Changes of cultivated land use structures including type structure, input structure, and plantation structure, could succinctly reveal change of cultivated land use function morphology. Cultivated land use function transition (CLUFT) in the process of socio-economic development, however, is currently an issue to be resolved. Based on the underlying relationship between induced production substitution and cultivated land use structure change, this paper established a comprehensive explanation framework of the CLUFT. Then, the regional CLUFT was studied with Guangdong province as a typical case area. Results show that cultivated land use functional morphology in Guangdong overall entered the interim stage of the transition from socio-economic morphology to ecological and economic morphology. Cultivated land use function in the Pearl River Delta has accomplished the transition from socio-economic morphology to ecological-economic morphology. The rest of districts of Guangdong, however, accomplished the transition from socio-ecological morphology to socio-economic morphology. Both socio-economic and institutional forces drove the CLUFT in Guangdong. Mechanism of the CLUFT behaves as cascading effects of interactions among urbanization, socio-economic development, induced production substitution, changes of cultivated land use structures, and transformation of cultivated land use function morphologies. The positive analysis above justified the comprehensive explanation framework presented in this paper. That is, changes of cultivated land use structures could effectively denote cultivated land use function transition. With socio-economic development from its primary stage to an advanced one, changes of cultivated land use structures will drive transition of cultivated land use function morphology from socio-ecological morphology to socio-economic morphology, and to ecological and economic morphology under the direct force of induced production substitution. This paper presented new knowledges on morphology and transition explanations in land use transition research. Furthermore, new knowledges on the underlying mechanism of cultivated land use transition has been developed based on rethinking of the induced production substitution in agriculture. This study is of significance to bridge the knowledge gap of cultivated land use transition among scholars, the public, and policy makers and to deepen further research on land use transition. Finally, suggestions on transformation from dryland to paddy filed in southern China and control of socio-ecological effects of cultivated land use function transition were discussed.

Land use structure is one of the fundamental spatial features of socioeconomic development. It is also a key issue of urban planning and management in small towns because proper land use structure is related to the improvement of urban function and land use efficiency. The existing literature on land use structure in townships of China is dominated by the studies which either focus on a given region or one certain type of townships, while a nation-wide study is missed. As a result, a generalized knowledge of land use structure in townships remain scarce. This paper aims to fill the research gap. Using the data of 121 townships from a survey conducted under the leadership of the Ministry of Housing and Urban & Rural Development, the paper analyzes the characteristics of land use structure and its mechanisms in townships in China. The results of analysis show that: (1) There is a small variation in land use structure between the townships due to a small size of total population and slight difference in population size between them; (2) Residential land use occupies a high proportion of the total area of land use in most townships due to industrial hollowing-out; (3) Land use structure is significantly related with industrialization and economic growth, and the higher level of economic growth, the higher proportion of industrial land use; (4) Land use structure in the townships which are located near to the large cities shows a clear trend of urbanization-featured land use due to the spillover effects and siphonic effects from these large cities; (5) Land use structure in the townships is obviously affected by land ownership and a higher proportion of state-owned land is related with a higher level of land use for public service facilities. The findings of this paper would have important theoretical values of enriching the existing literature and practical values of guiding urban planning and construction in townships of China.

：The rocky desertification in the karst area is becoming the third largest ecological problem in western China following desertification, as well as soil and water loss. In recent years, rocky desertification in the karst trough valley is increasing seriously, and puts more and more pressure on the environment. Therefore, by GIS spatial analysis functions and geodetector models, this paper aims to explore the spatial distribution of rocky desertification in different gradients and its driving factors based on rock desertification, lithology, slope, elevation, rainfall, land use, population density and the total output value of primary industry in the valley. The results are as follows: (1) The total rocky desertification area in the karst trough area is 21, 323.7 km ², accounting for 8.3% of the land area in the study area; of which the light, moderate and severe rocky desertification areas are 11, 894.8 km ², 8615.8 km ² and 813.1 km ², respectively, accounting for 55.8%, 40.4% and 3.8% of the desertified area. (2) From the spatial distribution, rocky desertification mainly occurs in the continuous limestone, and the light, moderate and severe rocky desertification areas respectively account for 22.1%, 22.4% and 1.9% of the corresponding rocky desertification types in the trough area; Rocky desertification in the trough area mainly occurs in the gradient range of 15° to 25°, and the light, moderate, and severe rocky desertification areas account for 27.1%, 18.2% and 2.3% of the corresponding rocky desertification in the trough area, respectively; From the elevation, it is mainly distributed in the range of 400-800 m, and the areas of rocky desertification with light, moderate, and severe erosion grades account for 24.9%, 18.4% and 0.2% of the corresponding rocky desertification area in the trough area, respectively; From the land use type, it mainly occurs in upland mountains; From the population density, it concentrates in areas with 100-200 persons/km ²; From the total output value of primary industry, it concentrates in areas with 2.5-50 billion. (3) The factor detectors of geographical detectors revealed that the lithology, land use, and slope are the main driving factors for the formation of rocky desertification in the trough region. Interactive detectors further revealed that the lithology and land use types (q = 0.85) together with slopes and land use types (q = 0.75) drive the formation of rocky desertification in the trough area.

Incorporating the economic value of river basin ecosystem services into cost-benefit analysis is the key to solving environmental problems and achieving a sustainable allocation of water resources in river basins. In recent years, with the increase in valuation literature, there has been much controversy in terms of the amount of value and its influencing factors, which has made it difficult to apply these research results to management practices. In this paper, the meta-regression analysis is first applied to the valuation of ecosystem services in the inland river basins of China. The results show that the valuation can be significantly affected by characteristics of the four aspects of valuation research, specifically: object, respondents, measurement method and publications. Among them, the valuation of both the Shiyang River and the Tarim River is significantly higher than that of the Heihe River. The valuation of the upstream portion is significantly higher than that of the middle and lower reaches. The value assessed by the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method is not significantly different from that of the choice experiments. However, it is significantly higher than values obtained by other contingent valuation methods. In addition, valuation over time shows a "declining effect" of 2%-3% per year and valuation in journal literature is significantly higher than that in other forms of literature. By using the n-1 data splitting technique, we applied the results of the meta-regression to out-of-sample benefit transfer, evaluated it, and found a median error of 27.12%. Compared with the existing research, the results are in an acceptable range. Therefore, the meta-regression analysis used in this paper is applicable to the valuation of the ecosystem services of the policy sites in the inland river basins of China.

Urban heat islands resulting from land use and land cover change have become a major barrier to urbanization and sustainable development of ecological urban environments. Although many studies have focused on the interannual and seasonal characteristics of urban heat islands, there has been no comparative analysis of the urban surface thermal landscape at multiple spatio-temporal scales. This study described the spatio-temporal patterns of the urban surface thermal landscape in different seasons and by time of day (daytime/nighttime) in terms of quantity, shape, and structure using MODIS LST products, and revealed the evolution of the urban surface thermal landscape using mapping techniques and analysis of barycenter trajectories in metropolitan Beijing between 2003 and 2017. The conclusions were as follows: (1) The characteristics of the urban surface thermal landscape vary significantly in different seasons and by time of day. (2) The medium-temperature zone constitutes the largest proportion of the area of metropolitan Beijing, which is the most unstable area during the daytime and the instability of the sub-high-temperature and sub-low-temperature zones increased at night. (3) The stable zone is most important in terms of the change in the land surface thermal landscape, followed by the repeated-changes zone and the zone where the change occurred in the first 5 years. The changes of different temperature zones usually increased or decreased progressively. There was a cooling trend in the mountains. In the north mountain-transition zone, the process of transferring between sub-low temperature and medium temperature was repeated. There was a warming trend in the south. (4) The area of the high-temperature zone increased from 2003 to 2017 and its barycenter was concentrated in the city center; the barycenter of the low-temperature zone moved to the urban fringe. The ecological conservation development zone made the greatest contribution to the surface thermal landscape in metropolitan Beijing. The spatio-temporal distribution and evolution of the urban surface thermal landscape support management decisions aimed at alleviating the effect of the urban heat island.

It is of great significance to analyze the main environmental issues, coupled with their spatial heterogeneity, and divide the ecological function zones to achieve ecological security and optimization of territory development in a certain region. In recent years, ecological function zoning, widely concerned by scholars, has played a vital role in regional ecosystem management and sustainable development. There arose a problem that the spatial characteristics of ecological functions were hard to be reflected in the previous studies based on spatial average data over basins or geopolitical regions such as counties, cities and provinces. This paper, using the approaches of coupling self-organizing feature map (SOFM) and support vector machine (SVM), attempts to develop an automatic demarcation and zoning approach, and explores the best possible division of ecological functions in the city of Ordos with the index system of ecological function zoning in mind involving the ecosystem services as well as ecological sensitivity. Ordos, which is located in the transitional zone between temperate grasslands and desserts, has become a key research area of global terrestrial ecosystem. The ecological functional zoning indexes indicate that there appears an obvious spatial heterogeneity of ecosystem functions in Ordos. Accordingly, land grids have been clustered into 7 ecological function types by SOFM with clustering quality index (CQI) in view. Hence, Ordos has been divided into 11 ecological function zones owing to the implementation of SVM to identify the optimal division borders, in which the border demarcation is treated as a classification system in spatial domain. The optimal combination of SVM hyperparameters is determined by grid search method. In this study, machine learning algorithm has been adopted to cope with the situation where the bottom-up physical regionalization might weaken the spatial position attribute of the partition features, and to realize the quantitative conversion from classification to partition. It has turned out that such SOFM-SVM-coupled zoning approach could effectively improve the spatial accuracy of the partition, which can be considered as a new way to realize the automatic ecological zoning.

According to the land supply results obtained from http://www.landchina.com/, this paper explored the spatio-temporal characteristics of state owned construction land supply of counties in China from 2010 to 2015 by using the spatial distribution of gravity-center, locational Gini index and hot spot analysis, and then analyzed the influencing factors of land supply of regions in different development phases based on panel data models. We found that land supply has experienced a process of increasing first and then decreasing, and spatial agglomeration degree, hot spot and sub-hotspot zones of land supply in counties were in general diffusion during the study period. Due to the implementation of "Western Development Strategy", "Aiding Xinjiang" and "Rise of Central China Plan", spatial distribution of gravity-center of land supply in counties moved evidently westward. The land supply was concentrated within the urban agglomerations. The administrative hierarchy of prefecture-level cities with counties was closely related to the land supply scale. In other words, the higher the administrative level of prefecture-level cities is, the larger the average land supply of counties is. There were differences in the total supply land size change and average land supply structure from region to region in different development stages. In general, the regions with high development stages need more construction land. Public finance expenditure, fixed asset investment, secondary industry growth rate, tertiary industry growth rate, growth rate of population size and per capita GDP have different effects on the land supply of regions in different stages. Among them, investment including public finance expenditure and fixed asset investment plays a critical role in promoting the land supply of regions in different development stages.

Changes of rice production in Southern China are crucial to national food security. This study employed Landsat images to map the distributions of paddy rice cropping systems in Southern China in 1990 and 2015, and then explored the impact of rice multiple cropping index changes on grain production capacity. The results indicated that: (1) From 1990 to 2015, the multiple cropping index of rice decreased from 148.3% to 129.3%, and the loss area due to conversion of double cropping rice to single cropping rice ("double to single") was 253. 16×10⁴ hm². The area with most dramatic changes was located in the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain. The rice cropping systems in Southern China showed a change pattern of "double cropping rice shrinkage and single cropping rice expansion" from north to south. (2) From 1990 to 2015, "double to single" led to a reduction of 6.1% and 2.6% in rice production and grain production, respectively. Hunan and Jiangxi, located in the main rice producing areas, as well as Zhejiang with better economic development, had a large reduction in rice production due to "double to single", all exceeding 13%. (3) The grain production capacity of "double to single" paddy field is equivalent to that of 223.3×10⁴ hm² of newly reclaimed cultivated land. The equivalent newly reclaimed cultivated land is 54% of the total newly reclaimed cultivated land through the land consolidation project during 2001-2015, as well as 1.7 times the target of the newly cultivated land goal for the national land consolidation plan (2016-2020). Making full use of the "double to single" paddy field can save approximately 167.44 billion yuan newly reclaimed cultivated land costs. Therefore, instead of pursuing low-quality "new" arable land, it is better to make full use of the existing high-quality "old" arable land. The government should change the assessment method of cultivated land balance, and incorporate the sown area increased by improving multiple cropping index into the cultivated land compensation indicator.

Having arisen as a national strategy and institution, the Major Function Zones Planning (MFZP) will play an active role in guiding and restraining China's long-term spatial development pattern. From the perspective of region uniqueness, it is critical to reveal the genesis (formation and evolution) and feedback (identification and planning) principles for MFZP. This paper takes Chongqing Municipality, a typical provincial unit in Southwest China, as an example to identify the suitable spatial pattern for MFZP by Territorial Space Development Conditions Comprehensive Evaluation (TSDCCE). Depending on perceptual observation of suitable pattern, this paper makes a dominant factors restriction hypothesis, defines the topography and urban location as the dominant factors, and then validates the correlation between dominant factors and Major Function-Oriented Zoning (MFOZ) index system. Then, based on the above analysis results, it discusses the restrictive and spatial stability mechanism originated from dominant factors for MFOZ. The results show that: (1) The spatial pattern of suitability is clear in terms of development or protection. The areas suitable for urbanization are mainly metropolitan regions and some surrounding counties, and sub-regional centers (Wanzhou and Qianjiang) also have relatively high suitability. The areas suitable for ecological protection are mainly located in the northeast and southeast of Chongqing, including Daba mountain area, Three Gorges Reservoir area and Wuling mountain area. (2) Topography and urban location factors dominate the MFOZ spatial pattern in this region. Regression analysis showed that more than 70% of the correlation between the MFOZ index and the topographic factor reached a significant level, while the correlation between the MFOZ index and urban location factor is over 40%. The significant levels (R²) of correlation between the weighting index (topography and urban location) and MFOZ flag variables (A and B index) are more than 0.8; The geographic detector finds that the topography's restriction on MFOZ indicators and urban location factors on that are 9 and 7, respectively, which reaches 0.05 significant level and the explanatory degrees for indicators A and B are about 70% and 60%, respectively. Then combining topography factor and urban location factor, it finds that restriction is obvious and the explanatory degrees for A and B are up to about 90%. (3) The spatial stability mechanism is shown in two aspects: one is the stability transfer mechanism based on the dominant factor's restriction, which is called objective stability; the other is the local relativity index system and the internal cancellation mechanism of the algorithm, namely, subjective stability. The coordination of the two mechanisms verifies the regional adaptability and correctness of the zoning technology system.

The ratio of transpiration to evapotranspiration (T/ET) is a key parameter for quantifying water use efficiency of ecosystems and understanding the interaction between ecosystem carbon uptake and water cycling in the context of global change. The estimation of T/ET has been paid increasing attention from the scientific community in recent years globally. In this paper, we used the Priestly-Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory Model (PT-JPL) driven by regional remote sensing data and gridded meteorological data, to simulate the T/ET in forest ecosystems along the North-South Transect of Eastern China (NSTEC) during 2001-2010, and to analyze the spatial distribution and temporal variation of T/ET, as well as the factors influencing the variation in T/ET. The results show that: (1) The PT-JPL model is suitable for the simulation of evapotranspiration and its components of forest ecosystems in Eastern China, and has relatively good stability and reliability. (2) Spatial distribution of T/ET in forest ecosystems along NSTEC was heterogeneous, i.e., T/ET was higher in the north and lower in the south, with an averaged value of 0.69; and the inter-annual variation of T/ET showed a significantly increasing trend, with an increment of 0.007/yr (p < 0.01). (3) Seasonal and inter-annual variations of T/ET had different dominant factors. Temperature and EVI can explain around 90% (p < 0.01) of the seasonal variation in T/ET, while the inter-annual variation in T/ET was mainly controlled by EVI (53%, p < 0.05).

Currently, the "farmland red line" management has made major achievements in the quantitative protection of Chinese farmland. However, the increase of grain production as well as the improvement of peasants' incomes still calls for more researches concentrated on the recessive farmland transition based on the current resources endowment. The recessive farmland morphology has multi-properties referring different disciplines. So the study of farmland transition needs a multi-disciplinary comprehensive research framework. This paper drew an outline of the farmland transition in China since its founding, and made an in-depth literature review from multi-disciplinary perspectives of management, economics and sociology. Previous research shows an inefficient performance from the aspect of locality, integrity and systematicness. The shortcomings above may weaken its application due to lack of popularization and operability. So the authors argue that, geographical ideology and analytical method should be introduced into current researches on recessive farmland transition. And multi-disciplinary comprehensive researches should be constructed to make up the existing deficiencies. Ultimately, from the conceptual level, the overall design level, and the practical application level, this paper puts forward a multi-disciplinary comprehensive research framework for the recessive farmland transition, and illustrates a concrete application from the problem-oriented perspective.

How to obtain the greatest social and economic benefits with the least input of urban land resources is the center of regional ecological civilization construction. Based on municipal input-output data from 2005-2014, we introduce the SFA (stochastic frontier analysis) to measure the urban land use efficiency of 110 cities located in the Yangtze River Economic Zone, and then analyze the spatial association characteristics of the efficiency. The results show that: (1) Urban land use efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Zone increases from 0.344 to 0.53 during 2005-2014, showing a significant growth trend with a cumulative growth rate of 54.07%. The efficiency growth rate of cities in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River is faster than that of cities in the middle and lower reaches. There is great growth potential across the whole area. (2) The urban land use efficiency shows a "bar-like" distribution across the whole area, which gradually decreases from the east to the west. Not only does it present great differences within each province, but also the inter-provincial differences and differences among the upper, middle and lower reaches are extremely evident. The total land use efficiency of cities in the lower reaches is the highest, followed by cities in the middle reaches and cities in the upper reaches. (3) The Moran's I of the study area is above 0 and increases year on year, which indicates that the land use efficiency among cities has positive spatial correlation, and the agglomeration level is enhanced. The LISA (local indicators of spatial association) reveals the characteristics of "small agglomeration and large dispersion". The High-High agglomeration area spreads outward along Zhejiang and Shanghai, while the areas with a Low-Low agglomeration pattern are mainly concentrated in northern Anhui province and northern Sichuan province. To sum up, the research framework and results are of great significance to sustainable land resource use and regional coordinated development.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, forest restoration, as the main theme of global forest development, has gradually replaced deforestation. It is of great significance to explore the transition path of China's forests, as China has abundant forest resources. Based on the MODIS land cover data, 14 contiguous destitute areas of China are chosen as study areas to analyze the characteristics of forest transition from 2002 to 2013. Using the method of cold/hot spot analysis, we investigate the forest change trend and its spatial heterogeneity. In addition, we explore factors affecting forest area change by a linear regression model and disclose the forest transition pathways in contiguous destitute areas. The results show that net forest area of the 14 contiguous destitute areas increases by 106554.75 km², with a growth rate of 11.93%, which means that the forest transition may enter the last stage. The Qinling-Daba Mountains, Wuling Mountains, southeastern Tibet and the eastern part of Yanshan-Taihang Mountains are hot areas of forest area increase, while the cold areas of forest area increase are mainly distributed in the vast area north of the 800 mm isohyetal line, Dabie Mountains and the eastern part of Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi rocky desertification areas. Both the increase of non-agricultural population and the implementation of forestry projects play significant roles in promoting forest transition, thus forest transition of 14 contiguous destitute areas of China mainly follows the economic development pathway and the state forest policy pathway. Some policy implications are also put forward. The pace of construction of small towns in contiguous destitute areas should be speeded up to depopulate rural areas. At the same time, rural eco-tourism should be developed on the basis of rich natural resources to help promote targeted measures in poverty alleviation. As for state forest policies, contiguous destitute areas should be regarded as the key areas for ecological construction so as to protect natural resources effectively.

Runoff generation is an important part of water conservation service, and also plays a critical role in soil and water retention. Under the background of the ecosystem degradation, which was caused by the vulnerable karst ecosystem combined with human activity, it is necessary to understand the spatial pattern and impact factors of runoff services in the karst region. The typical karst peak-cluster depression was selected as the study area. And the calibrated and verified Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was one of the main techniques to simulate the runoff services of typical karst basin. Further, the spatial variability of different services were analyzed with the assistance of the methods of gradient analysis and local regression. Results indicated that the law of spatial difference was obvious. And the surface runoff was at a low level, but the groundwater runoff was rich (about 2-3 times the surface runoff). The runoff coefficients of total and groundwater were 70.0% and 23.9%, respectively. Terrain is a significant factor contributing to macroscopic control effect on the runoff service in the Sanchahe River Basin, where the total and groundwater runoff increased significantly with the rising elevation and slope. Then, the distribution of vegetation has great effects on surface runoff. There were spatial differences between the forest land in the upstream and orchard land in the downstream, in turn the surface runoff presented a turning point due to the influence of vegetation. Moreover, the results of spatial overlay analysis showed that the highest value of total and groundwater runoff was observed in the forest land. It is not only owing to the stronger capacity of soil water conservation of forest ecosystem, and geologic feature of rapid infiltration in this region, but also reflected the combined effects on the land cover types and topographical features, that is, forest land was mostly distributed in the area with relatively great elevation and slope. Overall, this study will promote the development and innovation of ecosystem services fields in the karst region, and further provide a theoretical foundation for ecosystem restoration and reconstruction.

Land use/cover change is an important theme on the impacts of human activities on the earth systems and global environment change. National land-use changes of China during 2010-2015 were acquired by the digital interpretation method using high-resolution remotely sensed images, i.e. the Landsat8 OLI, and GF-2 remote sensing images. The spatio-temporal characteristics of land-use changes across China during 2010-2015 were revealed by the indexes of dynamic degree model, annual land-use changes ratio, etc. The results indicated that built-up land increased by 24.6×10³ km², while cropland decreased by 4.9×10³ km², and the total area of woodland and grassland decreased by 16.4×10³ km². The spatial pattern of land-use changes in China during 2010-2015 was concordant with that of the period 2000-2010. Specially, new characteristics of land-use changes emerged in different regions of China in 2010-2015. The built-up land in eastern China expanded continually, and the total area of cropland decreased, both at decreasing rates. The rates of built-up land expansion and cropland shrinkage were accelerated in central China. The rates of built-up land expansion and cropland growth increased in western China, while the decreasing rate of woodland and grassland accelerated. In northeastern China, built-up land expansion slowed down continually, and cropland area increased slightly accompanied by the conversions between paddy land and dry land. Besides, woodland and grassland area decreased in northeastern China. The characteristics of land-use changes in eastern China were essentially consistent with the spatial governance and control requirements of the optimal development zones and key development zones according to the Major Function-oriented Zones Planning implemented during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015). It was a serious challenge for the central government of China to effectively protect the reasonable layout of land use types dominated with the key ecological function zones and agricultural production zones in central and western China. Furthermore, the local governments should take effective measures to strengthen the management of territorial development in future.

Farmland marginalization has become the main trend of land-use change in the mountainous areas of China. Using the China Agricultural Production Costs and Returns Compilation (annual survey data of major agricultural production costs and earnings at national and provincial levels), this paper first analyzed the changes in the cost structure of agricultural production and the farmers' responses, under the context of the rapid rise in agricultural labor prices since 2003, and further compared the responses from the mountainous and plain regions. We found that farmers on the plains have reduced their labor input effectively through intensive use of agricultural machinery, which has minimized the impact of the increase in labor price. However, it is a severe challenge for farmers in the mountainous areas to use the same method due to the rough terrains. Thus, the agricultural labor productivity in these areas has increased relatively slowly, causing a widening gap in agricultural labor productivity between the two regions. With the rapid rise in labor costs, the marginalization of cultivated land in the mountainous areas is evident. In 2013, the profit of agricultural production in mountainous China, which takes maize cultivation as a representative, has fallen below zero. Since 2000, the land-use and land cover change in these areas has been characterized by the reduction of farmland area, reforestation, and the enhancement of the NDVI value. The high correlation between the NDVI change rate and the ratio of change in farmland (r = -0.70) and forest (r = 0.91) areas in mountainous areas at provincial level from 2000 to 2010, attests to the trend of farmland marginalization there. Finally, according to the analysis results, we summarized the mechanism of such marginalization against the backdrop of the rapid increase in the opportunity cost of farming and the sharp fall of agricultural labor forces. This study contributes to a deep understanding of the development process of farmland abandonment and forest transformation in the mountainous areas of China.

The development intensity of construction land is a comprehensive reflection of the regional construction land development degree and its carrying capacity of regional population, economy and society. We construct a theoretical framework and measurement model for the development intensity of construction land. Taking 179 counties in Northeast China as the research object, we use the spatial autocorrelation and spatial variogram to explore the evolution of spatial-temporal differentiation of the development intensity of construction land. We also use the ordinary least square (OLS) model and the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model to analyze the influencing factors and the spatial differentiation mechanisms of the construction land development intensity. The research reveals the following points: (1) The development intensity of construction land shows an increasing tendency from 2000 to 2015 and its spatial variance is significant. The interactions and linkage effects of the development intensity of construction land among different counties are obvious, but the spatial distribution of the development intensity of construction land tends to be unbalanced, and the distribution pattern of the cold-hot spots is basically consistent with the global variation and spatial heterogeneity. (2) The spatial variance of the development intensity of construction land is mainly influenced by the intensity of government financial investment, the investment intensity of land use and the structure of industry development in 2000, while the level of economic development has become a new factor during 2005-2015. (3) There is a correlation between the four influencing factors and the spatial pattern of the development intensity of construction land, but the influence of the four influencing factors in different counties varies greatly.

Reconstruction of regional historical land use and land cover change (LUCC) on the basis of historical documents is significant for regional eco-environmental effect studies and the enrichment of global historical land use datasets. By analyzing data recorded in historical documents, including Tuntian (cropland which was reclaimed by troops or farmers for military supplies) area, the number of Tuntian households, cropland area and the number of households, this paper proposed the conversion relationship between per household Tuntian area and per household cropland area. And a provincial cropland area estimation method of the Yuan Dynasty was designed. Then the method was used to reconstruct the provincial cropland area for AD 1290. The results are shown as follows: (1) Both per household Tuntian area and per household cropland area were high in north and low in south in the Yuan Dynasty, which was resulted from the differences of natural conditions and cropping systems in the south and north. And the geographical consistency signified that the allocation of per household Tuntian area takes reference to the local per household cropland area. (2) At the provincial level, there was some deviation between per household Tuntian area and per household cropland area. And the revision coefficients in the south and north were 1.23 and 0.65 respectively. (3) The cropland area of the whole study area in AD 1290 was about 535. 4×10⁶ mu (Chinese area unit, 1 mu=666.7 m²), accounting for 57.8% of the north and 42.2% of the south. The territory land reclamation rate of the whole study area, the north, and the south were 6.8%, 6.6% and 7.1%, respectively. And per capita cropland area of the whole study area, the north, and the south were 6.7 mu, 15.6 mu and 4.1 mu, respectively. (4) The cropland was mainly distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River (including Fuli area), the Huaihe River Basin (including Henan province), the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River (including Jiangzhe, Jiangxi, and Huguang provinces), and Yunnan province.

During rapid urbanization, high-intensity human activities have imposed significant stress on the structure and services of the ecosystem, resulting in ecological risk. In recent years, rising landscape ecological risk assessments have provided a new perspective for studying the relationship between landscape patterns and the ecological process, which can effectively support ecosystem management. Through a comparison of the concepts of ecological risk, regional ecological risk, and landscape ecological risk, this paper primarily reviews the two main methods for landscape ecological risk assessment: landscape index method and risk "source-sink" method. We also discuss the research progress of landscape ecological risk based on ecological services. In addition, this paper puts forward a framework for landscape ecological risk assessment, ESRISK, based on ecosystem services. In this framework, ecological loss is represented by the degradation level of key ecological services, and risk probability is represented from the perspectives of terrain, artificial stress, ecological restoration, and landscape vulnerability. As for scientific rigor, the ESRISK framework is a comprehensive assessment of landscape ecological risk in the urban and regional development process, in which the landscape is the study object and ecosystem services serve as the medium. In terms of application prospects, the ESRISK framework is applicable to different assessment purposes, study areas, and scales. The framework could also potentially provide a more integrative paradigm for assessment of landscape ecological risk and support the determination of regional adaptive risk mitigation strategy, and the efficient allocation of limited resources. Lastly, we have submitted future research trends from four perspectives: (1) Focusing on long-term ecosystem service loss dynamics and incorporating tradeoffs and synergies among ecosystem services into the assessment framework; (2) strengthening the analysis of uncertainty in assessment results and risk decision scenario simulation; (3) revealing relationships between landscape ecological risk and landscape patterns, as well as multi-scale and nonlinear characteristics; and (4) integrating remote sensing and socioeconomic data to deepen risk assessment into vulnerability research.

The mountain glacier which has unique and irreplaceable ecological service function is the material basis and characteristic cultural foundation of the ecological environment and socio-economic sustainable development in arid area. However, there are few studies on estimating service function and value of ice regulating ecological environment and providing human welfare and so on. Based on the data of the first and second glacier catalogs, this research examines variations of glacier area and ice reserves of the Tianshan Mountains in China and constructs the ecosystem service function of mountain glaciers. And this study combines the unit area service function price method and equivalent factor method to evaluate the annual ecological service value of glacier in the research area. The research results are shown as follows: Firstly, in the last 40 years, glacier area decreases by 1274 km², with the shrinking rate being 13.9%, and the annual average glacial reserve decreases by about 4.08×10⁹ m³. And the increased area in glacier area of the high altitude (> 5200 m) may be due to the fact that the effect of glacier accumulation caused by precipitation enhancement is greater than that of glacier melting caused by temperature rise. Secondly, the annual ecological service value of glaciers in the research area is 60 billion yuan. And the value of climate regulation, hydrology regulation and freshwater resources supply contribute respectively 66.4%, 21.6% and 9.3% of the total value, and the average annual ecological service value of hydroelectric power is about 350 million yuan. Other regulation and the service function value is about 1.3 billion yuan. Finally, this study finds that supply of fresh water resources, physical production and the ecological regulating function account for the absolute contribution in the ecological system, through the comparative analysis of ice, forest, grassland and wetland ecosystem service value of different proportions of the total value, and the ecological service value of the glacier unit area is higher than those of other kinds of ecosystems. Therefore the purpose of the research is to improve the understanding of human beings on impact of glacier about the human welfare, the maintenance of ecological environment and other aspects, and provide a basis for policy making in cryosphere ecological security, environmental protection and sustainable use of resources for planning and management.