Abstract: Modeling is a good method that could show us the recurrence of historical events if we want to know how the historical events took place. It helps us to promote the understanding of the events in the past. Even we can forecast the events that we care about in the future based on the high precision modeling. Taking two modeling cases of typhoon landing and its precipitation, and of the structure evolution of China's three industries as examples, we compare the differences of two modeling techniques of geography, namely, the physical process modeling and human process modeling, belonging to physical geography and human geography respectively. This paper singles out four aspects of major differences between them and discusses these issues, including the dominating elements in system analysis framework and the background information, in system analysis framework, data sources and quantitative methods, and the central objects of study and application paradigms. We describe the development trends of physical process and human process in a brief way. This paper points out that the modeling of both physical and human processes are two important approaches to regional sustainable development, and with the development of man-land system theory, the two modeling techniques will be integrated, and hence their border becomes blurred.

Key words: physical process, human process, modeling, regional sustainable development, man-land system