This paper firstly analyzes Guangzhou social area structure in 2000, and then compares the results with the structures in 1985. Its purpose is to study the social area change law of Guangzhou during economic system transformation, and to conclude the general social structure model of metropolis in China. On the basis of Principal Components Analysis and Hierarchical Cluster Methods, this paper processes more than 200 variables related to the social area structure from the fifth census data of 2000, and gets 5 key factors of "the degrees of population density", "the education level and occupation", "family status and the proportion of farmer population", "the proportion out of work", "the quality of apartment" who influence Guangzhou social area structure, and divides Guangzhou city into 7 kinds of social areas, that is "the densely populated, crowded old city area", "the residential area of medium-sized income stratum", "the residential area of salary stratum", "the residential area of the intellectual, advanced job person", "the mixed residential area of the migrant and local people", "the urbanized residential area in the suburbs", and "the farmer residential area". After comparison with the social area pattern of Guangzhou in 1985, this paper finds that Guangzhou social area has the following changes from 1985 to 2000: (1) the main factor influencing social area change is still "urbanization" although the importance of "social status" is getting high; (2) the social area structures get more complex, and the income gap and migrant population play a more important role in the formation of social areas; (3) and the three change patterns of Guangzhou social areas are concluded, that is the change pattern based on old city area, the one based on manufacture or university enclave and the one based on farmer social area. Finally, this paper analyzes the mechanism of the social area change from the point of view of national policy change during the economic transition, the history of city growth and the planning control of the government, then outlines the pattern of social spatial structure of China's cities during the period of economic transition, explains the differences of social area structures in China and in Western countries, and predicts the future changes of Guangzhou social areas based on occupation splitting up, family life cycle and migrant population.

The facility distribution is a hot issue in the urban layout, in which the representative Weber facility location is widely applied. Weber facility location can collocate the facility the best position in a discrete space and may solve location problem of various facilities. From the point of view of geocomputation, it can be divided into free facility location issue and restrained facility location issue depending on whether the facility orientation scope is restricted, namely whether the space network architecture is considered. It can also be divided into spatial damping and spatial no damping depending on whether it will have mutual effects among spatial geographical entities because of the distance. Based on different classifications, the Multiple Centers-of-gravity model, the Benefit Maximizing model and the p-center model are selected as the examples and computational methods in this study. In view of Integration and Development, the visual development kit Delphi 7.0 is generated as the development platform using specialized GIS widget MapObjects based on the OCX technology and the analysis system of the facility location is established to realize the computation and geographic analysis function of each model. And taking the social enterprise development of Xinqiao county and Songjiang district of Shanghai as an example, utilizing this system, the location problem of facility corresponding to the social enterprises development is solved. The analysis and computation of various distributions of the commune hospitals, the senior-citizen universities and the police workstations fully manifest that the research conclusion can provide a quantitative policy-making basis for reasonable distribution of infrastructural construction.

Based on the highway network map in 1986, 1994 and 2005, choosing weighted mean travel time as indicator, the spatial structure and evolution of major cities highway accessibility in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) are elaborated in this paper. Considering the characteristics of highway transportation, the impact of accessibility level on city development is also analyzed preliminarily. Some conclusions are drawn as follows. In the 20 years, the spatial structure of accessibility in the YRD has little change; Shanghai, Suzhou and Jiaxing are the center with the lowest accessibility value, and the value increases from the center to the surrounding. The improvement of highway system upgrades the accessibility of major cities in this region, but the evolution takes on different characteristics in the two research stages, and the accessibility upgrade in the second stage (1994-2005) is greater than that in the first stage (1986-1994). The changing extent of accessibility value is related to the initial value, and changing rate of accessibility value decreases from the northern part to the southern at the first stage, but takes on multi-core pattern at the second stage. With the improvement of highway system, the accessibility optimizes from the center to the surrounding. Most cities in this region are above the average level in accessibility, and the city relative accessibility has changed less at the first stage but more at the second stage. Standard deviation analysis of accessibility coefficient shows that the equilibrium of the accessibility distribution descends at the first stage and ascends at the second stage. Considering the highway freight local quotient, the impact of accessibility level on the city development is classified into three categories: promotion, restriction and adaptation. With these results, some suggestions about the development of highway system in this region and some foci for further study are proposed.

Based on the results of the first land use survey in Tibet Autonomous Region carried out in the late 1980s, land use map of Lhasa area in 1990 was compiled for the main agricultural area in Lhasa valley using aerial photos obtained in April, May and October 1991 and Landsat imagery in the late 1980s and 1991 as remotely sensed data sources. Using these remotely sensed data, the land use status of Lhasa area in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1999 and 2000 were mapped through updating annual changes of cultivated land, artificial forest, grass planting, grassland restoration and residential area and so on. According to land use status of Lhasa area in 1990, 1995 and 2000 at five-year intervals, the spatial and temporal land use dynamics in Lhasa area from 1990 to 2000 are further analyzed using GIS spatial models in this paper. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Land use change in Lhasa area during the period 1990-2000 happened mainly near the major towns and the Lhasa valley. Much natural vegetation was replaced by artificial forests; vegetation coverage and biomass have obviously increased. These changes are directly related to human activities aiming to improve regional environment, such as tree planting, grassland restoration during the implementation of the integrated agricultural development project at that time. (2) The most remarkable increase in area is forest as the forestland increased by 2.556% (2713.48 hm²) from 1990 to 2000. The most comprehensive changes of land use in Lhasa area from 1990 to 2000 is rangeland conversion. Rangeland was converted to cultivated land, horticultural land, forestland, settlement and water body. Among them, the largest area of land use changes is rangeland conversion to forestland (2338.25 hm²), being 94.093% of the area relating to land use change. Some 186.53 hm² of cultivated land have been converted to forestland over the period 1990-2000, being 54.857% of the total area relating to cultivated land conversion into other land use types. Some water bodies changed into cultivated land, forests and rangeland. Some 243.13 hm² of water body were converted to forests, being 93.126% of the area relating to land use change, which happened mainly from the bottomland conversion to the artificial forests. (3) Because Lhasa area is a semi-arid and environmentally vulnerable region on the Tibetan Plateau, effective measures should be taken to improve local environment in a short term through bioengineering technologies such as artificial forestation, grassland restoration and so on. These measures can improve local microclimate, conserve water, prevent land desertification and soil and water loss through modifying vegetation cover types and increasing vegetation coverage.

The basic cause of continuous cultivated land conversion is the comparatively low benefit of its agricultural use. Therefore, the main approaches to establishing the conservation mechanism of cultivated land are to heighten the comparative income of agricultural use of cultivated land on the one hand, and to enhance the cost of cultivated land conversion on the other hand. The two approaches are summarized into the re-evaluation of cultivated land resource. This article argues that cultivated land resource is actually provided with economic output value, ecological service value and social guarantee value, and all of them can be re-evaluated by market price respectively. The economic output value of cultivated land is the quotient of its annual benefit divided by discount rate. The ecological service value of cultivated land is the quotient of its annual ecosystem service value divided by discount rate. The social guarantee value of cultivated land is the sum of its provisions of endowment insurance for the aged and of guarantee for employment. Three cases representing various environmental conditions and social development levels are studied respectively in the article so as to reveal the regional differentiation among the east, the middle and the west of China. They are Chao'an county of Guangdong Province, Huaiyang county of Henan Province and Huining county of Gansu Province. The results show that the values of cultivated land resource are obviously different among the three case areas and present the higher feature in the east and the lower in the west. Regarding the composition of values of cultivated land resource, social value makes up more than 60% of the total in all of the three areas. Yet the proportion of social value is higher in the west and lower in the east, demonstrating that the dependent degree of peasant upon cultivated land resource reversely relates with the level of socio-economic development. The proportion of economic output value to the total value is higher in the east and lower in the west, showing the difference of productivity resulted from natural and economical conditions. The proportion of ecological service value to the total value is higher in the west and lower in the east, because the ecosystem of the west is simpler so that the farmland ecosystem is relatively more important in the western eco-environment. Agricultural land use provides a huge amount of exterior benefit for the society. This can become an important reason for practicing agricultural subsidies, and also become a basis for calculating the amount of subsidies. Moreover, this should be used as a basis for enhancing the compensation of levied cultivated land. In the present period in China, cultivated land serves as the major resource livelihood for majority of the farmers. Under the conditions of faultiness and even absence of rural social guarantee system, the social guarantee value of cultivated land could not be ignored.

This paper develops a theoretical framework for rural housing land transition in China. Land use transition refers to the changes in land-use morphology over time, and it usually corresponds to a particular socio-economic development phase. Land use transition is also one of the major research contents of Global Land Project (GLP), a joint research agenda of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) to improve the understanding of land system dynamics. Although our understanding of land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) has improved through carrying out a lot of studies on land system, it seems that LUCC research still remains under-theorized. Research on land use transition needs new methods to incorporate the historical aspects and timescales of social and environmental changes. The discipline which in principle should be most able to meet the demands is geography. There is tremendous scope for this kind of study, which needs the knowledge concerning physical geography as well as human geography. By understanding the change process of rural housing in China, theoretical hypothesis on rural housing land transition was put forward. It is assumed that rural housing in China will undergo specific stages-the proportion of rural housing in the increase of total construction land will decline gradually with the development of the local economy, and the end of the transition corresponds to a kind of equilibrium between rural housing and other construction activities. Henceforth, the research results of rural housing land transition in the transect of the Yangtze River were used to verify the above hypothesis.

This paper proposes a new method to simulate development plans based on the integration of multi-agent systems (MAS) and cellular automata (CA). The proposed model consists of three related components, i.e., multi-agent systems, cellular automata (CA) and GIS. The mechanism to achieve spatial and temporal efficiency in using land resources is implemented according to the theories of environmental economics and sustainable development. This scheme is helpful for promoting sustainable use of land resources in fast growing regions. The proposed model is applied to the simulation of land use dynamics in the Haizhu district of Guangzhou in 1995-2010. The model is able to simulate various planning scenarios and provide a spatial exploratory tool for planning purposes.

The Yuzixi Catchment is located in the core of the Panda Natural Reserves in western Sichuan Province, with an area of 1742 km². Due to influences of climate change and human activities, the land cover shows marked changes in the last decade. Using the land-cover data obtained from the remote sensing images of two years of 1986 and 1994, this paper developed two models based on the Markov Chain and Patch-dynamics approach, to simulate land-cover changes in the Yuzixi Catchment. Both models were verified using the land-cover data in 2002. Starting from the year 1994, the land-cover of the year 2002 was simulated in a time-step of 1 year and 8 years with these two models, respectively. Compared with the real land-cover data in 2002, it was found that the time scale had a marked effect on the simulation results, and the simulation error varied among different land use types. The simulation error of Patch-dynamics model of cultivated land (-8.2%/-5.6%), forest land (-0.5%/-0.4%), grassland (0.7%/0.4%) and residential area (-29.9%/-16.4%) is bigger based on one-year scale than eight-year scale, and their changing trends are unstable due to the significant effect of anthropogenic factors. By contrast, the simulation error of bush land (-1.5%/-1.7%) and ice land (27.3%/41.9%) is smaller based on one-year scale than eight-year scale, and the changing trends are stable because they are mostly affected by natural factors. The research results also show that the simulation results of Markov Chain model are similar to that of Patch-dynamics model. However, the simulation results of Patch-dynamics model are more stable and reliable.

The difference between ground soil and air temperature (Ts-Ta) was analyzed and studied by using the data of ground and air temperature of 99 stations over the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau from 1960 to 2000, and its spatial distribution and time changing tendency have been diagnosed by principal component analysis and power spectral analysis methods. The results show that the values of (Ts-Ta) are the biggest in June and the smallest in December. The first three loading eigenvectors reflecting the main spatially anomalous structure of (Ts-Ta) over the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau contains the contrary changing pattern between the northwestern and the southeastern regions, the pattern response of the sea level elevation and the geography, and the pattern response of the distribution of the permafrost. There are four patterns of time evolution including the patterns of monotonous increasing or decreasing trends, the basic stability pattern and the parabola pattern with the minimum value. (Ts-Ta) has a periodic variation of about 2 years. According to the spatial distribution of the third loading eigenvector of (Ts-Ta) over the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau in cool season, the permafrost response region and the seasonal frozen ground response region are identified.

Freeze-thaw erosion is the third largest soil erosion type after water erosion and wind erosion. Up to now, being restricted by many factors, few researches on freeze-thaw erosion have been done at home and abroad, especially on the assessment method of freeze-thaw erosion. Based on the comprehensive analysis of impact factors of free-thaw erosion, this paper chooses six indexes, including the annual temperature range, annual precipitation, slope, aspect, vegetation and soil, to build the model for relative classification of freeze-thaw erosion using weighted and additive methods and realizes the relative classification of the freeze-thaw erosion in Tibet with the support of GIS software. Then a synthetic assessment of freeze-thaw erosion in Tibet has been carried out according to the relative classification result. The result shows that the distribution of freeze-thaw erosion area is very extensive, accounting for 55.3% of the total land area of Tibet. The spatial differentiation of freeze-thaw erosion with different intensities is obvious and the difference in distribution among different freeze-thaw areas is also obvious.

Standardization of tree-ring data is one of the most important procedures in dendroclimatology. We used abundant Qilian juniper (Sabina przewalskii Kom) tree-ring samples along the eastern margin of the Qaidam Basin to approximate the growth trend to generate a total growth trend curve. We used samples that contained complete pith reaching to a growth culmination in 40-60 years to estimate the total growth trend curve, and then employed the generalized negative exponential function to fit the curve. Usually, most sample cores cannot reach the tree pith for various reasons and it is difficult to determine the trees' cambial ages. An empirical model of initial radial growth (IRG) was developed to estimate the number of rings missing from the pith based on the same tree-ring data and the IRG model explained 90.9% of the variance. When constructing the chronology, the cambial age of the first ring from the pith is regarded as 1 year. Then the ages of the rings in samples without piths were determined by the estimated numbers of missing rings in the cores. Standardization was accomplished by dividing each tree-ring series by the corresponding values of the total growth trend curve. The chronologies developed by this method can preserve more low-frequency variability. This method helps to construct more reliable tree-ring width chronologies.

Since reform and opening up, co-driven by foreign direct investment (FDI), the dispersion of large cities and rural industrialization (the development of TVEs) and constrained by the rural-urban dichotomy of management system, a new kind of transitional regions has emerged in some post-rural areas with good location or development basis, such as the Yangze River Delta and Pearl River Delta, which is characterized by mixed rural and urban land uses, rapid change of social and economic structure and thus can be named as "peri-urbanization region". Based on the extensive review on the progress of concerned researches, 5 theoretical concepts of urban fringe, edge city, extended metropolitan region (EMR), Desakota and rural-urban integration are found to have important references and differences to the peri-urbanization regions in China. Further, this paper highlights the significance and also purposes the major research issues for conducting peri-urbanization studies in China.

Tree-ring standardized chronologies are developed with 78 cores obtained from eastern and western Mt. Helan. Both STD and RES chronologies correlate negatively with the different periods of early half year temperature, especially January to July (August) (JJ/JA) temperature. It has evident physiological meaning that wide rings were formed when JJ(JA) temperature was low and narrow rings were formed when JJ(JA) temperature was high. Based on this analysis, we reconstructed mean temperature from January to August in the period 1776-1999, and the explained variance is 43.3% (F = 21.422，p < 0.001). The comparatively high temperature periods in reconstruction are 1805-1818, 1828-1857, 1899-1907, 1919-1931, and 1968-1995; and the comparatively low temperature periods are 1858-1872, 1883-1895, and 1935-1953. Ten year moving average curve presents three slow uplifting periods of 1766-1853, 1862-1931, and 1944-1995. Each temperature increase was followed by a sudden temperature decrease of about ten years, that is to say, the JA temperature has the character of slow increase and sudden decrease. The 70- and 10.77-year periodicities detected in the tree-ring growth series correspond respectively to the Gleissberg (80a) and Schwabe (11a) periodicity of solar activity, and the 2.11-2.62 year cycles are considered to be influenced by QBO (Quasi-Biennial-Oscillation) and the local environmental change.

In 2005, when studying the process of historic sandy desertification on Erdos Plateau, we found that a lot of ancient city ramparts were fortified by alternate layers of sand and soil, and these cities included Shi'er Lian Ancient City (located in Zungar Banner, Inner Mongolia, China), Dabaodang Ancient City (located in Shenmu county, Shaanxi province, China), Bayanhurihu Ancient City (located in Otog Front Banner, Inner Mongolia, China) and so on. They are located in deep desert now. Several researchers have thought that the fate of these ancient cities is associated with natural environmental conditions. However, our experimental result does not support this view. The discovery sheds new light into when and how sandy desertification occurred and provides new historic insight for eco-environment conservation in this district. Through the experiment, some conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) The sandy layer in the ramparts consisting of aeolian-sand which should deposit before the cities were built. Considering the time when these cities were built, we could conclude that the desert scene had existed before the Han Dynasty. Some researchers pointed out that the existence of these cities were associated with good natural conditions when they were built, while our experimental result did not support this view. Accordingly, the existence of these cities could not be an evidence to prove good environmental conditions on Erdos Plateau in historical times. (2) It is an effective way to analyze the environmental change and process of man-land relationship through the fate of the ancient cities, relics, traces of human activities and changes in wasteland reclamation. However, it is not accurate to quantify the time when sandy desertification occurred through the time when these relics were abandoned. Undoubtedly, farming activities in historical times to a certain extent destroyed vegetation on Erdos Plateau, thereby accelerating the process of sandy desertification, but it is not the main factor leading to sandy desertification before the Ming Dynasty. (3) It is credible that sandy layer in the ramparts as a direct sign to interpret the environmental background, so it is very useful for us to explain the process of sandy desertification in historical times. Through the discovery, mobile sand dunes, fixed sand dunes, meadows in low humid lands, lakes, and so on, can coexist on Erdos Plateau in prehistory and human history. Up to now, these environments still coexist in the district.

We collected indexes of alluvial fans and their drainage basins from DEM data, and analyzed distribution of these indexes. By comparison of distribution curves of these indexes with elevation distribution curve of piedmont landforms, we did some research on the developments of alluvial fans and their drainage basins. As a result, we find that the alluvial fans and their drainage basins in the uplift region of Houma basin differ greatly from those in the sunken region; distributions of drainage basin indexes are mainly influenced by tectonic activity of boundary fault; alluvial fans are influenced by factors of drainage basin, tectonic movement of boundary fault and base level together; and lithological difference between rocks and underlying drainage basins is not the main factor leading to difference in alluvial fans in the study area.

Our field investigation identified eight river terraces at Zagunao, Lixian county of Western Sichuan Plateau along the Zagunao River, a main tributary of the Minjiang River. Applying ESR dating method, we successively determined ages of T2, T3, T4 and T6, which are 54, 125, 248 and 481 ka BP respectively. The development of the terrace sequences here was prominently under the control of regional tectonic uplift, and they should record phased uplift events of the Western Sichuan Plateau since the middle Pleistocene. The average incision rate of Zagunao River is calculated to be around 0.39 m/ka, which is coincident with the geodesic uplift rate of the Longmen Mountain (0.3-0.4 m/ka).

Based on the data of annual mean groundwater level, we divided the groundwater levels into six environmental gradients and data were sampled repeatedly six times from vegetation plots for each gradient of groundwater level. Through analysis of the changes in vegetation coverage, species diversity and structure of plant communities along the gradients of groundwater levels, the results were obtained to explain the degraded process of vegetation. Meanwhile, we analyzed the mechanism of vegetation degradation. The results showed that: (1) Degradation of richness of herbaceous plants happened at a depth greater than 4 m of groundwater level, while that of woody plants started at a depth of 8 m groundwater level. (2) The decrease of vegetation coverage was due to decline of herbaceous coverage. The threshold depth of groundwater level for coverage degradation was 4 m. This depth was the same as the depth of groundwater for degradation of species diversity. However, when the depth of groundwater was under 6 m, the decrease of vegetation coverage was due to decrease of coverage of woody plants. (3) Changes of two typical plant communities in vertical structure and species were characterized by the degraded succession of plant communities. In the process of degradation of Phragmites communis the dominant species was replaced, but the dominant species of the Populus euphratica community, namely Populus euphratica, retained its dominant position in the process of degradation. (4) The degradation of desert riparian ecosystem was resulted from interior vulnerability of the ecosystem and extrinsic human disturbance. The increase of population and requirements caused the increase in human disturbance, while the immediate reason of vegetation degradation was human overconsumption of the environmental resource - water, which was a dominant factor for vegetation survival. In the process of degradation of ecosystem, plant functional types and intensity of disturbance impacted the extent of vegetation degradation.

By the wind tunnel experiment, we studied the deflation rates of 8 different sediments in arid regions of China, discussed the sources of aeolian sand and its influence on the development of sand dunes and formation of desert from the view of dynamics of wind erosion. Results of the study indicated that the average deflation rates of 8 typical sediments in arid regions of China can be arranged down: lacustrine sand > alluvial sand > weathered particles developed from sandshale > pluvial sediments > fluvioglacial sand > weathered particles developed from granite > slope deposit > glacial sediments. The deflation rates exhibited strong positive correlations with the erodible fraction—sand (0.063-2mm) content and sorting features. In contrast, the deflation rates have obvious negative correlations with the silt clay (< 0.063 mm) and gravel (> 2 mm) content. According to the deflation rates, the 8 typical sediments can be divided into four categories: (1) lacustrine sand and alluvial sand, which are prone to wind erosion, and are the main sources of aeolian sand; (2) weathered particles developed from sandshale, pluvial sediments and fluvioglacial sand, with the larger deflation rates, being the minor source of aeolian sand; (3) weathered particles developed from granite and slope deposit having the smaller deflation rates, only providing a small amount of aeolian sand; and (4) glacial sediments with a strong anti-erodibility, hardly offering any aeolian sand. Other than the strong wind conditions, the exposure of extensive lacustrine sand induced by the desiccation of inland lake basin, as well as the pre-sorting of sediments by flowing water are key factors in the development of deserts in China. It is the possible reason that deserts in China are mostly distributed along the inland lake basin and riverbank in a material light.

The Salawusu Formation of Milanggouwan section in Salawusu River Valley includes 7 layers of paleo-mobile dune sands, and 4 layers of paleo-fixed and semi-fixed dune sands. We have observed the structure of these dune sands and analyzed the grain-size, surface textural features and several main chemical elements of them, the results showed that: (1) these dune sands have some eolian structure characteristics which are similar to the recent dune sands; (2) they are also similar to the recent dune sands in grain-size components, and parameters of Mz, σ, Sk and Kg, as well as in several main chemical components; (3) the scatter plots of Mz-σ, SiO₂-Al₂O₃+TOFE and the probability curves of grain-size showed that these paleo dune sands are different from paleosols and fluvio-lacustrine facies but are consistency with recent dune sands; and (4) the quartz sands have well roundness and some surface textural features such as dish-shape pits, crescent-shape pits, pockmarked pits, upturned cleavage plates, siliceous precipitates and siliceous crevasses, indicating that they had been carried for a long time by the wind. As the 11 layers of paleo dune sands possess the eolian characteristics in structure, grain-size, surface textural features and chemical elements, the origin of their formation should be eolian.

As a basis of counting urban population, the correct urban-rural division is an important component in collecting, classifying and analysing socio-economic statistics. Research on urban and rural area division method has the vital significance both in theory and practice. Using Shanghai 2000 aerial remote sensing photographs and the Population Geographical Information System, this paper makes an experimental division of urban and rural areas. Detailed division method discussion has been made for three kinds of urbanized area, i.e., Shanghai city proper, the suburban Qingpu District and outer suburban Zhangyan town of Jinshan District, for the purpose of simulating regional division of the metropolitan, urban and town areas separately. It firstly introduces the basic division processes of the three types of urban and rural areas. Then it conducts a comparative study on different precision results of each type of the areas. Finally the authors discuss the three types of urbanized area divisions for metropolises, medium- and small-sized cities as well as towns in terms of precision to be reached in the near- and long-term respectively. Appropriate precision and simple operation is the focus of this research, which aims at promoting the urbanized area division work in a wide range.

Globalization and the new economy have had a profound impact on the formation and evolution of the urban spatial structure. Based on statistical data and fieldwork, this paper analyzes urban spatial restructuring in Guangzhou and develops an evolutionary model of urban development. The study has uncovered that the evolution of Guangzhou City is a gradual process characterized by four stages of evolving urban spatial forms: the single-core growth pattern, the Wikilib pattern, the dual structure pattern and the multi-core networking pattern. Currently, Guangzhou City is in the development stage of the dual structure pattern, with obvious differentials in economic structure, urban landscape and population structure between the old city and new urban areas. Such a spatial structure in Guangzhou results from various underlying factors, mainly globalization and the new economy, institutional change, local policies and urban planning. Globalization and the new economy have been playing a vital role in urban spatial restructuring in Guangzhou. The analysis of urban spatial restructuring in Guangzhou has significant implications for the study of metropolitan restructuring in China.

This article analyses the image of microspace scene and macrospace structure of Dalian by questionnaire, photo recognition and cognitive mapping. We also use factor analysis to make a study on what kind of microspace is preferred by people. Meanwhile means test and anova analysis are used to study the impact of age, sex and education background on the personally recognized number of photos and the scope of image of the city. Hence we conclude that Dalian is able to be highly imaged as integration, and the most imageable areas are concentrated in the center of the city, plazas and beauty spots. The image of microspace scene is affected by its function, areas, users, circumjacent environment and architecture noumenon. The image of macrospace structure is a framework which is upheld by road and with the residential and business areas as its background. This framework is dotted with population distributing center and the buildings with certain features. As is affected by age, sex and education background, the image area in different person's minds shares different sizes. Based on the findings and conclusions some suggestions are made for the urban planning and tour planning of Dalian.

Marsh is one of the most typical wetlands, playing important roles in hydrological and economic aspects, especially in keeping biological diversity. In this study, the definition and category of the ecological pondage of marsh have been discussed for the first time, and the distinction and relationship with ecological water requirement have been analyzed. Furthermore, the gist and method of calculating ecological pondage and ecological water requirement have been provided, and Zhalong wetland has been given as an example of calculation of the two variables. Ecological water use of marsh can be ascertained according to ecological pondage and ecological water requirement, and the suitable quantity can be calculated basing on the marsh's water condition and the total water quantity, insuring that the pondage changes reasonably in spatial and temporal scale, so that the rational water allocation can be achieved.

The institutional preconditions, behavior bases and the relationship between finance and urban space development have been emphasized when people pay more attention to the spatial dimension of urban finance during the progress of tertiarisation. The case studies on the change of spatial pattern of financial industry (SPFI) at the urban scale are scarce in China. Based on the second-hand data from 'the tertiary industry census'(1984), 'the basic units census'(1996, 2001), other socio-economic statistics and the first-hand data from field survey, this paper investigated the progress and causes of the change of SPFI during the transition period by using a set of combined methods, such as comparison, description and interpretation, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that: (1) There are two co-existing processes of the movement of the financial service industry during the transition period, including concentrating in the central districts from periphery districts and spreading to the new districts from the central districts. The initial spatial pattern as 'highly concentrating in Yuexiu District' has transformed to the current pattern as 'multi-spot concentrating in the central districts'. The generation of financial service industry comparatively agglomerative spots showed a 'South to North, and West to East' spatio-temporal movement process. (2) The systematic transition of socio-economic institutions and the evolvement of financial regulations were the preconditions of the variation of spatial pattern of financial service industry. The behavior of financial institutions was the micro-behavior base. And the expansion of urban space was the spatial tensile force. The economic effect of urbanization agglomeration widened the differentiation in financial service industry in each administrative division. The construction of office buildings in turn in an agglomerative form attracted the financial institutions to cluster at certain spots. (3) Dissimilar to the conditions of the cities of the Western countries, the headquarters location centre of high order financial services did not exist in Guangzhou, neither obvious decline of CBD nor 'abandoned' urban space could be discerned during the research period in Guangzhou.

Along with the highly speedy urbanization and industrialization in the developed area in China, the sprawl of land use has led to the development disorder and difficulties in natural ecology and agricultural land protection, which will threaten the regional sustainability. However, the regionalization based on ecological-economic approach amphasizes that regions with low development cost, high carrying capacity of resources and environment as well as great development ability should undertake social and economic activities with great intensity; whereas those regions having high ecological values but are difficult to be developed should maintain fuctions of agriculture and ecology, so as to promote the harmonious interrelations among economy, population, resources and environment with spatial order. Referred to the existing regionalization, this paper discusses how to divide the assessed units, choose and manage the assessed elements etc. on the basis of traditional regionalization. The classification matrix has been applied for integrating the ecological significant value and economic significant value. As a case study, Suzhou city is divided into four types, i.e., preferential development area, feasible development area, moderate conservation area and prohibited exploiting area. Finally, this paper analyses the main function regionalization method and the policy guarantee of management at different areas.

Northeast China is an important base to the national food security. There are more problems in achieving optimal allocation of land and water resources as well as sustainable utilization. At present water resources shortage and land degradation are the two most important factors restricting agricultural sustainable development in Northeast China. Improving the matching degree of land and water resources and guaranteeing supplement level of irrigated water resources have becoming long-term goals to promote the high-efficient utilization of agricultural resources and upgrade the comprehensive productivity of food. The matching coefficient of land and water resources (R_i), which is an indicator to reflect the proportion of water supply and cultivated land resources in spatio-temporal scale in a specific zone. The purpose of using this indicator is to investigate the balance between water supply and land resources in temporal and spatial distributions and their corresponding matching degree. Based on the dynamic analysis of gross land and water resources and their matching degree in Northeast China, this paper establishes a matching model of agricultural water and land resources. Simulation analyses indicate that the matching degree of land and water resources in Northeast China is not as good as expected, and there are distinct differences among this region. Northeast China, which possesses 16.68% of the total cultivated land in the whole country, only takes up 4.01% of the total water resources. In average, the per capita cultivated land in Northeast China is 0.309 hm², three times that of the whole country. However, the per capita water resource in Northeast China is 1042 m³, which is only 47.7% of the whole country. The matching coefficient is 1.153, which is lower than the whole country (1.441). According to different values of Ri, the matching degree of water and land resources in Northeast China is classified into 5 grades: excellent (0.73 < R_i ≤ 11.73), better (0.23 < R_i ≤ 0.73), moderate (0.16 < R_i ≤ 0.23), worse (0.13 ≤ R_i ≤ 0.16) and worst (0 < R_i < 0.13). Accordingly, the basic approach of enhancing the matching degree of land and water resources is to construct water conservancy projects in Northeast China. Attention should be paid to large-scale water transportation projects like "North to South Water Transfer Project", supplemented by midium- and small-scale water conservancy projects. Moreover, development of high-efficiency, water-saving modern agriculture with well-trench irrigation system should be strengthened as well.

The artificial oases are the main places for human activities in arid zones. Oasis management and ecological construction embody the active action of human activities, while irrational land development and economic activities exert excessive pressure and form ecological load on the existence and sustainable development of oases. Scientifically and precisely giving an integrated evaluation on the states of oases is an important prerequisite for people to correctly understand oases and launch ecological construction and environmental protection projects. In view of the facts that the evaluation indicators of oases in China are simple and they are only used in limited regions at present, this paper presents an universal evaluation indicator system of oases in inland river basins based on the "oasis maturity" obtained by factor analytical method and with the 15 oases in Hexi Corridor as study objects conducts the case analyses. The results show that in accordance with the integrated evaluation values of the maturity, the oases in the Hexi Corridor can be divided into four classes, namely industrial oasis, highly developed agricultural oasis, moderately developed agricultural oasis and degraded or lowly developed agricultural oasis. Such a classification is entirely consistent with local situation. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of various oasis are quantitatively expressed using the indicators of maturity at factorial level, and thus provide a concise and scientific basis for the oasis managers and policy-makers to manage oasis.

Adopted with Holdridge Life Zone Model (HLZM), Weight Centre Model (WCM) and Land Use Degree Model (LUDM), climate data of China in recent 20 years and 2-period LUCC data covering China are used to analyze the impact degree and direction of changes caused by climatic changes and human activities to China vegetation covers and land use. In recent 20 years, the rise in temperature and increase in precipitation in most parts of China have influenced not only China's biome, but also growth conditions of Holdridge life zone deeply. In this period, variations in both precipitation and temperature in Northeast China, North China and the Inner Mongolia Plateau have improved living environment and led to the transformation of Nature Covered Ecological Type from unutilized land to grassland and shrubland types, grassland and shrubland types transformed to forest and arable land. Meanwhile, China's economic development in recent 20 years, as well as land use increment in rural and urban areas for construction and transportation purposes in eastern coastal zones have made Land Use Type developed from farmland to construction land, leading to increase in land use degree index. Thereby the dual impacts by climatic changes and economic development resulted in a shift of Land Use Degree Weight Centre northeastward by 54 km. With regard to Land Use Degree Excursion Intensity, in east-west direction, 81% is caused by climatic changes and 19% by anthropogenic impacts; while in north-south direction, 85% is caused by climatic changes and 15% by anthropogenic impacts.

The pattern of land cover in Guangzhou city was translated from remote sensing image of SPOT. Two transects of north-south (N/S) and west-east (W/E) were set at the cross point which was the center of Guangzhou. Landscape diversity was selected as an index to describe the abundance of landscape. Four kinds of different extents were chosen to calculate the indices, such as 125 m, 250 m, 500 m and 1000 m. All those calculations were performed with Fortran programs under moving square windows of corresponding extents. The moving windows were sampled along the transects from west to east and from north to south with the step of a moving window size. Based on the calculation of diversity index, coefficients Moran I and Geary C and function of semi-variance were counted at different extents for correlativity of landscape diversity of urban land cover. Then, the two transects were partitioned by equal distance of the small width of the transects, 8000 m. A series of sample units with equal area were formed along the two transects. Scale variances were figured out for each unit based on the indices of landscape diversity. It was carried out at four extents. The scale variance of each transect was an average of all units in the same transect. The results revealed that there was a positively spatial autocorrelation between landscape diversities under different extents and the two transects had different spatial heterogeneities of landscape. Besides internal factors, variances of spatial structure of land cover in the two transects were affected by human activities directly. Different rates of factors formed different spatial heterogeneities of landscape of urban land cover. The semi-variance curve of diversity index was not different obviously with the increasing extents at N/S transect, but it was obvious at W/E transect. The rate of Co/(Co + C) increased monotonously, indicating that the impact of stochastic factors on landscape diversity increased with the increase of research extent. The scale variance of landscape of land cover in the moving windows along the two transects under different extents decreased with the increase of scales, and all scale variances went to be almost similar at a large extent of 1000 m. The values of scale variances were obviously relative to spatially geometrical shape. The scale variance of landscape was bigger when spatial shape of sample units was a rectangle in contrast to the shape of a square. The spatial heterogeneity of landscape in the two transects was not only relative to the direction of transect, but also relative to the extent. The scale variance did not monotonously change from small extent to large extent, such as extents of 125 m and 250 m, the change of scale variance decreased with the increase of extent. Analysis of scale variance showed that there was a multi-scale hierachical structure of land cover, but it was different between the N/S and W/E transects. The heterogeneity was higher in the W/E transect than in the N/S transect. In a word, the scale variance and function of semi-variance are appropriate methods to study spatial heterogeneity and hierachical structure of landscape of urban land cover with changes in scale and extent.

This paper presents a new method to simulate complex land use systems by integrating rough sets (RS), cellular automata, and GIS. Recently, cellular automata (CA) have been increasingly used to simulate urban growth and land use dynamics. Traditional CA models simulate urban development with static transition rules in large areas. Most of them are expressed by mathematical formulas and the transition rules are fixed. These models have limitations to simulate complex land use change. The transition rules should be subject to uncertainties and they should vary spatially. In this study, a CA model based on rough sets is developed using Visual Basic and ArcObjects of GIS. The GIS provides both data and spatial analysis functions for constructing RS-CA model. Training data are conveniently retrieved from remote sensing and GIS database for calibrating and testing the model. The rough sets method is used to obtain the uncertainty and dynamic transition rules. The RS-CA model can be applied to the simulation of urban development. Complex global patterns can be generated from the local interactions with the RS-CA model. This paper demonstrates that the proposed model can overcome some of the shortcomings of the existing CA models in simulating complex urban systems by using the rough set method. The model has been successfully applied to the simulation of urban development in Shenzhen city of the Pearl River Delta.