Using MSS images in the middle and late 1970s, TM images in the early 1990s and TM/ETM images in 2004, grassland degradation in the Three-River Headwaters Region is interpreted through analysis on RS images in two time series, then the spatial and temporal characteristics of grassland degradation since the 1970s in the Three-River Headwaters Region are analyzed. The results show that grassland degradation in the Three-River Headwaters Region is a continuous changing process which has large area of influence and long time scale, and the drastic intensification phenomenon does not exist in the 1990s as a whole. Grassland degradation pattern in the Three-River Headwaters Region took shape initially in the middle and late 1970s, since the 1970s, this degradation process has taken place continuously, characterizing obviously different rules in different regions. Such as, in humid and sub-humid meadow grassland, grassland firstly fragmentizes, then the degree of vegetation coverage decreases continuously, and finally "black-soil-patch" degraded grassland formed. But in semiarid and arid steppe regions, the degree of grassland vegetation coverage decreases continuously, and finally desertification formed. Because grassland degradation has obvious regional diversity, grassland degradation in the Three-River Headwaters Region could be classified into seven regions, and each region has different characteristics in type, grade, scale and time process of grassland degradation.
This study examined livelihood diversification and cropland use pattern in Keerma village, located in Jinchuan County, eastern Tibetan Plateau. Through stratified random sampling survey, participatory rural appraisal, investigation of households' plots and statistical methods, 63 households and 272 cropland plots were systemically investigated and sampled. The results show: (1) Different types of households have variety livelihood strategies, portfolio and income. Livelihood diversification and introducing and expanding off-farm activities can be the future trend, whereas, adverse natural environment, social-economic conditions and peasants' capabilities together affect sustainable livelihoods and land use. (2) Each livelihood strategy has its own impact on land use, mainly affecting land use type and land use intensification level. (3) Diversification into off-farm activities could be the key of building sustainable livelihoods and the essential approach to the realization of sustainable land use in the region.
Along with the rapid development of Chinese economy, remarkable changes of spatial patterns and specialization level of commodity exchange markets have taken place. According to the spatial analysis of large-scale commodity exchange markets of China from 2000 to 2005, the authors conclude that the concentration degree of large-scale commodity exchange markets is related with market types, those developed based upon the particular geographical environments and natural resources possess relatively high and steady degree of spatial concentration; those developed on the basis of high tech and advanced industries have relatively low degree of spatial concentration at zonal level and relatively high degree of spatial concentration at provincial level; and those developed on the popular consumption demand are provided with rather low degree of spatial concentration at various spatial levels. Meanwhile, large-scale commodity exchange markets tend to be concentrated in the eastern coastal areas of China and large cities. However, their specialization index is high at provincial level, but it drops totally. The statistical regression analysis shows that the level of urbanization, Engel coefficient and the degree of market development have fairly notable impact on the specialization of large-scale commodity exchange markets, but the level of industrial concentration, the development level of private economy and the net income of urban residents have no marked effect on the specialization of large-scale commodity exchange markets, and the index of trade competitiveness has slight impact on it.
The study on spatial pattern of both urban commercial and residential places is one of the important fields in urban geography. The analysis on micro-behavior has become one of the more frequently used methods in recent years. In order to better understand the characteristics and the relationship between urban commercial and residential space, a case study in Guangzhou is done, and the data based on a questionnaire with 1428 people involved from eight typical communities are collected. The analysis shows that firstly, people's travel mode, trip distance and multi-objective traveling are closely realted with type of communities, location, service around, and urban commercial space. Secondly, the hierachical system of urban commercial space clearly exists. The traditional shopping center is one of the most attractive centers, followed by the new shopping centers formed in the 1980s. However, the type of the consumers attracted is different. The sub-centers and service area around the neighborhoods also play an important role in daily shopping service. Thirdly, because of the mismatch between commercial supply and consumer's demand, some of the residents living in the Danwei (work place) residential areas regularly visit the traditional commercial centers in the inner city. Finally, due to the lack of shopping supply, people in commercial housing area and the economic affordable housing area in the peripheries can go shopping nearby but have to go to the commercial centers for regular shopping, which increases their expenses. Thus analyzing the distribution pattern of people's shopping travel is one of the means for understanding the characteristics and developing dynamic pattern of urban structure.
An integrated model for spatial association metrics is developed on the basis of fractal correlation coefficient, global and local spatial association measurements, and semivarigram. And six input data for the model are acquired by multi-source satellite imageries covering the period 1984-2005, including Landsat TM or ETM, IRS-P6. Then, we used the model to study the urban growth periodicity, the fractal dimensions of the built-up area, the spatial distribution and evolvement of the "hot spot" districts of urban growth as well as the pattern evolution of spatial gradient since the reform and opening-up of China. Finally, some conclusions are drawn as follows. (1) Since the 1980s, Suzhou's urban growth has experienced four stages from a gradual increase, a slow decrease, then a rapid rise to a sharp decline. (2) There exists an obvious characteristic of spatial evolution and shift according to the analysis of high-value clusters, viz. "hot spots", of urban growth intensity. The hot spot of urbanization is in turn from 1984 to 2005, going from Suzhou city, Suzhou city-Wujiang axis to Suzhou city-Kunshan axis along the Shanghai-Nanjing expressway, and then to Taicang-Changshu-Zhangjiagang axis along the Yangtze River. These hot spot regions are the cores driving social and economic development in differenrt periods in Suzhou. In the development period, spatial continuity and self-organization of urban growth has been intensified, and the spatial form of urbanization changed from decentralization in the initial stage to centralization at present. Additionally, the structural difference due to spatial association becomes more and more obvious with a characteristic of strip association, showing a tendency of a regional urbanization. It is worth noting the fact that the driving force of urbanization is different in different stages.
Total factor productivity is a basic index reflecting the quality of economic growth and the rate of technical progress in a country or a region. Adopting the Solow's Residual Method and the C-D production function, this paper estimates tourism total factor productivity (TTFP) growth rates and identifies sources of tourism economic growth for the period from 1992 to 2005 in China and its 30 provinces (municipalities or regions) except Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). Based on it, this paper analyzes the causality between TTFP and tourism economic growth, then classifies the tourism growth patterns of 30 provinces into five categories according to the contribution of TTFP to tourism economic growth, and finally discusses the divergence of TTFPs and tourism economic growth rates among 30 provinces. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) The Chinese tourism industry belongs to an obvious factor-driven economy with cheap labor forces contributed 63.69% to the total economic growth. (2) The average growth rate of TTFP is slightly positive by 2.91% during the sample period thanks to the effect of tourism education, encouraging policy, and better information provision, but may be hampered by the inadequate infrastructure investment and investment inefficiency. (3) Tourism technical progress is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for tourism growth, and the improvement of tourism technical progress is irrelevant to region's economic level, nor to its geographic location due to the enclave tourism model and the special trait of tourism that tourist attractions are "fixed" in geographic location. (4) There is obvious and ever enlarging divergence among provinces in tourism growth pattern and TTFP growth rate. If it continues, the provincial tourism developing level will be even more unbalanced in the future. But it will be helpful for the laggards to obtain higher TTFP growth rate by enhancing the public services system.
Development of transport, as one of the most important causes of changing economic activity and location advantages, is essential to economy development. The purpose of this paper, is to analyze the effect of transport accessibility on regional economy. Cobb-Douglas production function modeling, spatial analysis and network analysis in ArcGIS have been used to analyze this connection. Cobb-Douglas production function (Y = A Ka Lb, Y = Income, K=Capital, L=Labor, A=Technology, a and b are positive parameters) is used to reflect mutual relation between investment and output. It has been applied to many fields such as industry, energy sources, regional economic programming and agricultural management. Accessibility is a basic index which is used to describe traffic cost. Accessibility is one of the main reasons to cause spatial difference of regional economy, because it can reflect the degree of convenience from one place to another using certain traffic system and the economic activity and location advantages at one place on a large scale. Macroeconomic development can be seen as output of social capital investment. As part of social capital investment, infrastructure construction is very important to the regional economic development. In order to analyze the effect of transport accessibility on investment performance in regional economy and its weight in the economic growth, the authors adopted Cobb-Douglas production function and its regression modeling to constructe a homeostasis equation based on the relationship between investment (transport accessibility and total investment) and output (GDP). The timescale includes 11 years from 1995 to 2005 which was divided into two stages (1995-2000, and 2000-2005, especially). Also, we integrated spatial analysis method in GIS with economic modeling theory and constructed a multifactor regression equation. According to these models, feasibility of developing transport accessibility and its roles in macroeconomy have been analyzed with the spatial-temporal change of transport network and change characteristic of macroeconomy in the same term. The result indicates that the transport accessibilities are still very low and disproportional in many places in Xinjiang. Transport accessibilities polarize in some regions. There are big gaps among the other regions. Also, it has not come into being an organic pattern in line or polygon besides some points. It also shows that economic development depends mainly on investment scale when transport accessibility is suitable for some economic level, however, investment performance would be restricted by transport accessibility when the latter is lower than the level. There exists different response relationships between fluctuation of transport accessibility and economy in different terms. The improvement of transport accessibility will be in the interests of national economy. Transport cost, one of the most important factors, differs greatly throughout Xinjiang. It is very high in most areas. The spatial distribution of difference is consistent with that of economy based on the analysis of transport cost in increasing 10,000 yuan GDP increase per capita. According to the result, we found Cobb-Douglas production function and the regression modeling can link transport accessibility with macroeconomy. A quantitative analysis has been made between the change of transport network in space and the regional economic performance with the models. The final result shows this method is valuable to decide and optimize investment scale. This study can provide basis for steady, harmonious and balanced economic development.
The development of globalization and advancement of production technology further lead to the transformation of social production organization. New international division of labor has penetrated into the inner layer of products, and the global value chain and the global production networks have been brought into multidisciplinary research. The new theories can better explain the new changes of production organization in modern world. Based on introducing the concepts and remarks of global production networks, this paper firstly discusses the general organization of global production networks of computer industry. Secondly, according to two indexes of value increment and profitability, the paper proposes two kinds of smiling curve and takes the GPN framework to explain it, including value analysis and its spatial competition, corporation organization and power distribution. Thirdly, the paper studies the smiling curve of Chinese computer industry, and holds discussions on value and its spatial competition, and then discusses embeddness of Chinese computer industry to global production networks.
