Food security is the basic foundation in accomplishing of the overall Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the objective in SDGs of "halving the proportion of hungry people by 2015" has not been achieved as scheduled, it will become more challenging to realize its final goal of zero hunger by 2030. So exploring the underlying causes of global food security pattern from perspectives of spatio-temporal evolution is badly needed. In this paper, a comprehensive evaluation method with multi-indices was applied to evaluate the food security level of 172 countries in 2000-2014 based on an established global database with country-specific time series data. Then the spatial pattern and changing characteristics of global food security by country was conducted through the spatial autocorrelation analysis. Upon this basis, the underlying factors affecting the food security pattern were further identified and analyzed with a multiple nonlinear regression method. The findings and results show that: (1) The global food security pattern can be summarized as "high-high and low-low agglomerations" of socio-economic status and food security level. The most food secure countries are mainly distributed in the regions with more advanced economy such as North America, Oceania, parts of East Asia, and Western Europe. On the contrary, the least food secure countries are mainly distributed in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, West Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia. (2) At 99% confidence level, Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa are respectively the hot and cold spots in global food security landscape, while in non-aggregation areas such as Haiti and North Korea, there exist long-term food insecurity problems. (3) The spatio-temporal pattern of global food security is generally stable, but the internal changes in the extremely insecure groups are significant. The countries with the most changeable levels of food security are also the countries with the most food insecurity. (4) Annual mean temperature, per capita GDP, the proportion of people who have access to clean water, and political stability are the key factors affecting the global food security pattern. The study indicates that while the global food security situation has improved since 2000, there was a reverse sign or omen in 2013. Affected by climate change, residents' purchasing power, infrastructure condition, and political and economic stability, global food security has in fact been volatile and some areas in the world are still facing acute food security problems. In addressing this challenge, a food security strategy based on the four dimensions, i.e. food supply, food access, food use and political stability, and a worldwide rural revitalization approach, is highly recommended. Meanwhile, it is necessary to progressively introduce some diversified modes of production such as urban agriculture to build a more resilient food system in those fully urbanized regions.

It is important to study rural transformation and development from the perspective of farmers' livelihood regime changes on the Loess Plateau. We selected cunties of Binxian, Changwu and Xunyi located in the apple growing area of the Loess Plateau, as a case study to construct the evolutionary path of rural regime, identify the micro factors that affect rural transformation and development, and reveal the mutual feedback mechanism between farmers' household regime and rural transformation. In doing so we adopted a regime change perspective, and applied the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method, geodetector, and multiple linear regression. We obtained the following three findings. First, 27 of 130 selected samples, distributed mainly in areas with loess girder topography, belonged to the traditional agricultural regime. Meanwhile, 96 samples, distributed mainly in areas with loess tableland topography, belonged to the new agricultural regime. Another 7 samples, mainly distributed in valley areas, belonged to the non-agricultural regime. Second, when rural transformation sees the traditional agricultural regime replaced by the new agricultural regime, and finally the non-agricultural regime, the overall performance of rural development follows an inverted U-type development trend in a 3D space coordinate system. Simultaneously, rural population development follows an upward convex development trend in a 2D space coordinate system. Meanwhile, rural economic development follows an upward concave development trend, and agricultural production development follows an inverted U-type development trend, both in 2D space coordinate systems. Third, means of livelihood is the control variable that connects family system transformation and rural transformation development, which are determined by human and natural capital and directly affect financial and material capital at the farmer level. These aspects of transformation development are guided by the response process at the village level of three dimensions, namely population, economy and agriculture, and lead the process of rural transformation and development.

Rural restructuring is an important means of implementing and pushing forward the strategy of rural vitalization. Systematic research on the characteristics and problems of rural development and restructuring in typical areas is the basis of developing scientific policies facing the strategic needs of rural vitalization in the new era. Taking Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as a case, based on the TOPSIS model supported by entropy method, this paper analyzes the spatio-temporal pattern of rural development level and restructuring intensity, identifies the problem regions of rural development and restructuring, and explores the regional path of rural vitalization. The results show that, during the research period, the level of rural development in Guangxi has been rapidly improved, and the development of rural territory is moving from relative homogeneity towards heterogeneity. The average intensity of economic, social and spatial restructuring increases gradually in each research period, and economic restructuring is accelerating, while spatial restructuring is still lagging behind. The average coupling and coordination degree of economic, social and spatial restructuring has gradually improved, but the current level of coordination is still not high. Based on the above research, 37 counties in 7 categories are identified with problems in rural development and restructuring. The formation of problem regions reflects the impact of geographical environment, and is the result of the interaction of various factors such as terrain conditions, location conditions, natural resources, economic foundation, population quality and regional policies under the background of changes in socio-economic elements. The sustainable development in rural areas depends on the economic-social-spatial coordination, and the implementation of rural vitalization strategy in Guangxi requires not only the overall planning of the regional path of rural restructuring from the macro level, but also the regulatory measures to promote rural socio-economic development and spatial restructuring for problem regions.

Cultural landscape protection compensation is a new topic in modern human geography. In this paper, we firstly proposed the theoretical framework of cultural landscape protection compensation of traditional villages, and then set up the cultural landscape protection compensation model on the basis of proposed theoretical framework. Finally, we discriminated the driving factors and offered a proof to the model, which takes Xiangxi nationality autonomous prefecture in Hunan province as a case study. The results can be concluded as follows: (1) From the aspects of the traditional architectural style, the location and pattern of villages, dynamical inheritance of the intangible cultural heritage of villages, and the level of their social and economic development of villages, traditional villages in Xiangxi conforming to the implementation conditions of cultural landscape protection compensation. (2) From the aspects of landscape characteristics and values, external market recognition, self-loss, government management, etc., cultural landscape protection compensation of traditional villages in Xiangxi conforms to the proposed cultural landscape protection compensation model. (3) From the aspects of its driving factors, cultural landscape protection compensation features of the 82 traditional villages in Xiangxi are in accordance with the comprehensive driving mode of landscape characteristics, government management, external market and self-loss. (4) In the traditional villages of Xiangxi, the cultural landscape protection compensation can be divided into three types, namely, social and economic compensation, historical and cultural compensation, and natural environment compensation. The factors of each type, such as social economy, historical culture, natural environment, all influence the structure of the compensation model.

Rural areas are the core concept of rural geography. The cognition of rural definitions guides the development direction of rural geography. Analysis of rural definitions has been a research hotspot in Western rural geography. Western rural geography is also developing with the deepening of scholars' understanding of rurality. The development of rural geography in China focuses on serving the needs of economic and social development, and there is little discussion on the principles and basic concepts of the discipline, which gradually leads to the situation that theory lags practice. The concept of rural areas is always changing. In recent years, there have been more and more studies on the rural diversified paths and multifunctional transformation and development. Historical experiences have proved that the connotation of rural concept has been constantly broken and subverted by the reality of rural transformation and development. The basic understanding of rurality in the past urgently needs to be changed and expanded, which also shows that the definitions of rural areas is worthy of continuous discussion. With the strategy of rural vitalization put forward, the development of rural areas in China in the new era is of unprecedented importance. This paper sorts out the evolutionary context of cognition of rural definitions and rurality in related research fields at home and abroad, and proposes that rural conceptual cognition gradually changed from single to multiple, from passive to active, from static characteristics to dynamic process. And then, this paper deepens the rural definitions based on the article "On discrimination of rural definitions". It points out that the difficulties in defining the rurality lie in the spatial dynamics of elements' flows, the unconformity of the rural space system, the relativity of the rural concept itself, and the new era background with rural vitalization strategy and urban-rural integration as the policy orientation behind the three characteristics. Finally, this paper prospects the future development of rural geography in China, and summarizes the importance of the analysis of rural definitions to the development of rural geography.