located at particular points, whereas Japanese R&D investment is large scale and widely distributed among major large and medium-sized cities of China. In addition, different from the trend of direct investment in manufacturing, neither Japan nor Korea R&D investment shows an R&D investment trend towards central-western China.
The past two decades has witnessed the considerable strides made in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity. Based on the literature review on the study of China's tourism carrying capacity, this article was designed to make a reflection on its trend and problem: (1) The planning practice in China's tourism carrying capacity needs to be perfect. (2) The method concerning administrative management needs to be improved; in the domestic tourism market tourism carrying capacity is merely treated as a variable used to limit the number of the tourists. Seemingly feasible, this practice actually poses some potential problems, such as ignorance of the dynamic feature of tourism carrying capacity and of tourists' mobility and the drop in tourists' traveling interest. (3) Three misunderstandings occur in the study of tourism carrying capacity in China's academic field. The first misunderstanding is that tourism carrying capacity is always regarded as definite; the second one is that tourism carrying capacity is regarded as a fixed value; and the third misunderstanding is that the study of the number of tourists receives unnecessary emphasis. On the basis of the above discussion, the findings we obtained show that compared with the boom in China's tourism industry the backwardness in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity has exerted negative influence on the maintainable development in tourism destination. In such a context a systematic study of China's tourism carrying capacity is in emergent need. For this purpose the common understandings are to be reached in terms of the study of China's tourism carrying capacity: ① A relationship of carrier and carried, container and contained is to be symbolized in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity. ② The relevant factors concerning the study of China's tourism carrying capacity are in harmony with each other. ③ There is much flexibility in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity. ④ A limiting category can be changed into a regulatory category in the study of China's tourism carrying capacity. ⑤ Systemic indexes need to be established in terms of regulatory management of China's tourism carrying capacity.
The study of the spatial structure of city tourism is receiving increasing attention but methodology so far has used qualitative rather than quantitative methods. This paper applies an accessibility and analysis information system based on calculations of optimal road routes and times to scenic spots in Nanjing. This enabled the construction of time contour, diffusion and service range maps and diagrams. The study found that over 80% of the region had access to Nanjing's scenic spots in less than 40 minutes. However, downtown scenic spots were found to be much more accessible than those on the periphery of the city. At county level, accessibility to the city's downtown scenic spots shows a concentric pattern. Due to the disparities in intra-regional accessibility, the paper suggests the development of scenic spots in a recreational belt around the city to optimize their spatial distribution, particularly in Liuhe, Pukou, and Jiangning districts.
According to the structure of environmental consciousness, we formulate a questionnaire on tourists' environmental consciousness in this study. The main quota systems in the questionnaire include four aspects: intellectual level of tourism environment, attitude towards tourism environment, evaluation on tourism environment and behavior of tourism environment. In view of weighting and bestowing score, we also construct evaluation model of each part in quota systems and overall evaluation model on environmental consciousness to calculate comprehensive score of tourists' level of environmental consciousness. Taking Hohhot region, Baotou region and Erdos area as case studies, we make an investigation on tourists' level of environmental consciousness. And we learn that the pattern of tourists' environmental consciousness is the one restricted by attitude towards environment through counting up and analyzing 480 questionnaires. The study indicates: (1) knowledge about environment is not the key problem which restricts tourists' level of environmental consciousness. Besides, evaluation on environment is not a dominant factor. But attitude towards environment is most important factor and resolves inclination of tourists' environmental behavior. Therefore changing consumers' attitude and training the tourists who are responsible for ecological environment is most critical to change tourists' environmental consciousness. (2) Tourists only know some basic and plain knowledge and viewpoint on environment. But they understand little complicated and abstract knowledge on environment. Especially, it is insufficient that the accuracy of tourists grasping knowledge on environment and degree of gradation increased progressively. (3) In the course of tour, tourists can hardly protect eco-environment conscientiously. And they could not supervise other tourists to maintain the eco-environment. Most tourists mainly think of how to minimize economic cost in the course of tour. They are not ready to serve for environmental protection of prairie tourism. So we can learn that if we can not carry out the guidance towards environmental consciousness properly and the appropriate management to tourist, it is unavoidable that assault on eco-environment. Consequently, we must strengthen that the staff of tour enterprises, including tourist guides, lead to positive consciousness of environmental protection for tourists.
