Improving the quality of environment in ecologically fragile areas had been paid much attention by scholars and government at different levels. Over the past decade, a large number of rural labors had migrated into urban areas. To what extent would the migration affect the changes of vegetation cover in ecologically fragile areas? In this study, we analyzed the spatio-temporal variation of vegetation cover and its relationship with human activities at the county level based on the NDVI data with a resolution of 1 km, meteorological data and economic data from 2000 to 2010 in Inner Mongolia. The major methods included trend line analysis method, significance testing and multi-regression analysis method. The main conclusions were as follows: (1) The vegetation cover of the study area increased by 10.1% during 2000-2010. More than 28% of the vegetation cover increased significantly, and only about 2% decreased evidently during the study period. (2) The area with significant degradation presented a banded distribution in the northern fringe of farming-pastoral ecotone in the central part of Inner Mongolia. It is shown that the ecological environment is still fragile in this area, which should be focused on. The area where vegetation cover significantly improved showed a concentrated distribution in the southeast and west of Inner Mongolia. (3) Effects of agricultural labor on vegetation cover had exceeded those of natural factors such as climate. The emigration of agricultural labor had improved vegetation cover significantly.

Place is a subjective creation of human groups at regional level. Its structure changes with differences among diverse identity groups. In order to explore the dimensions and structure of placeness identity, this paper selects Barkhor Street in Lhasa as a case to conduct an empirical research from the tourists' perspective. Involving theoretical construction and empirical test, the research uses Grounded Theory and SEM to enrich the theoretical connotation of place theory and provide reference for further research. The authors build an exploratory theoretical model of tourists' placeness identity, which includes three categories-perceptional space, living space and subjective space, and seven subcategories-natural distinctiveness, cultural distinctiveness, self-efficiency, environmental manageability, consistency, attachment and self-esteem. Placeness identity is not a metaphysical concept, but a concept existing in the heart of each tourist. A questionnaire was developed to measure tourists' placeness identity. The scale consists of 23 items, which belong to seven dimensions. The scale is well-formed and has a good reliability and validity. The study finds that tourists tend to agree with the features of Barkhor Street' placeness. Perceptional space has the highest score, followed by living space and subjective space. In the seven subcategories, cultural distinctiveness is the highest, followed by natural distinctiveness, attachment, self-efficiency, environmental manageability, self-esteem, and consistency. This paper designed five competition models according to the theoretical structure. With confirmatory factor analysis, model five was found to be the best model which has good convergent validity and discriminant validity. The conclusion confirms the effectiveness of the exploratory model. In addition, this paper discusses the formation procedure of placeness, and the interaction between the production of space and placeness identity, as well as the level progression and transformation of placeness identity.

In the period of rapid urbanization of China at present, studies on the meaning space structure in rural villages will be helpful for understanding the complicated psychological bond between community members and residential settings, and conducive to mitigate social frictions and conflicts caused by non-economic factors in the village demolition and relocation process. In this research, data were collected by semi-structured interview and participatory mapping techniques, and 251 residents from 9 villages were investigated. Those villages would be removed and relocated for the registration of Han Chang'an City Historical Site as a UNESCO World Culture Heritage. Through qualitative analysis of the interviews, 12 place feature categories, 7 place meaning categories and 34 place meaning sub-categories were identified. Based on the above attribute analysis, cross-tabulation analysis was used to examine the association between place features and meanings, and GIS tool was used to reveal and visualize the residents' place perception spatial configuration. The findings show that village, culture relics, house and people are among the significant place features, and person-place fit, personal feelings, historical-cultural connection, values and accomplishments are the important meaning categories. As the carriers, place features symbolize place meanings in both collective and selective ways. Place features form a system together with associated meanings, by which the place is defined and distinguished from other places. In addition, there exists a spatial pattern of residents' perceptions, which is characterized by the perception hotspot areas around the villages and relics, carrying important place meanings of local people in the study area. Feeling connection, place fit and personal identity make sense for the explanation to the revealed meaning space structure. The extending suggestion of this study is that the preservation of typical place features for local people in some forms will be helpful for the removal communities preserving homeland attachment.

Thousands of traditional settlements with prominent historical and cultural information of China are considered as the Chinese traditional treasures. They play an important role in the new tide of current social-economic development and urbanization processes of China. Recently, the Landscape Gene Theory (LGT), which aims to dissect the cultural features of traditional settlements of China, is a powerful tool for a better understanding of the landscape patterns of traditional settlements and is gaining more and more attention. Plenty of prominent cultural factors derived from the traditional settlements are identified by LGT. These are very helpful knowledge about the intrinsic cultural features implicated in the traditional settlements. However, LGT does not still cope well with the co-relationships among landscape genes of traditional settlements. Therefore, LGT cannot capture the mechanisms between the prominent cultural factors and landscape images of traditional settlements. Targeted to partly resolve this issue, this paper employs methods in genome mapping of biology and LGT to integrate into a new research framework to address these mechanisms. The framework is named as Traditional Settlement Landscapes' Genome Maps (TSLGM) according to its conception and connotation. The paper is organized in the following orders. Firstly, it makes the definition and classification of TSLGM by the theoretical fundamental and essential features of LGT. Secondly, the functionalities and academic significances of TSLGM are also highlighted. Thirdly, practical flowcharts for constructing and organizing an instance of TSLGM are brought forward. Finally, 30 well-known traditional settlements of Hunan Province of China are taken as study areas. The paper portrays the spatial pattern for the 30 traditional settlements according to their TSLGM. Furthermore, a genome pattern identification of landscape genes of traditional settlements is performed by using Jinshan village of Rucheng County as an example. To sum up, this paper indicates that TSLGM plays a paramount role in capturing characteristics of the traditional settlements, which is a potential methodological progress for LGT. From this paper, it is found that TSLGM has some potential points in traditional settlement digitalization, planning pattern mining and characteristics of regional traditional landscapes identification.