Based on regionalized variable theory, semivariograms of geo-statistics were used to research the spatial variability of soil properties quantificationally. The results showed that the semivariograms of soil organic matter were best described by spherical model, the best model for semivariograms of soil N and available K were exponential model and that of available P belongs to linear with sill model. Those soil properties have different spatial correlations respectively, the range of organic matter is the highest and that of available P is the lowest, and the spatial correlation of N and available K belongs to moderate class. Their spatial heterogeneity degrees were different too. The degrees of organic matter and total N were the highest, the degree of available K was in the next place and that of available P was the lowest. Influenced by the shape, topography and soil of the study area, all isotropics of available P were obvious in all directions while anisotropics of others were manifested. According to the analytical results, supported by GIS, Kriging and IDW were applied to describe and analyze the spatial distribution of soil properties. The results indicated that soil organic matter, total N and available K were distributed regularly from northeast to southwest, while available P was distributed randomly and its structural characteristics were not so distinctive as those of others.

The vertical variations of soil compositions, properties, types according to genetic classification and taxonomic classification, and the north boundary of subtropical zone on the southern slope of Funiu Mountain were discussed in this paper based on soil survey in field and soil physical and chemical analysis in laboratory. There were some vertical varying laws of soil compositions and properties on the southern slope of Funiu Mountain. (1) The content of fulvic acid in soil humus exceeds that of humic acid in all profiles of soil (HA/FA<1). The ratios of HA/FA in surface horizons are rising from foot to top of the mountain. The degree of humification in soil humic acid at 900 m asl is the lowest. (2) Along the altitude from foot to top of the mountain, both soil pH and base saturation percentage go down first, then go up. (3) Soils below 900 m asl have remarkable clayification horizon, argic horizon appears in each soil profile, and soils above 900 m asl have no clayification and argic horizons. (4) All of soils have higher degree of weathering and ferrallitization, average migration coefficients (Km^x) of most oxides and the values of β in all of soil bodies are below 1, the values of "Saf" are smaller than 5.06, the contents of Fed in illuvial horizons are higher than 20 g·kg^-1, the percentage of Fed/Fet in illuvial horizons is higher than 40%, and many kinds of ferromanganese (concretion and coating) appear in all soil bodies below 900 m asl. But for soils with lower degree of weathering, no ferrallitization takes place, and no ferromanganese appears in all soil bodies above 900 m asl. The north boundary of subtropical zone on south slope of Funiu Mountain is in the area between S3 and S4, ranging from 900 m to 1000 m, the average height of which is at 950 m above sea level.

The distribution of soil organic matter (SOM) and nitrogen of Gongga Mountain were studied in this paper. The results showed that the contents of SOM and N of A horizon had an ascending trend with the increase of the elevation. The vegetation types distributed higher than the mixed broad-leaved conifer forest had the irregular trends. In the transitional communities such as mixed forest and treeline, the contents of SOM and N were higher than other vegetation types. The distribution of SOM and N of A horizon was determined by the mutual effect of climate and vegetation types. The vertical distribution of SOM and N in soil profile had the similar trends in all kinds of vegetation types, i.e., the content of A horizon was higher than that of the B and C horizons, which was the same to the distribution of dead animals and plants in soil. There were N accumulation peaks in A horizon of the transitional communities. The soil C:N is between 7 and 25, which is lower relative to the appropriate C:N of 25-30. The soil C:N increased with the increase of the elevation, but its vertical distribution in the soil profile varied with different vegetation types. The N in the SOM existed mainly in the form of organic nitrogen, and the soil C:N was significantly correlated with SOM.

In this paper, two mathematic models are used to measure the spatial structure and the competition pattern of the coastal container port system of China from 1992 to 2001. Shift-share analyses reveal some characteristics for the competition pattern of the coastal container port system of China: (1) Both between (inter) and within (intra) the different port ranges, the net volumes of the shift effects are very notable. (2) In competition, the Pearl River Delta container port ranges are all along superiorior; the around the Bohai Sea container port range is throughout inferior; the Changjiang River Delta container port range is relatively complicated. (3) From 1995 to 1998, Shanghai was one of the major winners interms of total shift, but in the other two periods, it lost some TEU. (4) Shenzhen and Ningbo ports have been the major winners interms of total shift since 1992.

CLUE-s (Conversion of Land Use and its Effects in small extent) is a model for simulating spatial changes in land use. The model was applied for regional agriculture and forest land-use system simulations in many countries. The author extended the CLUE-s model with a dynamic neighborhood analysis. The extended model (CLUE-sII) could simulate the self-organizational processes, spontaneous processes and the competition processes of the land-use changes. CLUE-sII can also implement different simulation schemes according to the characteristics of the study area. The local factors and the neighborhood factors play different roles in each scheme. Therefore, the researchers could find the best scheme for the specific study area. Land use change from 1991 to 2001 is simulated using CLUE-sII for Haidian District, Beijing. The results indicate that neighborhood factor analyse is important to simulate urban land-use changes and the scheme that took the neighborhood factor as a magnifying factor to the spontaneous processes obtained the best results, with which the whole map correspondence proportion gained 77% and the Kappa of urban attained 0.754. The case study in this paper showed that CLUE-sII could simulate urban sprawl with multiple land-use types at a high spatial and temporal resolution. Through constructing multiple simulation schemes, one can not only find the best simulation performance, but also could obtain more information on the importance of different land-use drivers.

Based on analysis with ESDA-GIS framework, by using statistical data of 1346 small cities and towns in Jiangsu province in 2002, their spatial structure was studied. We, at first, finished summary factor analysis from database, and drew the two principal components: economic factor and scale factor. By comparison, we found that the frequency distribution of the two factors was skewed and the skewed degree of scale factor was higher than that of economic factor. But there is no positive correlation as scale-benefit between the two factors. In this paper, exploratory spatial structure of the small cities and towns was analyzed. With the density map, we found their spatial distribution is imbalanced, whose density would descend gradually from Yangtze River zone and Taihu Lake area in the southeast to the west and the north, which showed a belt and circle structure. Based on the analysis with global SAMs and local SAMs, we came to some conclusions. The spatial distribution of economic factor of the small cities and towns showed positive autocorrelation and spatial cluster, but the autocorrelation of scale factor is very weak. Finally, after classifying the local SAMs coefficients of small cities and towns according to administrative units of country, we analyzed economic significance with anisotroptric variogram and improved the classified result. We found the spatial cluster of the economic development of the small cities and towns in Jiangsu province: three districts, one belt, and one part, i.e., the middle part of the northern Jiangsu area, the middle part of Jiangsu province and Nanjing-Zhenjiang area, Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou area, and the northern part of Jiangsu border belt, and district around Suining. The corresponding economic development types are diffusing development type, polarizing development type, clustering development type, transitional development type, and continual impoverished type.

Based on SPOT remote sensing images and GIS, choosing the central area of the external circle highway in Shanghai as a case study area, the paper studied the spatial scaling effect of the urban landscape pattern with different grains and extents. The conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) The spatial autocorrelation of urban landscape pattern depends on different scales within a certain range of scales, and Moran I and Geary c related to the grains, which characterized the spatial autocorrelation of the urban landscape structure, have the same sensitive points to the scaling at the level of 50 m. (2) The patches of all kinds of landscapes have the fractal character. The fractal dimensions of landscapes respond to scaling differently, and the present nonlinear change trends with grains. The fractal dimensions of landscapes are obviously different at a small grain, but the differences become not obvious with the increasing grain. (3) The landscape diversity are closely linked to the location and the pattern of human activities, especially to economic and social activities. Due to the high land cost in the urban center, the dominant landscapes are mainly for business and culture, and their patches have the characters of high congregation and high fragmentation. While agricultural landscapes with low economic benefit can only be located at the fringe or outskirt of the urban area, and they have the characters of simplex, larger patches and less fragmentation. (4) The landscape diversity depends on spatial scale. With the increasing extent, the Shannon diversity index (SHDI) increases and the spatial pattern of landscape varies dramatically. At 0.5 km extent, the maximum of diversity is in the center of the urban area. The landscape diversity is distributed with a ring mode up and down from the center to the outer. With the increasing extent, the maximum of diversity moves to the urban-rural transition zone where landscape types change dramatically. (5) The semivariogram discloses the spatial variance character and internal mechanism of landscape diversity. At a small scale, the spatial variance of diversity is more complicated. The spatial heterogeneity, which is caused by spatial autocorrelation, contributes a lot to the total spatial heterogeneity of terrestrial ecosystem, while the spatial heterogeneity caused by random factors (scale and measure error) contributes less. The increasing scale washes off the detailed variances in a fine scale. The coarse scale may result in more nugget effect and less contribution, which is caused by spatial autocorrelation.

The rapid development of urbanization in China started in 1996 with two basic characteristics: the economic globalization and the transformation of economy. In the author's opinion, accumulation and diffusion are the two fundamental dynamic forms of the flow and the essential manifestation of the dynamics of urbanization. The author, by establishing an urbanization policy model of rural surplus labor force under indefinite situations, tries to explain the differences of the speed of urbanization between the period after the adoption of reform and open-up policy and the period of rapid development of urbanization, and comes to the conclusion that the latter period is the natural result of the combined force of the government and the market. Moreover, by making a metrological analysis on the numerical relationship between traditional industrialization and urbanization, the author promotes the opinion that the rapid development of urbanization is mainly stimulated by the tertiary industry. Then the author roughly estimates the industrial output value according to the import and export margin of industrial products and calculates the contribution of international trade to the development of urbanization.

Minqin Basin was once a pastoral area for Hun people in Chinese Qin and Han dynasties 2000 years ago. Since the Hun people were banished and Minqin Basin became part of Han Dynasty, agricultural techniques were introduced. As a result, the quondam pastoral area evolved into an agricultural area gradually. With the acceleration of exploitation, great changes have taken place in the environment. Since then, the fecund land that was once suitable for cultivation and fishery became a scene of "deserts occupying 90% of the area" and "no irrigation, no planting". At present, Minqin Basin has become a typical example of environmental deterioration, and the sustainable development of this area is facing significant challenges. Based on a great many field investigations, the authors made use of integrated data, including historical literature, archaeology, remote sensing imageries and maps, collected extensively evolvement evidence of Minqin Basin about 2000 years ago, reconstructed and mapped the typical oasis distribution of historical times. The result shows that the exploitation of Minqin Oasis, which began in the Han Dynasty, brought prosperity in the Wei and Jin dynasties, declined from the Southern and Northern Dynasty to the Song and Yuan dynasties, rebounded in the Ming and Qing dynasties and reached a climax in modern times. As a whole, the spatial development of Minqin oasis experienced a transfer process from west to east.

References between Genetic Soil Classification of China (GSCC) and Chinese Soil Taxonomy (CST), characteristics of distribution of GSCC-Ferralosols in CST were studied, based on 1:100M Soil Database of China. GSCC-Ferralosol is a type of zonal soil with a total area of 1,122,969.6 km² in China. There are 6 CST Orders referenced with GSCC-Ferralosols, including 25 CST Groups and 53 CST Subgroups, such as Ferrosols, Argosols, Cambosols, Ferralosols, Primosols and Vertosols, in percentages of total area of GSCC-Ferralosols respectively 34.8, 32.2, 26.1, 6.3, 0.6 and 0.04. The reference relationship between GSCC and CST was so complicated that there were no obvious distribution rules for the GSCC-Ferralosols in CST. Results obtained from statistics of references area of the soils in CST show that it is easier to grasp references if the references are all at lower level for both GSCC and CST. Although CST has been finished at high level, it is important and urgent to study and develop the CST at basic level, in order that the CST can be widely used. The result is also useful for soil reference and application of CST.

Based on China's daily temperature data during 1961-2000, we analysed monthly averaged diurnal temperature range, seasonally averaged diurnal temperature range, yearly averaged diurnal temperature range, monthly temperature range, seasonal temperature range and annual temperature range in different areas of China. The results show that the decreasing trends of monthly averaged diurnal temperature range and seasonally averaged diurnal temperature range in most parts of China in spring and summer are greater than those in other seasons, and weaker in autumn than in other seasons. The yearly averaged temperature range also displays significant declining trends in most parts of China. While the decreasing trends of monthly temperature range are greater at the end of winter and spring than those in other seasons and the decreasing trends of seasonal temperature range are greatest in summer, other seasons have not evident decreasing trends. Yearly temperature range also displays evident decreasing trends in China. There exists an obvious regional difference in trends of them in China. The decreasing trends of monthly averaged diurnal temperature range, seasonally averaged diurnal temperature range and yearly averaged diurnal temperature range are obvious in Northeast China and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and lower than in other areas of southern North China. As a whole, the decreasing trends of monthly averaged diurnal temperature range and seasonally averaged diurnal temperature range are more obvious in North China than in the South. And the decreasing trends of monthly temperature range are more obvious in North China than in the South. The decreasing trends of seasonal temperature range are obvious in those regions lying from Inner Mongolia to Southwest China and the southern part of North China in summer. The decreasing trends of annual temperature range are more obvious in East China than in the West.

The problem of inconsistent urban population data is very serious and there is no systematic urbanization data for provincial regions in China. Such situation is caused, partly by frequent changes in the definition of urban population in population censuses and partly by changes in the criteria for the designation of cities and towns. Population census is an important source of national and provincial urban population data. But such data are not consistent due to changes in the definition of urban population in various censuses. These urban population data must be adjusted. This paper discusses the new urbanization process in the reform period first. Then the changing definitions of urban population in various censuses are clarified. A regional approach based on the concept of dual-track urbanization for estimating national and regional urban population data is proposed. Using adjusted urban population data from the 1982 and 2000 population censuses as the benchmark, an annual data series of provincial levels of urbanization is estimated for the period 1982-2000. Based on the estimation results, the major trends of urbanization in Chinese provinces are identified. Some suggestions are proposed for the statistical development of urban population in the future.

Weather generator is an important tool in studying impacts of weather/climate on a variety of systems including ecosystem and risk assessment. The purpose of this work is to develop a weather generator for applications in China. The focus is on precipitation simulation since determination of other weather variables such as temperature is dependent on precipitation simulation. A framework of first order Markov Chain with Gamma Distribution for daily precipitation is adopted in this work. Based on this framework four parameters for precipitation simulation for each month at 672 stations all over China are determined using daily precipitation data from 1961 to 2000. Compared with previous works, our estimation for the parameters is made for more stations and longer observations, which makes the weather generator more applicable and reliable. The spatial distribution of the four parameters is analyzed in a regional climate context. The seasonal variation of the parameters at five stations representing regional differences is discussed. Based on the estimated monthly parameters at the 672 stations, daily precipitations for any period of time can be simulated. A 30 year simulation is made and compared with observations during 1971-2000 in terms of annual and monthly statistics.

During the 1992-1993 joint Australian-Chinese over-snow traverse on the western Lambert Glacier Basin (LGB), two firn cores were drilled respectively at MGA and LGB16. During the 1996-1997 and 1997-1998 austral summers, two firn cores were drilled respectively at DT001 and DT085 on the eastern LGB. Based on the achievements made during the expeditions, the climatic and environmental features on both sides of the LGB have been studied. Results show that during the past 50 years, the trends of both air temperature and accumulation rate show a slight increase on the east side of the LGB, in contrast to the west side of the LGB. The spatial trends of the accumulation rate measured by accumulation canes at 2 km intervals along the nearly 500 km of the traverse lines on both sides of the LGB are different. Moreover, correlations of δ¹⁸O vs T10 along the two sides of the LGB are also different. In addition, the variations of sea salt ion concentrations show different trends in the past 50 years. All the evidences show the Lambert Glacier is a dividing region for the different climatic regimes over the East Antarctic ice sheet, which may be due to different moisture resources resulted from the special local circumfluence such as cyclone activities and local terrain influences. The International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) has its initial aim to reveal an overall spatial pattern of climatic change on Antarctic ice sheet for the past 200 years. This study re-confirms the importance of continental to regional scaled circulation to annual-decadal scaled climatic change in Antarctica.

Based on the hydrological data of Tangnag hydrometric station in the upper Yellow (Huanghe) River and meteorological data of this river basin in the same period, this paper studied the influence of climate change on surface water resource in the upper Yellow River. The results show that the annual flow in the upper Yellow River has been decreasing, it is especially more significant since the 1990s; while the climate change in the upper Yellow River tends toward desiccation with the increase of air temperature, decrease of precipitation and increment of evaporation, which is extremely significant in the 1990s. The increase of air temperature, decrease of precipitation and increment of evaporation resulted in the decrease of flow in the upper Yellow River, and among them, precipitation amount is the main climate factor to impact flow. The decrease of precipitation amount, especially its decrease in summer, is the direct cause to make the flow decrease in the upper Yellow River.

The statistical results of predicting coast change of the Yellow River abandoned delta lobe formed from 1964 to 1976 are put forward using Landsat TM imagery. The velocity of coast erosion or accumulation obtained from four different classic profiles selected were calculated and its change curves with time were plotted. The curves suggested that the regularity of the evolution of coastline after the delta lobe was abandoned is very obvious. It can be divided into three different phases: erosion phase, transition phase and cyclical change phase. The coastline change cycle located in between the two dams is 4 years and that located to west of the dams is 5 years. The analysis shows that the quasi-equilibrium line of coast is located near the coastline of 1996. The coast in the dam areas will recede 1.79 km to reach to equilibrium line. Therefore, effective measures must be taken to protect the dam. But the magnitude of evolution velocity will decrease with the elapse of time and at the same time it proved that the evolution of silty coast actually was a cyclical change process too.

Coastline configuration indexes of 34 arc-shaped coasts in South China were investigated by the method of principal component analysis, and meanwhile deposition and geomorphology features of arc-shaped coast were also analyzed. The results show: (1) Configuration of arc-shaped coast in South China is of the characteristic of variability and complexity. (2) Its decisive factors for the openings of the bay and wave power result in the changes of the configuration of the arc-shaped coast in South China, however, incidence direction for the wave has no effect on configuration development of the coast. (3) Geomorphologic modes of the arc-shaped coast system in South China consist of barrier, lagoon and tidal-inlet. The types for arc-shaped are classified into four kinds as follows: the openings of the bay leaned to east, the openings of the bay leaned to south, the openings of the bay leaned to west and the openings of the bay leaned to north.

This study demonstrates that genetic algorithms are capable of producing satisfying results for optimal spatial search under complex situations. We successfully solve a spatial search problem using the proposed method to allocate the facility according to the population constraint from GIS. The search algorithm is very simple using the mechanics of natural selection in biology. The proposed method can be used as a planning tool that can help urban planners to improve development efficiency in site selection. The method is developed by a common computer language which can directly use the full functions of a commercial GA package through the DLL and can import the spatial data from GIS. This integration is useful for solving realistic problems by using large spatial data sets. The programming can be easily adapted to other applications by just modifying the fitness functions instead of changing the model itself. The proposed method has been tested in the city of Hong Kong, a densely populated region. The population data are obtained from the census department and the population density is prepared in GIS as the main inputs to the GA programming.

Focused on the influencing factors, such as industry, land use, behavior, traffic, history, and culture, the dissertation explores the formed mechanism of commercial types in Guangzhou and evaluates the benefits of its spatial structure under multi factors. The paper defines the study concepts. Based on the quantity, structure and distribution of land supply in Guangzhou, the paper analyzes the relationship between urban land expansion and spatial structure of commercial types. It is concluded that there is spatial accrete characteristic between commerce and real estate, and the degree of integration affects the developmental level of spatial structure of retail. The paper explores the effect of traffic network on spatial structure of commercial types. Urban external traffic arteries mostly affect the spatial structure of wholesale business, and the internal traffic lines combined with real estate generally lead to the expansion of spatial structure of retail. The authors consider that the demand and tendency of consumers cause the differentiation of function about spatial structure of retail. The paper probes into the relationship of history, culture and spatial structure of commercial types in Guangzhou. It is concluded that the core-fringe structure of traditional business streets, modern shopping centers and storage marketplaces in built-up area of Guangzhou is gradually appearing. Finally, the authors summarize the forming mechanism of spatial structure of commercial types by all factors, and evaluate its benefit.

Based on System Dynamic Model and the interaction of ecology-production-living system, the coupling formula of water-ecology-economy coordinated development is put forward. Then the coupling model of water-ecology-economy coordinated development is set up. With dynamic simulation and synthetical adjustment, three available precepts are chosen from lots of experimental precepts, such as water-ecology protecting precept (WEP), water-high economic benefits precept (WEH), water-ecology-economy coordinated development precept (WEE). The gross of water demand in WEE is between that of WEP and WEH. And it takes both economic development and eco-environment protection into account, so economic and ecological benefits are both obvious. It is not the best project according to economic development or ecological protection respectively, but it is the best choice to the sustainable development and the construction of eco-economic zone in Heihe River Basin. So the conclusion is that WEE is the optimal one. It can satisfy the requirement of the water-distributed plan for Heihe River Basin which is decided by China's State Council, and improve the benefits of water utilization at the same time.

This paper employs a number of recently developed economic polarization measures, on the basis of the analysis of the studies on regional economic polarization at home and abroad, and uses consistent data of gross domestic production per capita to quantitatively evaluate the variety characteristics of regional economic inequality and polarization in Jiangsu province since the economic reforms and opening up of 1978 in China for the first time. It shows that regional economic polarization increases with the widening of the regional economic difference. Using a polarization index based on inequality decompositions, we make a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the influences of the regional economic polarization in regional development policy and strategy, township industrialization and foreign direct investment from top-down, bottom-up and exterior of regional development. This paper discusses the factors that account for the changing regional inequalities and polarization in Jiangsu province and argues that the top-town driving factors are likely the most important aspects affecting regional economic polarization in Jiangsu province. Spatially, regional economic polarization in Jiangsu province shows obviously two aspects of dividing from north to south and from urban to rural.

Lots of theoretical and empirical studies dealing with market area and distance decay model in economic geography have been carried out. According to the theory of market, the main elements that determine market scale are population and economic development level. Tourism firms are often discussed in economic geography because their market area and distance decay rule are clearer than many other kinds of firms. This paper mainly analyzes the relationship between regional economy and performance of China's listed typical tourism firms. Unlike the previous studies, we construct the market area not only from distance but also from its constitutes: population and economic development. In China, different provinces often present differences in economic development level, culture, consumer behaviors, etc. So we take province as the basic unit for analysis, and divide market areas into three levels by distance: the province where the typical sightseeing place is located (located provinces), the provinces neighboring to the located province (neighboring provinces), and the provinces adjacent to the neighboring provinces (hypo-neighboring provinces). The following conclusions are drawn: 1. According to OLS model, one yuan RMB adding to GDP per capita in the located province will generate an income increase of 38.46 thousand yuan to the typical tourism firms, and the prominent level is 8.8%; the case of the neighboring provinces is 37.45 thousand yuan and the prominent level is 10.3%; the GDP per capita of the hypo-neighboring provinces has no prominent influence. According to FE (fixed effect) model, the influence of GDP per capita of the located province is 69.86 thousand yuan and the prominent level is 0.1%; the neighboring province is 52.83 thousand yuan, and the prominent level is 8.9%; and the same as the OLS model, the hypo-neighboring has no prominent influence. So we get the conclusion: the economic development level of the located provinces (GDP per capita) has greater influence on the performance (income from main business) of the typical tourism firms. The neighboring provinces have weaker influence than the located provinces. But the influence of the hypo-neighboring provinces is not apparent at all. This conclusion is consistent with the distance decay rule. 2. When controlling other variables as economic development level, and just judging from the quantity of population, we can not find evidences that there exists apparent relationship between the quantity and the performance of China's listed typical tourism firms in all level market areas, even in the located province. 3. In 2003, the performance of China's typical listed firms decreased evidently compared to 2002 due to SARS which indicates that health and stability of society are crucial to tourism industry.

With fast development of regional economy and society of China, the "Three Macro-Regional Development Zones", which is still in effect, is now hard to meet the requirements of the new situation under the guidance of integrated-considering regional development. According to the demands of the scientific viewpoint of development and the "five-integrated-considerations", after introducing what is a full regional economic system and the actual full four-layer regional economic system of USA, this paper puts forward a new zoning project of the "Three Macro-Regional Development Zones" and the 10 comprehensive economic districts of the regional economy of China: the "New Three Macro-Regional Development Zones" include the Northeast and East Coastal developing zone, the Middle and Near-Reach-West developing zone, and the Far-Reach-West developing zone; the 10 comprehensive economic districts are composed of the Northeast District, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei-Shandong Coastal District, the Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang Coastal District, the Guangdong-Fujian-Hainan Coastal District, the Upper and Middle Reaches of the Yellow River District, the Upper and Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River District, the Upper and Middle Reaches of the Pearl River District, Inner Mongolia District, Xinjiang District, and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau District.

The authors carried out drought monitoring and its impacts assessment in Southwest China using CCD and IRS data obtained from China-made satellite HJ-1 in the spring of 2010. The following techniques were proposed: 1) Drought monitoring using LST and NDVI derived from HJ-1 CCD and IRS; 2) Water resource assessment by comparison of water area sampled within the severe drought regions; 3) Effects of the drought on crops. Crop growing curves from time series MODIS NDVI were compared to assess the effects of drought on crop conditions, arable land area, crop planting proportion. Crop planting structure and area fraction of different drought grades were used to introduce crop area under the drought condition. A crop yield loss look-up table was also built-up based on field-experiment results digested from articles. The results showed that: i) the drought occurred mainly in Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing, especially in the northwest of Guangxi, central and northeast of Yunnan and the southwest of Guizhou. ii) the severe drought resulted in the withdrawal of surface water bodies, and more than 2/3 of water bodies disappeared. iii) Since last October, crop growing curves have presented obvious restrain due to the drought, Among the crops, winter wheat, seedrape and sugarcane has been greatly affected. There were about 9.13×10⁵ hm² of winter wheat, 5.43×10⁵ hm² of seedrape and 9.00×10⁵ hm² of sugarcane suffering the drought, respectively. For winter wheat, there would be a damage of 8.3×10⁵ t, and 13.7% of the total production of Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan, accounting for only 0.8% of the country. The damage would not do harm to the country's food security but will exert influence on regional grain supply-demand balance. The drought has also affected the nursery of autumn crops and transplant of rice.

This paper focuses on the method of quantifying the phenomenon of mass elevation effect (massenerhebungs effect). Geographers have taken notice of mass elevation effect and its influence on mountain altitudinal belts for more than 100 years. But so far, our knowledge on mass elevation effect has been very limited, let alone its quantitative effect on mountain altitudinal belts. Geographers and botanists have established many unitary or dibasic fitting models between mountain altitudinal belts' distribution and longitude or latitude, or both. But most of these models involve small scales and could not be expanded to other regions; while others are established for the northern hemisphere or the whole globe with very low precision. The reason is that these models neglect one of the most important factors controlling the distribution of altitudinal belts—mass elevation effect. It is well known that the higher the mountain range, the greater the mass elevation effect is. So, mountain's base altitude could be a represent of mass elevation effect. We collect 173 samples of forest line distribution, and use latitude, longitude and mountain base elevation (MBE) as independent variables to build a multiple linear regression equation for timberline altitude in the southeastern Eurasian continent. The result turned out that the contribution of latitude, longitude and mountain base elevation to timber line distribution reaches 30.60%, 26.53%, and 42.87%, respectively. North of northern latitude 32°, the contribution for each of the three factors amounts to 53.08%, 21.25%, and 25.67%, respectively; to the south, the contribution is 14.94%, 48.98%, and 36.08%, respectively. The results indicate that MBE, serving as a proxy indicator of mass elevation effect, is a significant factor determining the elevation of altitudinal belts. Compared with other factors, it is more stable and independent in affecting forest line elevation. Of course, mass elevation effect is also determined by other factors, including mountain's volume, the distance to the edge of a land mass, the structures of the mountains nearby, etc. They need to be included in the study of mass elevation effect in the future.

Investigations of land use change and its impact on soil development were carried out over the loess tablelands in the northern Weihe River basin. Typical soil profiles, including 6 cultivated soil and 8 apple orchard soil were surveyed in detail, and then sampled systematically. Pedological characteristics and the structure of soil profiles were observed in the field. Particle-size distribution, magnetic susceptibility, contents of organic matter, CaCO₃, trace elements, pH value and micromorphology was analyzed in laboratory. An integration of the results shows that: (1) When cultivated land was converted to apple orchard, the structure of the soil profile changed from Ap-Bc-A-Ck-C to AB-(Bc)-A-Ck-C gradually. (2) Element change occurred in the topsoil between 0 and 35 cm in depth. Magnetic susceptibility, contents of organic matter, major elements (Si, Al, Fe, K, Mg, Ca, Na) and trace elements (Cu, Co, Ni, Zn, Vi, Cr, Pb, Cs) tend to increase, and CaCO₃ content and pH value tend to decrease. (3) Between 35 and 90 cm in depth, magnetic susceptibility, contents of organic matter, major and trace elements tend to decrease, and CaCO₃ content tends to increase. (4) Soil properties remain unchanged below 90 cm in depth. (5) Soil porosity change is obvious. The number of the soil pores is reduced, and the average area of pores is increased. The total content of clay mineral is increased, the ratio of the residual clay to alluvial clay is reduced. The illuviation depth of secondary calcite in the cultivated soil profile occurred between 0 and 35 cm in depth. However, in apple orchard soil profile, carbonate illuviation extended to the depth of 90 cm in general. All of these evidences show that human land use change has affected soil properties and soil development in a relatively short period of time. After cultivated land was changed into apple orchard, soil properties changed mainly between 0 and 35 cm in depth, and the deeper part between 35 and 90 cm was also affected.

Based on the frost date data of 52 meteorological stations over Shanxi Province from 1970 to 2009, the basic characteristics of the first and last frost dates and their changing trends were analyzed in this paper using linear trend estimation method, cumulative filter method and non-parametric statistical test method respectively, and the abrupt changing feature of the frost dates was also analyzed with Mann-Kendall method. The results show that the frost dates and frost-free period have obvious spatial and temporal changing features. Along with the latitude moving northward and the altitude rising high, the first frost appears earlier, the last frost occurs later, and the frost-free period becomes shorter. With the time changing over the past 40 years, the first frost event occurs later and the frost-free period becomes longer, while the last frost date fluctuates from year to year. For the abrupt changing feature, they all have one obvious abrupt change over the past 40 years. The abrupt change of the first frost date appears in 2000, while the abrupt changes of the last frost date and the frost-free period are detected in 1997. For the spatial distribution of their changing trend, the area in which the first frost date is postponed significantly includes the east of Jinzhong city, the north of Lüliang city, the west of Xinzhou city, the south of Yuncheng city, the northwest of Linfen city and the southern part of Datong city; the area in which the last frost date appears obviously earlier includes the east mountainous region of Jinzhong city, the eastern part of Lüliang Mountains and the western part of Xinzhou city; the area in which the frost-free period extends obviously includes the region near the Yellow River, the central-eastern part of the province and the south of Yuncheng city.

From the perspective of geography, this paper studies the evolution of Tianjin water supply pattern by taking advantage of GIS technology. The results showed that because of high salinity of groundwater, surface water from the Haihe River basin was utilized as the main water source of Tianjin in ancient and modern times. The region for water security in these two periods was the upper Haihe River close to the city. Since 1949, water conservancy facilities and water source development have been constructed step by step, and the water supply system in correspondence with the city layout has been established. Water supply structure of Tianjin was characterized by higher proportion of surface water, utilization of new types of water in small quantity and high dependence on external water. The evolution of water source and region for water security has experienced 3 stages in the last 60 years. The first stage is basically the self-supporting period from the 1950s to mid-1960s. The region for water security was confined in administrative area. The second stage lasted from the mid-1960s to early 1980s. It was an unstable period when the upper Haihe River was taken as the main region for water security and water from the Yellow River basin for emergence use. From the early 1980s to the present, the Luanhe River basin was taken as the main region for water security and water from the Yellow River basin was taken as water source for emergency, and the supply water pattern was stable by and large. In the future, utilization of external water would be larger and the proportion of surface water would be higher. Utilization amount of ground water would decrease continuously. The region for surface water security would extend to the Yangtze River Basin on the basis of the current pattern. Region for ground water security would experience further reduction.

Along with the rapid economic and social development in the developed areas in China, the water environment has been continuously deteriorated by the increasing amount of water pollutant discharge. Thus, water environment has already become a constraint factor to regional development. In order to coordinate the relationship between economic development and water environment, many countries have attempted water environmental function zoning so as to provide a scientific basis for the basin management. However, those researches have ignored the spatial relation between water and land area, or how the bearing capacity of water environment constrains industrial distribution. Therefore, the applied index systems concern environmental factors without considering the constraints brought by human activity to the water environment. This paper discusses the methods of cooperative constraint regionalization of water environment which is related to both the sensitivity and the pressure of water environment, including how to divide the assessed units, and how to choose and manage the assessed elements etc. Then, as a case study, Jiangsu Province is divided into four types by the method of two-dimensional quadrant analysis, namely, high-pressure and high-sensitivity area, high-pressure and low-sensitivity area, low-pressure and high-sensitivity area, and low-pressure and low-sensitivity area. Finally, this paper presents the scheme of industrial distribution adjustment, which provides a scientific basis for making different industrial policies as well as harmonizing the industrial development and the bearing capacity of water environment.

Debris flow is in essence the process of mass transportation controlled by its constitution that can be characterized by a wide-ranged distribution of grain size. Soil samples of debris flows of various densities have been collected from different regions and gullies. Analysis of grain composition, particularly for debris flow of high density, ρ_s > 2 g/cm³, reveals that the cumulative curve can be fitted by exponential function with exponent varying with regions and gullies. More importantly, the exponent falls into a narrow-valued domain and hence provides an index signing the activity of debris flows. Furthermore, fractality turns out to exist in grain composition and porosity; and fractal dimension has been derived from cumulative curves in a certain range of size, a range that defines the upper limit of grains constituting the matrix of debris flow. In analogy to concentration in fluidization of granular materials, fractal structure of porosity has proved to take a crucial part in initiation of debris flows.