As a radical method in geographical research, geographical regionalization has been widely used by geographers in their works, even since earlier times. But there are few documents devoted to the discussion of the geographical regionalization itself. The present article tries to probe into its connotation and contents of the geographical regionalization in the context of a methodology. As is well known, there exist similarities and dissimilarities among the geographical zones, and zonality is a universal theorem governing geographical distribution. Therefore, geographical regionalization exists objectively, and geographers just try to develop and construct an image of geographical realities. At the level of concept, geographical regionalization can be referred to a draft of regional division which meets some practical purposes, or a process a dividing region which adopts certain indexes and uses some techniques to divide an area (region) into many inter-related sub-areas (sub-regions), or a method to reveal the laws hidden in various geographical phenomena. As a draft, map-based form is a good way to describe the distribution of geographical features and phenomena. Clustering and classification are usually used in the process of regionalization in traditional physical regionalization. But these methods have little consideration of temporal variation of the geographical features. On the basis of analysis of the various regionalization drafts and plans, we proposed a scheme composed of five elements for geographical regionalization. Any regionalization must start from the understanding of the regionalization ontology composed of objects and aims and tasks of a geographical regionalization. The principles and criteria are the bases for the geographical regionalization and should be carefully designed and selected to fully meet the needs of the regionalization. Regionalization models include the model for dividing an area and determining the boundaries among the sub-areas. Regionalization information system stores the attributes of all sub-areas and provides the functions for assessing and simulating the draft of a geographical regionalization.
It is of great significance to research the changing patterns of current regional cultivated land and explore its impact on grain productivity. "3S" technology can not only improve precision, speed and efficiency of data collection, but also obtain and manage various kinds of agricultural resource information with spatial attributes effectively, and monitor and assess the cultivated land dynamic change. This research is innovative in such aspects as research content, method and so on. Firstly, taking Northeast China as a study area, with the help of "3S" technology and on the basis of spatial and temporal land resource data, agricultural statistics data and considering the natural and socio-economic factors, this paper analyzed the impact of cultivated land change on the grain production capacity within this region in terms of cultivated land quantity, cultivated land quality, crop structure etc. Secondly, since the soil nutrient data obtained from field survey in 2005 differ greatly from the data obtained at the time of the second soil survey in the 1980s on the aspect of sample position, quantity, time and soil analytical method, this paper did not carry out comparative research with the cultivated land quality of the period of the second soil survey, but analyzed the spatial distribution of the change of the cultivated land quality caused by the change of cultivated land quantity. Thirdly, considering cultivated land quality is the comprehensive reflection of different properties of cultivated land, the elements of cultivated land quality include the natural factors and social-economic factors mainly. And the natural resources, cultural structure and social-economic conditions among different regions may vary greatly, thus the natural and social-economic factors will exert different effects on grain production in different regions, and this proves that it is important to manage cultivated land resources based on regionalization. In recent years, the peasants have increased the input amount on the cultivated land, such as fertilizer and mulch film, which resulted in different effects on cultivated land quality in Northeast China. Under the above-mentioned background, this paper analyzed cultivated land quality information in the concerned region. The method was to explore natural quality grading and utilizing quality grading on cultivated land respectively through natural quality grading and utilizing quality grading indicator systems. And then we divided the whole region into high-yield cultivated land, medium-yield cultivated land and low-yield cultivated land based on per unit area grain yield, and the correlation was analyzed between natural quality grading of land and per unit area grain yield as well as between utilizing quality grading of land and grain yield per unit area through GIS method. In a word, this paper can provide some help to sustainable utilization and management of cultivated land resource in the study and offer useful reference for the similar research in other regions.
Crop area estimation is a key technique for crop yield prediction. Today remotely sensed data have been widely applied to crop area estimation, but the result often differs from the statistics of crop area in the Statistical Yearbook, therefore the data of crop yield estimation by using remote sensing data is less adopted in the government's agricultural decision. Moreover, agricultural subsidy policy has been adopted by many countries, which aimed at the protection and development of agriculture. In China, the grain subsidy was provided according to taxed farmland area, a kind of statistics of crop area and usually smaller than the actual crop area, which caused part of peasant profits to be lost. Why the difference between the statistics of crop area in the Statistical Yearbook differ from predicted result by using remote sensing technique? Which is more close to the actual crop area? For answering the above questions and preventing peasant profits from being damaged, this paper studied the middle-season rice area in Honghu city, Hubei Province by using SPOT satellite imagery with a 10-m spatial resolution and data from field sampling survey. The result shows that the statistical area of middle-season rice from the Statistical Yearbook of Honghu city in 2006 was remarkably smaller than the actual and the predicted data of 58788.09 hm2C by remote sensing technique, or 52.156% lower than the latter. The main reason is due to the high ratio of customary unit of crop area adopted in estimation to standard unit (1.507). Besides, some local government concealed the actual rice planting area for evasion of agricultural taxation, which also made the statistical area of the middle-season rice differ from the actual and the predicted data by using remote sensing technique to a certain extent.
Under the background of economic globalization, container shipping, which has the character of pronounced scale economy, is an indispensable link of a modern economy. Since the container ships become larger and larger, the expansion of Panama Canal has been put to agenda, therefore "round-the-world service", which can exploit economy of scale most, will reappear soon, hence forming a world-wide hub-spoke network eventually. This study analyses shipping cost to find the best locations of hub-ports of the container service which is based on Ashar's Equatorial Round-The-World Service (ERTW Service). How to choosing hub-ports en route will affect the world regional economic development in the future, so this study is quite meaningful. The result of this study differs slightly from Ashar's ERTW Service, for example, the locations of ports of Chinese Taiwan are quite superior, while those of Chinese Mainland, especially those along the coast of Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, are not so good comparatively. Although this study is from a new aspect which is pure economical and makes the result somewhat deviate from the status quo, it introduces a new quantitative method to analyse transportation geography. The result of this study reveals the disadvantages of the locations of ports of Chinese Mainland. The emergency is to reinforce the construction and management of these ports to attract more container services to meet the future challenges.
Based on data of export to other provinces and import from other provinces, with statistical analysis by SPSS and spatial analysis by GIS, change of regional type of coal flow from the 1st Five-Year Plan (FYP) to the 10th FYP of all 31 provinces in China are discussed firstly, spatial-temporal process of coal flow among regions in province scale are studied secondly, and driving force of the change of temporal-spatial process of coal flowing are explored lastly. The dynamic characteristics of coal interprovincial flow from the 1st FYP to the 10th FYP are: quantity of interprovincial coal flow increase gradually with the average annual increase rate of export and import reaching 5.9% and 5.6% respectively. The range of interprovincial coal flow extends gradually, for example, the number of province that has no interprovincial coal flow reduced from 10 in 1957 to 2 in 2005. Spatial structure of interprovincial coal flow can be depicted as that output stream concentrated on few provinces, while a great number of provinces need to input coal from other provinces to satisfy industrial and domestic demand. The number of export provinces is less than that of import provinces, while the ratio of export coal of the primacy exporter in total coal export is more than that of import coal of the primary importer in total coal import. The main driving forces of temporal-spatial change of interprovincial coal flow lie in: (1) the deficit between coal production and consumption is the primary driving force of coal regional flow. The coal production is more than coal consumption in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia and some provinces in Northwest and Southwest China, while the coal consumption is more than coal production of most provinces in eastern China, southern China and Northeast China. So coal flow from the north to the south, and flow from the west to the east is the spatial pattern of coal regional flow in China. (2) To perfect transportation can facilitate coal regional flow. Provinces with road density index being above 20 can transport coal out smoothly, while it is difficult to do so for provinces with road density index under 20 in 2005. Besides, making infrastructure layout assort with coal production distribution can boost coal regional flow. (3) Regional price differentia is a signal of coal regional flow, which can influence the direction and quantity of coal regional flow.
Guangzhou had been one of the most important foreign trade harbors before the Qing Dynasty. Port market, foreign trade, cultural diversity and the "Fan Fang (the authorized residential cluster for foreigners)" etc. had exerted a significant impact on the urban socio-spatial structure. In the earlier Qing Dynasty, Guangzhou was designated as the only foreign trade harbor, which promoted the flourish of transnational trade. The "Xi Guan (the outside of the west gate of Guangzhou)" and the southern area close to the Pearl River attracted the local rich and foreign traders for living, while the inner city was mainly occupied by the Man nationality and the Han nationality, and the former with higher social status was more privileged in residential choice etc. In general, Guangzhou had a "dual-core" socio-spatial structure, that is, the rich in the western part and the bureaucracy in the eastern part. The "Xi Guan" and "Nan Guan (close to the Pearl River)" were better-off due to their closeness to the Pearl River and the transnational trade. Meanwhile, the old inner city had been the feudal official area and the residence for the bureaucracy and the aristocrat. This is the evolutional path of socio-spatial differentiation of Guangzhou. For the "Xi Guan" in the later Qing Dynasty, it could be sorted into the weaving factories for the workers, the newly-built residences for the local rich and the transnational trade district for the foreign traders, which had some characteristics of the colonial trade harbor city. By and large, the natural conditions had affected the urban sprawl; the designation of the only foreign trade harbor made Xi Guan become the merchant and tradesmen district, the inner city was the upper scholar-officials district. All of these could contribute to the formation of urban socio-spatial structure of Guangzhou in the Qing Dynasty.
Cognitive map, an internal representation of outside environment, is usually inconsistent with the real map. Cognitive map and its distortions are very significant for urban planning and construction. To date, sketch mapping is a dominant method to externalize cognitive map. In this study, we conduct a questionnaire investigation in Beijing by radom sampling of people to draw a sketch of Beijing city, then analyze major public imaginary of the city. By a bidimensional regression (BR) along with Standard Deviational Ellipse, we quantitatively measure the global and local map distortions, and derive distortion index (DI). Besides, we use Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the radius of the distortion based on DI. It shows that the average cognitive distortion of Beijing residents is 2 km to 3 km, the global distortion is elongated in the southwest-northeast direction and contracted in the east-west direction, and the northern local distortions are more obvious than the southern ones. Individual DI is negatively correlated with the extent of the familiarity of all landmarks; and remarkably correlated with other factors, such as gender, driving or not, the scope of activity, daily travel frequency, years of residence, and distance to anchor point.
Hinterland supplies resources for the economic activities of central cities, so the range and the quality of hinterland are very important to city's development. However, the existing hinterland delimitation models are not enough to explain and analyze the complexities of urban system in China for their lack of maneuverability and their limit to only one indicator. In this paper, complex components for calculating the urban synthetical scale value are selected, with consideration to the following five specific aspects, i.e., population, economy, commerce, traffic and government capability, and the value is calculated by means of principal component analysis. Then, China is divided into 338828 grids, the scale of which is 5 km ×5 km, with the support of ArcGIS software. The field-strength of each grid influenced by cities at prefecture level or above in China can also be calculated. Meanwhile, each grid is allocated to exclusive city in the light of "maximal field-strength choosing" principle, and then, the hinterland area of 283 cities at prefecture level or above in 2004 in China can be delimitated automatically. Finally, the coherence and difference between hinterland area and administrative division are studied by overlaying these areas with province boundaries in order to provide scientific basis for adjustment of administrative division and delimitation of urban economic region. Results show that (1) the difference of urban hinterland cities was obvious among the cities at prefecture level or above in China, and the concrete facts show that hinterland area of the western cities is larger than that of the eastern ones, in which the maximum hinterland area is 5488 times of the minimum one. (2) The relationships between urban hinterlands are identified as four types: coexistence, inclusion, semi-inclusion and competition. (3) The coincidence degree between urban hinterland areas and their administrative division is lower. On the basis of measurement and analysis for urban hinterland, a three-level zoning project of urban economic regions of the whole country is put forward. According to the project, the first-level division includes North Region, Middle-and-east Region and South Region; the second-level division includes 11 regions, which are North China, Northeast China, East China, Shandong, Fujian, Central China, South China, Southwest China, Tibet, Northwest China and Xinjiang; and the third-level division is comprised of 38 districts, which are named after cities at provincial capital level or above. The measurement results also indicate that application of GIS spatial analysis methods to delimitate urban hinterland is convenient, precise and feasible, which can be an alternative approach of urban economic region division and urban system planning.
Studies on the residents' perceptions and attitudes toward tourism destinations have been a lasting study topic of tourism geography. A comparative study of different resort residents' perceptions and attitudes is one of the future study subjects. The paper analyzes the difference of residents' perceptions and attitudes in Xidi and Jiuzhaigou. The results are drawn as follows: (1) Residents in Xidi and Jiuzhaigou all have positive perceptions and attitudes toward the tourism impacts in the host community. But residents in Jiuzhaigou have more positive support to the tourism development than those in Xidi, and they have much more tourism income than those in Xidi. (2) Residents in Jiuzhaigou have more tourism economic profit, socio-cultural impact and environmental impact perceptions than those in Xidi. At the same time, they have also more tourism economic cost perceptions. 3) From the residents' characteristics, the paper identified correlation factors and predictors of residents' attitudes toward tourism development in Xidi Village and Jiuzhaigou resort by correlation and regression analysis. There are different community characteristics in different types of tourism destinations. The findings indicate that these communities with different characteristics, such as resort characteristics, dependence on the tourism industry, economic development level, territorial structure, heritage protection and tourism management mechanism and host-gest cultural difference, should have different residents' perceptions and attitudes toward tourism impacts. Based on social exchange theory, because of capital proceeds and compensation of being disturbed, residents have more profit expectations. Then this brings out that their realistic profit is lower than their expected profit. So compared with their counterparts in Jiuzhaigou, residents in Xidi tend to underestimate tourism economic profit and social profit, and overestimate social cost.
With the Shift-share Method, the international visitor arrivals statistical data and sampling survey data from 1999 to 2005 of Shanghai and the provinces of the Yangtze River Valley (YRV) have been analyzed, indicating that the contribution of structural shifted components plays a leading role, and the contribution of share components plays a fundamental role in the in-flow and out-flow tourist increment in the provinces of the YRV from or to Shanghai. The competitive shifted components also make contributions but their effect is obviously less than other components. Generally, the structural shifted components and the share components highly concentrate in Shanghai's two neighboring provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, showing a highly regional agglomeration; however, as for the component contributions to the in-flow and out-flow tourist increments in Shanghai, there exists disproportionality in influence in the various provinces of the Yangtze River Delta. To be more specific, the intensity of tourist flow from Shanghai, from east to west, shows a U-shaped distribution. In addition, although the spatial distance is an important factor affecting the change of spatial difference of tourist flow, the regional differences of tourism resource endowment, traffic, characteristics and supply of tourist products and the regional tourism integration, are the fundamental causes affecting tourism interaction between the metropolis and its region, and the change of tourism spatial distribution. It is strategically important to develop regional tourism by promoting the tourism interaction between the metropolis and its region in different spatial scales, so as to realize harmonious development and improve tourism spatial efficiency in China.
