Virtual Geographic Environments (VGE) is an integrated virtual space which is used to simulate and analyze complex phenomena and process of geography. It supports activities of research on geography as collaborative work, knowledge sharing and group decision-making. It can become one of the scientific methods and advanced technologies of modern experimental geography study. In the paper, the development process and progress of VGE and experimental geography are introduced, the roll and prospect of VGE and virtual geographic experiment on modern experimental geography are focused, key issues and existing misunderstanding about current studies on VGE are discussed. Integrated research on VGE and experimental geography highlights the importance of geographic model and knowledge in geography study, stresses that VGE can promote the theory and methods of modern experimental geography study, and contribute to the development of geographic science.

The Jianglang Mountain is situated at the transitional zone of South China fold-system, Jiangshan-Shaoxing deep rip belt and Baoan-Xiakou-Zhangcun rip belt. The formation of the Xiakou basin was a result of the tensioning of the above mentioned two rips in early Cretaceous, afterward, series deposits such as Guantou formation (K₁g), Chaochuan formation (K₁c) and Fangyan formation (K₁f) which belong to Yongkang group, lower Cretaceous phase, were gradually built, whilst the rips occurred to extrude and the basin began to rise in late Cretaceous. Meanwhile, amounts of tension fissures and joints have been produced since Cenozoic, accelerating down-cutting velocity in base rock. Consequently, landform-building activities such as weathering, eroding and collapsing etc. were prevalent as finally to develop the Danxia landform. The main sceneries to apply for world natural relics are relying on unique and unparalleled peak, split valley with vivid stones and reviving of platform. What is more, it is significant to study lithology, stratigraphy and paleo-biology. According to dating for specimen of dolerite vein through the Yongkang group of Mt. Yafeng by K-Ar method, this article revealed the uplift age of red-bed basin to be 77.89±2.6 Ma BP (K₂), i.e., late Cretaceous, the first chronological datum of Danxia landform research in China.

Evidence from all over the world shows that the timing of mountain glacier maxima advances varied widely. Studies on the climatic conditions, tectonic background, glacial sequences and glacier extents show that they are different from region to region. Three glacial remains are preserved in Taiwanese mountains including the middle/early stage, last glacial maximum and late-glacial stage glaciers. The glacier extent in MIS3b is larger than MIS2. The glacier geomorphology and landforms are well perserved in Japanese high mountains, such as the MIS2, MIS3 and MIS4 stage glaciers, and the glacial extent in MIS4/3 is larger than that of MIS2. The high mountain range of the Changbai Mountains is unglaciatied at present, but numerous glacial landforms and related sediments around the Tianchi Lake, especially on the northern and western slopes of the volcanic cone, indicated that there was repeated glaciation in these areas during the last glacial cycle. The glacial landforms and deposits in the study area are assigned to the LGM (MIS2) and the Late Glacial. Seasonal and atmospheric cycle differences and different geographic locations caused different conditions of precipitation and temperature. New calculation of the modern theoretical snowline (ELA) and ELA depression during the LGM shows that the ELA is 2750-4245 m from the northernmost Japan to the southernmost Taiwan, and the ELA depression is 800-1300 m with an average value of 1000 m except in the northern part of Japan (only 400 m). The glacial development is obviously affected by the neo-tectonic actions. A 250-m mountain uplift is calculated using the minimum value of uplift rate 5 mm/yr in the Taiwanese mountains during the MIS3b glacier stage.

This study is to reveal the wetland system pattern of Huaihe River basin during the Sui-Tang (A.D.581-907) dynasties and Northern Song (A.D.960-1127) Dynasty, which were two millenarianism periods in Chinese feudal history. The data reflecting the wetland system pattern of Huaihe River basin during these two periods were mainly digitalized from "The Historical Atlas of China" and the data reflecting present wetland system pattern of Huaihe River basin were from "Basic Geographic Information Database of China". Based on ArcView GIS software, this study generated the sketch maps of wetland system pattern for the two historical periods and then discussed the pattern changes.From Sui-Tang to Northern Song, there were no significant changes for macro pattern of wetland system of Huaihe River basin. Wetland system was stable during Sui-Tang periods and relatively stable during Northern Song Dynasty. Natural wetlands in the basin, such as rivers and lake-marshes, maintained their relative stableness, which determined the stability of macro pattern of wetland system in the basin throughout the period. Stable wetland system pattern of Huaihe River basin provided good natural environmental background for the development of agricultural economy and social culture during that period. The major changes of wetland system of Huaihe River basin during these periods came from artificial wetlands.

Based on pollen, paleosol, archaeology materials and terrain features in Gansu-Qinghai Region, this paper reveals that climate was warm and humid at 4 ka BP, culture of Majiayao was distributed over forest-steppe valley region around the Yellow River and its branches. The Liupan Mountain was the eastern boundary of culture of Majiayao, which extended northward to Hexi Corridor and was mainly engaged in planting industry. Around 4 ka BP, environment went worse, and natural zones moved eastward. Meanwhile, culture of Qijia replaced that of Majiayao, and the survival environment shifted to temperate steppe. In order to respond and be adapted to the environmental changes, cultural relics moved southeastward back to low elevation regions, and the proportion of animal husbandry in industrial structure increased obviously.

Based on the temporal-spatial distribution features of ancient settlement sites from the middle and late Neolithic Age to the Han Dynasty in the Chaohu Lake Basin of Anhui Province with the methods of GIS, combining with the reconstructed paleoenvironment by the records of lake sediment since Holocene in the Chaohu Lake, the transmutation of ancient settlements with responses to environmental changes in this area has been discussed. Study shows that the main feature of the transmutation of ancient settlements from the middle and late Neolithic Age to the Han Dynasty was that the distribution of settlements in this area changed from high altitude to the low one and kept approaching to the Chaohu Lake with the passage of times. These could be the response to the climate change from warm-moist to a relatively warm-dry condition during the middle Holocene, leading to the lake level fluctuations. The large area of exposed land provided enough space for human activities. These indicate that the above changes in geomorphologic evolution and hydrology influenced by climate conditions affected the transmutation of ancient settlements greatly. The distribution pattern of settlement sites was that the number of the sites in the west was more than the east. This pattern may be related to the geomorphologic conditions such as frequent channel shifting of the Yangtze River and flood disasters during the Holocene optimum. Therefore, the climate change is the inducement of the transmutation of ancient settlements in the Chaohu Lake Basin, which exerts great influence on the distribution, expansion and development of the ancient settlements, and the transmutation of ancient settlements responded to the environmental changes evidently.

The authors developed a model to estimate annual tree growth based on tree-ring data (Abbr. TGTRing model) derived from the trunk at 0.5 m, 1.3 m and 2.5 m height. This model was applied to estimate the annual biomass and carbon accumulation of a plantation in Qianyanzhou Red-Soil Hill Comprehensive Development Experimental Station of CAS in Taihe County, Jiangxi Province (Abbr. Qianyanzhou). The results showed that the inflexion points of the biomass and carbon accumulation curves occur at 17 and 18 years of age, respectively, in Masson pine, whilst both inflexion points occurred at 15 years in slash pine and Chinese fir. The biomass and carbon accumulation in Chinese fir proved to be greater in the last 20 years than in the other species, with 171.697 t/hm2 and 92.29 tc/hm2, respectively. Masson pine, with a biomass of 133.84 t/hm2 and a carbon accumulation of 73.92 tc/hm2, was the lowest whilst slash pine was intermediate with a biomass of 147.639 t/hm2 (unturpentined) and 135.743 t/hm2 (turpentined), and a carbon accumulation of 80.18 tc/hm2 (unturpentined) and 73.72 tc/hm2 (turpentined). In 2006, the total biomass and carbon storage of the tree stratum of Masson pine in Qianyanzhou was 3324.43 t and 14156.64 tc, respectively, whilst the values for Chinese fir were 1326.97 t and 713.27 tc. For slash pine was the total biomass was 14156.64 t (unturpentined) and 13015.97 t (turpentined), and the total carbon storage was 7688.21 tc (unturpentined) and 7068.78 tc (turpentined). Following the shaving of slash pine for resin, the total biomass was reduced by 1140.67 t and the total carbon storage fell by 619.43 tc.

The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data in Inner Mongolia during 1982 to 2003 were used to classify the vegetation belts in four time periods and reveal spatial shifts of the vegetation belts between two sequential periods. Then, we analyzed the spatial and temporal variations of the vegetation cover degree and its relation to thermal-moisture factors taking the tpical steppe belt as an example. During the study period, the area of the typical steppe belt showed an increscent tendency, whereas the area of the desert steppe belt indicated a decreasing tendency. Otherwise, areas of the forest belt, the forest steppe belt and the desert belt did not represent any apparent tendency. Generally speaking, an evolution succession of vegetation belts was dominant during period 1 (1982-1987) to period 2 (1988-1992), whereas a degradation succession of vegetation belts (following succession orders of forest→forest steppe→typical steppe→desert steppe→desert) was dominant during period 3 (1993-1998) to period 4 (1999-2003). In between, evolution and degradation successions of vegetation belts were counterbalanced during period 2 (1988-1992) to period 3 (1993-1998). A significantly positive correlation appeared in the western part of the Xilingol Tableland and the Ulanqab Tableland. In contrast to precipitation, the correlation between the vegetation cover degree increment and air temperature was less significant. From 1982 to 2003, areas with decreasing and increasing linear trends of the annual maximum vegetation cover degree accounted for 52.6% and 47.4% of the entire Inner Mongolia, respectively, of which significantly decreasing trends appeared at the western edge of the Hulun Buir Tableland and the both sides of the Da Hinggan Mountains.

This study aims at revealing how land use and land cover changed in the mainstream of the Tarim River since 1973. Combining the integrated technology of ecological quantity analytical method with GIS technology, based on the MSS images in 1973, TM images in 1990 and 2000, CBERS images in 2005, and the land use data of 1983, the changes of land use/cover and landscape pattern were analyzed in this paper in the mainstream of the Tarim River from 1973 to 2005. The results showed that the areas of farmland and residential land increased obviously, areas of grassland, forest and wetland decreased, and that of unused land increased first then decreased. The major patterns of land use change were the conversions of grassland, forest and wetland to farmland, farmland to residential land, and grassland to unused land. Land use change underwent a process of obvious change - slow change - obvious change - tremendous change. The analysis of landscape index showed that due to the disturbance of human activities, landscape diversity index increased while landscape dominance index decreased. Simultaneously, landscape fragmentation index increased gradually.

The pH values and Electrical Conductivity Measurement (ECM) records in three shallow ice cores from Glacier No.1 at the headwater of the Urumqi River, Kuitun Glacier No.48 and Hami Miaoergou Glacier in the eastern Tianshan Mountains, western China were measured and analyzed for the research on atmospheric environmental change. Ice core records show that the changing trends of pH and ECM at the three sites in recent about 10 years are different: Kuitun ECM increased with the change of the ice depth, but Hami site and Urumqi Glacier No.1 show a decreasing trend. The average ECM value in Hami is greater than the other two sites, just as the case of high dust concentration and ions concentration at this site. ECM records are mainly affected by Asian dust, as the correlative coefficients of ECM and mineral ions such as Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺ and Na⁺ are significantly high. Also, pH and ECM are significantly high correlative coefficients, which coincide with the research on the Tibetan Plateau, but different from that in the polar regions.

The cross wavelet transform method is adopted to study the time-frequency characteristics and multitime scale correlations between the runoff and precipitation, evaporation, maximum and minimum temperature in the source region of the Yellow River. The results show that the variations of runoff and regional climate in the source region of the Yellow River present periodic oscillations of different significance in frequency space and the localization characteristics in time space. There are significant periods at scales of quasi-biannual, 4a, 6-8a, 12-14a and above 20a in both of the runoff and regional climate variations. The power of periodic oscillation at different frequency scales and phase differences in time space are important causes for the unstableness and the lag correlations. The coherence of positive correlation between runoff and regional precipitation is the highest in the climatic factors, indicating that the variations of regional precipitation have a predominant effect on the runoff variations. The unconventionality of regional precipitation at pre-period has durative influence on the runoff. Negative correlation between runoff and regional evaporation is significant, but unstable with lag correlations on the interannual timescale. The coherence of negative correlation between runoff and maximum temperature is higher than the positive correlation between runoff and minimum temperature on interdecadal timescale, that is to say, the effect of decreasing the runoff supply due to maximum temperature rise induced the regional evaporation increase is greater than the effect of increasing the runoff supply due to minimum temperature rise caused ice thawing and snowmelt in the long term change. The unstableness of the interannual timescale correlations between runoff and maximum and minimum temperature is distributed in some of the time space. And the phase differences of them indicate that responding time of runoff to temperature variations is different. Analysis makes it known that the primary factor is the regional precipitation on the runoff variations, maximum temperature is important factor, and the regional evaporation and minimum temperature also have different influences on the runoff variations. Synthetic effect of regional climatic elements is the prime cause for runoff variations in the source region of the Yellow River.

Since 1909, China has witnessed rapid development of geography as well as hard times of the subject. The geography in China has undergone four stages, namely the launch of contemporary geography, the founding of New China to the late 1970s, reform and opening up to the late 1990s, and the early 21st century. On the occasion of the centennial celebration of The Geographical Society of China, the author dedicates this article to the geographers who have made contributions to China and the world during the past 100 years.

Chinese modern geography is the production of the interactions between West and China. George B. Cressey is a non-negligible western geographer in Chinese modern geography, who established Geology and Geography Department in Shanghai College, and trained some Chinese geologists and geographers; whose abroad and in-depth fieldworks corrected many errors in Chinese geographic texts; whose Chinese geographic research and works sharpened the understanding of Chinese geography, and promulgated Chinese geographic knowledge. At the same time, Cressey's frequent and extensive intercourses with Chinese geographic scholars promoted more modernization and internationalization of Chinese geography. Moreover, Cressey's activities, to some extent, also reflected the track of Chinese modern geography.

Chinese human geography, as a branch of geography, has played an important role in the service of development for the country since the reform and opening up, at the same time, the process of national development has flourished the disciplines of human geography. However, much discussion has taken place on the status of human geography, in particular the debates have been long focused on human geography research methodology. In the context of globalization, the world needs to understand China, and China needs to enter the world system, thus in this process human geography will become even more important than ever. This paper explores the development process of human geography, and highlights the role that human geography has played as a major part of geography. On the one hand, economic, social and political changes in China have promoted the development of human geography, and on the other hand, Chinese human geography can make its due contributions to the development of the country with the enhancement of China's international economic status. Besides, human geography has its own law of development and research methods. We should emancipate the mind, and pay more attention to the law of value in economics, the value of social justice in social science, natural landscape and historical analysis methods, and analysis of quantity. There is a need to deepen and innovate the Chinese human geography research as well as to upgrade its results obtained in previous studies.

During the 30 years of development in tourism geography in China between 1978 and 2008, many researchers analyzed and evaluated its development in different periods.  However, most of such studies were done from the perspective of geography of tourism itself, without taking the perspectives such as China's social and economic development, overall academic development as well as the background of tourism activities. This paper reflects and evaluates the three periods of development in tourism geography based on the differences of research orientation: the periods of idealism, realism and rational idealism. In the idealism period, major development in tourism geography was shown by the fact that scholars constructed the scope of the subject of study and the framework for research as well as kept up with the theoretical development abroad. While educating the next generation of scholars, they were also involved in problem-solving by making contribution to the society. They set up the association for the study of tourism geography to strengthen collaboration. In the period of realism, geographers of tourism became the major force for tourism planning. Their research was driven by what they did as planners, with less effort on theoretical development. As a result, their research scope was relatively narrow with less attention to development abroad and lack of paradigms. In the rational realism period, scholars paid more attention to theory construction, with more interdisciplinary studies at the aim of broadening research scope and more international exchanges. In the meantime, planning was of higher standard, and  tourism geography as a subject of study received more attention and support in academic circle. This paper points out that the rational realism being discussed is based on individual cases rather than large-scale reality. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether such rational realism is going to continue in the near future.

Rural hollowing is a widespread phenomenon all over China, especially in traditional agricultural areas. From the dynamic viewpoint, rural hollowing is a special evolution form of rural areal system during the process of urban-rural transformation development. In terms of its natural function and task, rural geography has unique advantages to research rural hollowing. From the comprehensive, dynamic and regional perspectives, these advantages of rural geography are mainly the phenomenon description and spatial models establishment of rural hollowing, formation mechanism and dynamic force simulation, response mechanism and comprehensive effect, as well as potential types and its optimal regulation This paper puts forward a series of propositions which should be studied based on theoretical disciplinary system of rural geography. Therefore this paper refines and develops the theoretical foundation of rural geography for rural hollowing research. The theoretical system includes the lifecycles of rural hollowing evolvement, spatial pattern of generation development, mechanics theory of rural hollowing and "Three Integration" model. Then based on the theory research of rural space reconstructions and rural hollowing regulation, integrating with analysis of influencing factors on spatial pattern and evolvement of rural settlement, this paper develops a framework for the succession, evaluation and regulation of rural hollowing. Finally, taking Yucheng city in Shandong province as a typical case, this paper constructs the basic criterion, development concept and planning schemes for the regulation of hollowed villages in Yucheng city, which is the theoretical practice of rural geography. In order to guide new countryside construction, ensure warning line of cultivated land and co-ordinate land use allocation between urban and rural areas in China, it is necessary to conduct a through investigation on the mechanism, policy and mode innovation involved "trinity" by implementing village renovation demonstration project.

With the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, there is a phenomenon of hollowing villages resulting from the vacancy and idleness of rural housing in the core of villages in the vast rural areas of China. It is a unique spatial morphology of China's rural settlements shaped by a "dual track" structure of rural-urban socio-economic development. The formation and evolution of hollowing villages is closely interrelated with the spatial organization of the activities of the rural population and the migration flows between town and country and between rural areas. Based on the characteristics of rural housing land-use, an evolutive model of the development stages of hollowing villages was constructed. Usually, there are four evolutive stages in a normal development process of hollowing villages at the urban-rural fringe, i.e., solidization, subhollowing, hollowing and resolidization, which corresponds with the temporal characteristics of China's socio-economic development. However, China has a vast territory with obvious regional differentiation in the level of socio-economic development, which contributes to coexisting different evolutive stages of hollowing villages in the same period, in provincial even larger scale. The influencing factors of hollowing village formation and evolution include four aspects such as economic factors concerning economic growth and technological level, socio-cultural factors embracing population change, social and land-use main body behaviors, institutional and managerial factors including land property right, price and policy, and bio-physical factors. Accordingly, the evolutive types of hollowing villages were classified, and using high-resolution remote sensing data and household investigations, the evolutive characteristics and its driving mechanism of the evolution of hollowing village types in plain agricultural region were studied.

Statistical methods were employed in this paper to explore the driving forces of residential land prices in Beijing, including accessibility, land intensity, cultural and sport infrastructure and new transport methods. Box-Cox transformations, T-test, Pearson correlation, factor reduce and ridge regression were carried out to identify the key factors that influence the residential land price. Distances to the nearest CBD (P = 0.265), to the nearest road (P = 0.529), to the nearest schools (P = 0.202), to the nearest parks (P = 0.105) and to the nearest hospitals (P = 0.706), which had a low correlation with residential land price, were excluded by Pearson correlation test. Independent samples T-test showed that cultural and sport infrastructure (P = 0.003) and urban subways (P = 0.000) had statistical significant influence on residential land price. Thus, factors including distances to the central area and railway stations, plot ratio, public bus lines within 1 km, urban subways as well as cultural and sport infrastructure were studied in this paper. Factor reduce found that all the remaining factors could be divided into 4 groups. This result was used as one piece of judgment for the regression results, which should use at least one factor of each group. Ridge regression is one of the least-squares refinement methods. In this method, a biased constant is employed to find out a biased estimator, which helps to enhance the precision compared with least-squares methods. It has been proven that the ridge regression method is stable and valid when independent variables are highly correlated. Thus, the multicollinarity among the independent variables in this paper could be resolved by ridge regression analysis. Results of ridge regression indicated that the effects of the studied factors mentioned above accounted for 73.2% change of the independent variable Y in Beijing, and among which, the distance to the central area was the primary factor influencing the price of residential land, followed by the plot ratio. A negative correlation between distance and land price and a positive correlation between plot ratio and land price appeared respectively. Accessibility factors such as bus lines within 1 km had considerable effects on residential land price. Besides, urban subways and cultural and sport infrastructure had a significant value added function to residential land around. Based on statistical analysis, suggestions were proposed in this paper: (1) Land use rate could be improved by enhancing the accessibility and value of suburban areas via land use pattern change and urban subway construction to maximize the land use value. (2) Land use pattern of low efficiency such as 'urban village' could be presented to raise the intensification level of land use to optimize the urban function, thus the urban entity value increased. (3) Cultural and sport infrastructures could help to enhance the additional value of residential land price.

Based on the analysis of remote sensing images (landsat TM and MSS) of Wuxi in recent 30 years, we found that the landscape of urban-rural transition region was in the form of suburban agriculture before market economy took the dominant position (the mid-1990s of China). After that, the landscape of suburban agriculture disappeared. The urban-rural transition region transmuted from suburban, a concept of administrative division, to urban-rural coupling region with new urban-rural relationship. On the other hand, administrative division adjustment lagged behind the transmutation of landscape and social attributes. In this paper, urban built-up area is composed of consecutive city buildings, and urban-rural transition region is the external region of urban built-up area. Urban and rural areas are the complex giant systems that contain many social, cultural, economic, and landscape factors. And the urban-rural integration results in urban-rural coupling region. The term of transmutation represents not only the evolution of things but also the complete change of the essence of things. Transmutation of urban-rural transition region refers to the complete change from quantitative to qualitative of its space and attribute.
Through the establishment of the transmutation model, urban and rural factors in the transmutation of transition region are divided into internal factors (u) and external factors (v) as control variables. According to analysis of the factors influencing the urban-rural transition region, we found that the external control factors, such as the percentage of built-up area and the index of transportation accessibility, are dominant in transmutation. At the same time, external control factors bring about the changes of internal control factors such as non-agricultural employment population, non-agricultural industries, and construction land. The irreversible changes of the factors, such as expansion of built-up area, lead to an irreversible transmutation of urban-rural transition region. So the transmutation is different from normal catastrophe theory model in irreversibility.
Based on the above-mentioned studies, we provide a scientific basis for overall planning of urban and rural region. By accelerating the changes of external conditions of rural region, we can promote the rural development, and also provide a basis for adjustment of administrative divisions of the city to meet the need of economic development. As a result of the rapid expansion of urban built-up area, urban-rural transition region has almost expanded into the entire administrative area. So the further expansion of urban built-up area is bound to create a form of urban and rural interaction beyond the administrative boundaries.

Valley economy, featured by valley development, is a new mode in mountainous area development, and prenents a distinguishing economic geographic pattern. The special spatial coupling relations in the distribution of different mountainous elements in valleys are new subjects for the mountain development studies, and such studies are meaningful both for researches and practices. Based on the long term researches on mountainous area development and following a brief exploration into the connotations and the spatial organizing process of valley economy, the authors analyzed the present situations of the development of valley economy in Beijing's mountainous areas, studied the characteristics and the impacts of the spatial structural changes of the valley economy in these areas, and finally proposed a rational arrangement of the spatial structure of the valley economy in Beijing. It is indicated that valley economy plays an important role in the development and functional transformation in Beijing in the new stage. Firstly, valley economy is not outlined by the administrative boundaries, and it connects most of the villages in the mountainous areas along the major transportation lines. Therefore, valley economy can exert positive influence on the development of the mountainous areas, at least in the aspects such as industrial restructuring in the mountainous areas and the coordinated development of rural and urban areas. In addition, it is found that the valley economy of Beijing has evolved in a spatial organizing stage of secondary concentration, which is characterized by resource-saving, ecological protection and industrial optimization. Therefore, the development of valley economy will be helpful to the coordination between ecological protection and economic development in the mountainous areas, and will promote the comprehensive development of these areas. The developing mode of the valley economy in the mountainous areas of China will provide the basis for the decision-making in the transformation of the functional roles of the mountainous areas of Beijing, and on the other hand, it will present experiences for the studies in the mountainous areas outside Beijing.

The research on cognition of city name, city image and cognition of distance and the cognitive distortions of urban space are the important parts of urban spatial cognitive study. Place names abroad include two aspects: One is to discuss the human emotion and the meaning of place names through its origin. The other is to study the differences of cognitive space in different spatial scales. In China, there are relatively few studies on urban spatial cognition. Most of the studies focus on the cognition of city image, while there is insufficient research on cognitive differences, cognition rate of names and correspondence. This paper aims to analyze the spatial cognition pattern in Beijing based on a large amount of cognition rate data by investigation. The objective is to set up the spatial association pattern between geographical locations and residents in different places. Spatial cognition data are obtained by questionnaires, which included properties of residents, cognition rate and so on.
This paper uses the spatial analysis method to discuss spatial difference of recognition rate of place names of Beijing and spatial cognitive correlation pattern of cognition places and sub-districts based on different cognition places and sub-district types divided by cognition rate and position relations. Three conclusions can be drawn as follows. Firstly, the difference of spatial cognition in Beijing is obvious. Judged from different types of cognition place, the cognition rate in the southern part of urban and suburban areas is low and centralized, and it is low and divergent in the northeastern suburbs while high and centralized in the western urban and suburban areas, and it is high and divergent in the southeast of urban areas. Seen from the sub-district type, the cognition rate of sub-districts in urban areas is high and that of the periphery is low, which displays the central-marginal structures. Secondly, there are different associative patterns between distance and cognition rate of 23 cognition places by various types of streets, such as short distance-low cognition rate, short distance-high cognition rate, medium distance-medium cognition rate, long distance-low cognition rate, and long distance-high cognition rate. The influence of distance on cognition rate is changing for different associative patterns. Thirdly, there are twin peaks on the space cognition curve of Beijing. One represents short distance-high cognition rate, and the location is changed with the change of cognition places. The other represents long distance-high cognition rate, which mainly lies in the urban central area.

Tourism destination circle(TDC) is a kind of destination region, which is defined as a spatial collaborating organization, which inhabits a certain geographic space, and has one or several tourism distributing centers as well as many tourism areas (or tourism attraction complexes), It can supply enough products and services for an effective visit. Here, the scale of an optimum TDC is of vital importance: If the scale is beyond the actual demand of visitors, then the TDC is inefficient and some tourism resources (or products) are wasted; if the scale is less than the actual demand of visitors, then the visitors cannot be fulfilled and the TDC cannot develop well. In this paper, tour-time (T, including traveling time T0 and visiting time T1, unit: days) and tour-diameter (?渍, unit: kilometers) are introduced to measure the scale of TDC, in which tour-time is a scale from temporal dimension while tour-diameter is a scale from spatial dimension. Two computable models on the scale of an optimum TDC are proposed based on statistical analysis of the data gathered from more than 600 travel itineraries, which are applied in the Yangtze River Delta as an example. The research shows that: 1) There is a high significantly positive correlation between the scale of an optimum TDC and the traveling distance (D, unit: kilometers), in which T1 = 0.0715D0.5655 and T0 = 0.1908D0.4601, while ?渍 = 0 (if  D ≤322) or ?渍 = 253.6lnD - 1464.6 (if D > 322). 2) When we consider only market factors, the demand of tourism market within 300 kilometers from a destination region is the basic force for the development of tourism areas, and then the formation and expansion of TDCs are induced by the demand of tourism market beyond 300 kilometers from the destination regions. The increase of TDC is convergent, which should be less than 600 kilometers. 3) The scale of TDC will "transfer" from one state to another based on "time-space linkage" between continuous tour-time and discrete tour-diameter, which leads to the formation of a nested structure of TDC.

The elements of the sense of place in tourism attractions generate various tourist-experience designs, and they act the role of guiding tourists with diversified cultural backgrounds to gain assorted experiences and cognition, which form the comprehensive sense of tourist-experience. "Sense of Place" is an academic concept consisting of two aspects: the objective characteristics of place and the subjective cognition from human beings. And sense of place in tourism attractions contains two parts: place identity and place dependence. Place identity derives from the visitors' perception, emotion, and it is sensory to the place characteristics and the visitors' reflection of the place authenticity. Place dependence primarily originates from the experiences of functional elements of the place. On the basis of summarizing the elements of sense of place in tourism attractions, this paper formed a framework of measuring system of three parts: the background of place of the tourism attraction, the background of tourists, and the contents of the sense of place. The three parts are subdivided into 11 factors: 1) the diversity of cultural background of the tourist place; 2) the category of the main landscape; 3) the gender of tourists; 4) the age of tourists; 5) the occupation of tourists; 6) the level of education of tourists; 7) the sense of place of tourism attraction before visiting; 8) the characteristics of place; 9) the authenticity of place; 10) the dependence of place; and 11) the comprehensive evaluation of satisfaction. Under the framework of measuring system, the paper conducts a questionnaire, on a sample pool of 397 representative tourists to investigate the cognition of visitors' sense of place of tourism attractions and then uses Pearson correlation analysis to examine the cognitive variables of sense of place. The correlation analysis shows that factor 1 "the diversity of cultural background of the tourist place" is the most significant factor of sense of place of tourism attractions; factor 4 "the age of tourists", factor 6 "the level of education of tourists", and factor 7 "the sense of place of tourism attraction before visiting" have positive impact to some extent. The paper further indicates that the sense of place of tourism attraction is an essential element in evaluating the satisfaction of tourists with tourism attraction. In  conclusion, this paper discusses the regular pattern of visitors' cognition of sense of place, and gives some suggestions to the development, planning and management of tourism attractions.

Solar radiation is a key factor in most climate processes. In surface hydrology, it controls the energy balance of the catchment, thus deeply influences the water balance. In this paper, the temporal and spatial variations of solar radiation and the cause of the variation have been analyzed based on meteorological data obtained from 46 national meteorological stations and aerosol index data from TOMS in the Haihe River Basin and surrounding areas. The results show that solar radiation and direct radiation significantly decreased, while the scatter radiation increased during the period 1957-2008. In terms of solar radiation, the densely populated areas have a greater decreasing trend than the scarcely populated ones. The spatial distribution of the increase in aerosol index is consistent with that of the decrease in aerosol index. The increase in aerosol resulting from human activities is the important reason for the decrease in solar radiation.

Since the 1970s, some meteorological observation stations in China 'entered'into cities passively due to urban expansion. The changes in underlying surface and building environment around the stations have had influences on the observation of air temperature,leading to overestimation on the regional air temperature. In this study, the surface underlying 756 meteorological stations across China was firstly identified based on the MSS images of the 1970s, TM images fore-and-aft 1990, and ETM images fore-and-aft 2000 and 2005, to distinguish the stations that 'entered' into cities. Then, after removing the observed data at these stations influenced by urban expansion, we built a dataset of background air temperature by interpolating the observed data at all the left stations. The average Urban Heat-island Intensity (HI) since 1970 was estimated by comparing the two datasets. The results show that overestimation on regional air temperature does occur due to urban expansion, with higher HI in autumn and winter than in spring and summer. Spatially, the overestimation is relatively higher in eastern China than in the middle part of China, however it is much higher in the above two regions than in western China. In the last 40 years the average temperature in China increased by about 1.58 ^oC, among which about 0.09 ^oC was attributed to urban expansion in some regions.

Yuxi and Dajiuhu profiles in the Three Gorges Region are chosen in this study, and based upon AMS14C dating (calibrated CY), we establish the high-resolution curves of various proxy indicators (δ¹³C, K, humification coefficient, total concentration of spore-pollen, Rb, Sr and Rb/Sr) during 9.3-2 kaBP. Besides we synthetically compare and analyze the records of climatic and environmental changes in Holocene sediments in the surrounding areas, we also obtain the materials of prosperity, decline and transition of ancient culture as well as the flood information from the Neolithic Age to historical periods by making statistical analysis of archaeological sites and paleoflood layers of the study area. The results show that: (1) Megatherma in Holocene appeared during 7.6-4 kaBP in the Three Gorges Region. During 9.3-7.6 kaBP, the climate in the study area was very unstable, drastically fluctuating, wet-cold in general, occurring cold or arid events more than once (approximately 9.1, 8.2 and 7.7 kaBP). During 4-2 kaBP, the climatic fluctuation was frequent, and trending slightly cold-dry than before. (2) The Megatherma during 7.6-4 kaBP can be divided into three stages: namely 1) the stage of 6-5 kaBP was the prime of Megatherma, when the climate was stable, warm-wet, with predominent vegetation and ecological environment as well as low frequency of flood events; 2) the stages of 7.6-6 kaBP and 5-4 kaBP were the transition periods with unstable characteristics in Megatherma, among them, during 5-4 kaBP as well as around 4 kaBP, the cold events were still remarkable and the flood events were also frequent. (3) The formation and development of ancient culture in the study area in prehistoric period was mainly corresponding to Megatherma, Daxi culture that the planting industry was the most prosperous appeared in the prime (6-5 kaBP) of Megatherma, other types of ancient culture before and after Daxi culture which were at the low tide or showing decline corresponded to the stages that the climate and environment were unstable. Response of ancient culture in study area to the climatic and environmental changes was achieved through altering the modes of subsistence.

Since the early 1900s, a tendency for some monsoonal temperate glaciers retreat has been observed in the Hengduan Mountains region. Against the background of climate change, 7 monsoonal temperate glaciers were in a stationary or an advancing state between the 1900s-1930s and the 1960s-1980s, and they were in a retreat state during the 1930s-1960s and from the 1980s to the present, which is consistent with the climatic fluctuations of China, the Northern Hemisphere and Hengduan Mountains region, and these glaciers were steady or advanced when the climate was characterised by cold-dry and vice versa. The variational extent is different among 7 glaciers owing to the locations and scales. The ablation water equivalent of glacier tongue in Dagongba Glacier, Xiaogongba Glacier and Hailuogou Glacier is 2710 mm, 3139 mm and 5281 mm in 1982/83, respectively, and the mean value in Hailuogou Glacier is 6157 mm during 1990/91-97/98, which is 876 mm more than that in 1982/83. The ablation of Baishui Glacier No.1 was in decline with the rise of altitude owing to the less debris cover in the summer of 2002. Based on the mass observation during 2008.9.19-30, the glacier started to accumulate after October 6, and the accumulation depth is 1 cm equal to 5 mm water equivalent per day during 9.30-10.13.

Based on the surface runoff, temperature and precipitation data over the last 50 years from eight representative rivers in Xinjiang, this paper, using the method of Mann-Kendall trend and jump detection, investigated the long-term trend and jump point of time series of surface runoff, mean annual temperature and annual precipitation. Besides, this paper analyzed the relationship between runoff and temperature and precipitation, and the frequency and peak flow of floods. Results showed that all parts of Xinjiang had experienced an increase in temperature and precipitation since the mid-1980s. Northern Xinjiang is the area that saw greatest change, followed by southern Xinjiang and eastern Xinjiang. Affected by temperature and precipitation variations, river runoff had both inter-annual and inner-annual changes. The surface runoff of most rivers had increased significantly since the early 1990s. And some of them had the phenomena of spring floods appearing ahead of time, summer floods lagging behind and flood peaks increasing. The variation characteristics were closely related with the replenishment types of rivers. The flood frequency and peak flow increased all over the Xinjiang region. Climate warming has had an effect on the regional hydrological cycle.

Based on the measured hydrological data from 1951 to 2008, the linkage hydrological effect between Jingjiang River and Dongting Lake was analyzed by comparative method after the operation of Three Gorges Project. Firstly, the results showed that the scour amount in Jingjiang River was 78.9% of the total scour amount from Yichang to Chenglingji, and that its average scour intensity was higher than the total scour intensity from Yichang to Chenglingji, too. Secondly, the dividing-water and dividing-sand ratios in the three bayous of the Jingjiang River were reduced by 2.33% and 2.78% separately. Thirdly, the average runoff and sediment in the three bayous flowing into the Dongting Lake were reduced by 7.7% and 24.4%, respectively. Fourthly, the speed of sediment filling-up was lowered by 26.7%, which would prolong natural life of the Dongting Lake. In flood season, the runoff amount of the Jingjiang River flowing into the Dongting Lake was 20.2% less than the multi-year average value. The decreases of runoff amount induced droughts in summer and fall, as well as shortage of drinking water and industry water, shipping safety, similarly led to the decrease of birds and the increase of the oriental field mice. Finally, the multi-year average values of sediment and flood discharge capacity in bayous were respectively increased by 26.6% and 3.7%, which protected embankment effectively.

In order to find out the variation process of water and sediment and its effect on the Yellow River Delta, this paper, by means of statistics, analyzed the water and sediment discharge from 1950 to 2007 at Lijin and the reduction of water and sediment in Yellow River Basin caused by human activities. Results show that the water and sediment discharge into sea decreased from 1950 to 2007 with serious fluctuation. The human activities were the main cause for the reduction of water and sediments into sea. From 1950 to 2005, the multiyear average reduction of water and sediment by means of water and soil conservation were 2.02×10⁹ m³ and 3.41×10⁸ t, respectively, while the multiyear average usage of water and sediment for industry and agriculture were 2.52 × 10¹⁰ m³ and 2.42 × 10⁸ t, respectively. From 1960 to 2007, the multiyear average sediment silted in the Sanmenxia Reservoir was 1.45×10⁸ t and that silted in the Xiaolangdi Reservoir was 2.398×10⁸ t. Compared to the data of Huayuankou, in the lowere reaches, the water and sediment discharge into sea decreased with siltation and increased with erosion. The coastline near the estuary extended and the delta increased when the ratio of total water and sediment into sea was about 0.0257 t/m³ in different periods.

The forefront of physical geography research is driven by social needs. The global concern on resources and environment issues and major issues facing sustainable development of China has a series of demands for physical geography. International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, International Human Dimensions Program of Global Environmental Change, World Climate Research Program, Biological Diversity Program and Earth System Science Partnership contain the forefront of physical geography research. China's State Key Basic Research Program, the priority area of development of Earth Sciences Department of National Natural Science Foundation of China, State Science and Technology Support Program etc. have conducted a series of cutting-edge physical geography research. A number of new methods and techniques for physical geography research have emerged in data collection, model simulation, laboratory analysis, studies on physical geographical processes and environmental change and global physical geographical research.

In recent years, promoted by tremendous demands from national economic construction, great progress has been made in geomorphology and Quaternary geology in China. This article generalizes the recent progresses, mainly those in the period 2006-2008, including the progress in the fields of tectonic landforms, fluvial landforms, eolian landforms, glacial landforms, estuary and coastal landforms and Quaternary environmental evolution. Furthermore some suggestions are proposed to develop the discipline in the following aspects: (1) Studies of basic theories; (2) Research into applied geomorphology and Quaternary geology concerning the key construction projects; (3) Experimental studies, both in laboratories and in field surveys; (4) Training of young geomorphologists and Quaternary geologists.

Wetland research in landscape ecology, as a new hot field in recent years, has resulted in the development of wetland science. However, wetland research on landscape scale is a complex process which integrates wetland ecology with landscape methodology. So some problems have emerged in the development of wetland in landscape research, and significantly blocked the progress for wetland research in advance. This paper elaborates the current situation and problems in landscape studies on wetlands, and discusses future of wetland research in landscape ecology. We believe that wetland research into landscape ecology is still the main field in conservation and rational utilization of wetlands. Especially, we have obtained latest conclusions in landscape structure and pattern, process and function, evaluation and management of wetlands. But some new problems are increasingly emerged, including the concept of wetland landscape, classification, precision of information of wetlands from remote sensing imagine, application of multi-scale data, methodology of structure and pattern and scale choice for process and function of wetlands. How can we solve these problems, and how can we apply the theory of landscape ecology to the practice of wetland research? In future, five aspects are to be addressed: (1) to focus attention on wetland classification system with special ecological characteristics and distribution features in a given geographical condition; (2) to strengthen studies on landscape fragmentation of wetlands to exhibit changes in landscape patterns of wetlands impacted by human activities; (3) to develop new methodology for landscape patterns by integrating ecological process and functions of wetlands; (4) to conduct multi-scale biodiversity of wetlands study to exhibit maintaining capacity of wetland landscape in different patch-corridor-metrics models influenced by natural or human activities in a given region; and (5) to place emphasis on landscape management research in applying principles of pattern-process-function for conservation, planning and design of wetlands.

Land use and land cover change as the core of coupled human-environment systems has become a potential field of land change science (LCS) in the study of global environment change. Based on remotely sensed data of land use change with the spatial resolution of 1km ×1km on national scale among every five years, this paper designed a new dynamic regionalization according to the comprehensive characteristics of land use including regional differentiation, physical, economic, and macro-policy factors as well. Spatial pattern of land use change and its driving forces were investigated in Chia in the early 21st century. To sum up, land use pattern of this period was characterized by rapid changes in the whole country. Over the agricultural zones,e.g., Huang-Huai-Hai Plains, the southeast coastal area and Sichuan Basin, the built-up and residential areas were considerably expanded to a great proportion in the northwestern oasis agricultural zones and the northeastern zone led to a slight increase of arable land aea in the northern China. Due to the "grain for green" policy, forest area was significantly increased in the middle and western developing region,Where the vegetation coverage was substanially enlarged, likewise. This paper argued the main driving forces as the implementation of the strategy on land use and regional development, such as the "Western Development", "the Revitalization of the Northeast" policy, coupled with rapidly economic development during this period.

A variety of methods, including Markov chains, multivariate statistics, optimization, system dynamics, and CLUE/CA, have been widely used to study land use change in different areas. Previous studies indicate that these methods obviously have their own pros and cons when they are applied to the studies on land use change. New approaches will probably provide a better alternative if it can assimilate some of the advantages of current available methods.Case-based reasoning (CBR) is an effective method which was widely used to study geographical problems. However, the CBR approach is far from perfect in presenting complicated geographical phenomena, particularly in computing and reasoning the similarity between current study cases to those ones that have been studied. Research is in great need to improve CBR-based geographic information portrayal modeling and reasoning algorithm. This paper reports a CBR-based method, including a spatial relationship extracting algorithm and a model describing the similar reasoning between spatially related cases. These methods were tested by examining the land use change in Zhuhai City, which is located on the western Pearl River Mouth of Guangdong, China. In order to evaluate the prediction accuracy derived from CBR-based method, we also use Bayesian network method to study land use change in our study area.As the results indicate, both CBR and Bayesian network approaches yielded similar prediction accuracy. However, the advantages in CBR approach are obvious, particularly in dealing with complicated geographic phenomena. When using the CBR method, it is unnecessary to define those complicated conversion regulations. Instead, the method predicts land use change simply based on knowledge retrieved from old cases, hence significantly improving the efficiency in building the case library, as well as case querying in the library. By contrast, Bayesian networks require extensive computation and more unrealistic assumptions, i.e., complete dataset, no preferred selection, and non-continuous variables.

Landscape index is an instrument commonly used for quantitative analysis of landscape pattern. However, most of landscape indices are generally focused on simple analysis and description of the geometric features of a landscape patch or pattern, while neglecting information on dynamic changes of landscape pattern. In this paper a new landscape index, i.e., landscape expansion index (LEI), is proposed. In contrast with conventional landscape indices, LEI contains information of the formation processes of landscape pattern, so it can be used to analyze the dynamic changes of two or more temporal phases of landscape pattern, since conventional landscape indices only reflect information for one certain temporal phase of landscape pattern. Landscape expansion index was applied to studies on the urban landscape expansion of Dongguan City, Guangdong, China for the period of 1988-2006, and the results indicate that LEI can perfectly identify the three types of urban expansion, i.e., infilling type, edge-expansion type and outlying type. Additionally, based on an analysis of the LEI changes in the urban expansion processes of Dongguan City, it was found that the rule governing urban expansion of Dongguan City is consistent with the phases theory on urban growth. This study further demonstrates that LEI can be used effectively for a quantitative analysis of the dynamic changes of landscape pattern, and LEI proves to be significant to the studies on landscape pattern and its dynamic changes.

Traditional spatial clustering methods can not avoid the disadvantage of "hardware division", and can not describe the physical characteristics of spatial entity effectively. One-dimensional cloud model can not accurately reflect multi-attribute characteristics of the real-world. Besides, essential information of spatial objects might be lost during procedure of simple fusion. Standard two-dimensional cloud model overcomes some shortcomings of one-dimensional cloud, but it still can not meet the needs of simulating the non-homogeneous and non-symmetry characteristics of complex geographical phenomena. In view of the above, this paper sets forth a general multi-dimensional cloud model, which describes the characteristics of spatial objects more reasonably. Based on the empirical research, a detailed interpretation of clustering results is made from the spatial distribution of membership degree of clustering, the comparative study of Fuzzy C-means and a coupled analysis of residential land prices. It is found that general multi-dimensional cloud model can reflect the integrated characteristics of spatial objects better, reveal the spatial distribution of potential information, and realize spatial division more accurately in complex circumstances. However, due to the complexity of spatial interactions among geographical entities, the construction of cloud model is a specific and challenging task.