Based on remote sensing images in 1980, 1988 and 1994, the Shenzhen citi’s land use was conducted through methods of maximum like and probabilistie relaxation. Which revealed the city’s spatial process during 15 years. The conclusions may be distingnished as follows: (1) The results of the detection are reasonable and it is feasibility to calculate the transfer matrix of landuse to show spatial pattern of landuse distribution as unit of image pixel. (2) The main characteristics of the city’s landuse change are the obvious reduction of the existing farm and orchard lands and subsequent rapid increase of urban landuse along the coast and several major roads which are controlled by the opening policies of establishing the special economic zone in this city. (3) The characteristics of the city’s landuse changes are mainly demonstrated as follows: The urban landuse increases rapidly at the expense of occupying great amounts of farmland, showing the patterns of belt distribution along the main transportation lines and of spreading outside the Special Economic Zone. In the primary landuse such as farmland and woodland, etc, the tendency from the lower benefit landuse pattern transforming to the higher benefit one has taken place due to the influence of urbanization. Furthermore, the city’s landuse changes also demonstrate the characteristics of bare land enlargement and farmland split up, which is one of important factors recently led to serious soil erosion and no point source pollution in the city. (4) Under the policy of the special economic region produced by the central goverment of China, the external driving forces of landuse changes in Shenzhen City are the rapid growth of population, foreign investment and development of the tertiary industry which was based upon the real estate. The counter force of landuse changes in Shenzhen City are the transportation issue, topography, landuse patterns, the most importent factor is the transportation.

Land use changes may influence a variety of natural phenomena and ecological processes, including soil conditions, water runoff, soil erosion and biodiversity. Irrational land use is one of the main reasons for the soil erosion and nutrient lose in the loess hilly area. The Yangjuangou catchment in the Loess Plateau of China, with typical loess hill and gully topography, was selected as the study area. The study focus on the affects of land use changes on soil erosion, the distribution of soil nutrient and soil moisture from catchment, and land use type at three spatial scales. Aerial photography interpretation and field survey mapping were used to produce land use maps in 1984 and 1996. GIS was used for data storage, analysis and display from a comparison of land use areal changes in 1984 and 1996. It was determined that the area of forest and grassland increased 42% and 5% respectively and slope farmland decreased 43%. Land use changes result in a decrease of soil erosion by 24%. Three types of typical land use structure during 15 years in the loess hill slope were selected in order to study the effect of land use structure on the distribution of soil nutrients and soil moisture. From the bottom to top of hills, the patterns of land use types are: grassland slope farmland forest, slope farmland grassland forest and slope farmland forest grassland. By measuring the contents of the total N, total P, available N, available P, organic matter of soil and soil moisture in 0 cm～70 cm depth, the results show that the land use structure type of slope farmland grassland forest has high contents of soil nutrients and low antecedent soil moisture. This indicates that this land use structure has a better capacity for retaining soil nutrient and a high efficiency for soil conservation. The analysis of soil nutrient and soil moisture in different land use types showed that the content of soil nutrient are: forest>grassland>slope farmland, while the content of soil water are: forest

The quantitative measurement of sustainable development has become one of the frontiers of sustainable development research since the sustainable development concept was put forward The ecological footprint indicator, put forward and developed by W E Rees and M Wackernagel since the early 1990s, is to measure the human impact on the earth and judge whether the human load stays within global carrying capacity The ecological footprint of any defined population (from a single individual to that of a whole city or country) is the total area of ecologically productive land and sea occupied to produce all the resources and services consumed and to assimilate all the wastes generated by that population With an area of about 6 88?10 6 km 2 which accounts for 71 67% of the total land area of China and 3 57?10 8 people accounting for 28 3% of the total population of China, the 12 provinces of West China have relatively low population density, and are abundant in natural resources but backward in economic development It is important to study the usage status of natural resources and sustainability of the 12 provinces of West China Based on the introduction to the concept and calculation method of ecological footprint indicator, the authors calculate and analyze the ecological footprints of the 12 provinces of West China in 1999 according to the data of the statistical yearbooks of these provinces According to this calculation, Yunnan Province and the Tibet Autonomous Region were the two provinces with ecological surplus, the other 10 provinces were all with ecological deficit The ecological surplus of Yunnan and Tibet were 0 145 hm 2 and 5 431 hm 2 per capita, respectively The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province were the two provinces that have the largest ecological deficit, 1 261 hm 2 and 0 876 hm 2 per capita, respectively The ecological footprint and ecological deficit per capita of the 12 provinces of West China in 1999 were 1 172 hm 2 and 0 469 hm 2, respectively The total ecological footprint deficit of the 12 provinces of West China in 1999 is 1 625?10 6 km 2,which is equivalent to the area of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region The ecological footprint deficit shows that the human load has already stayed beyond the regional bio capacity, and the regional natural ecosystem is under great pressure of human activities We also point out the sustainability of the 12 provinces of West China according to the results of ecological footprints, and analyze the use efficiency of natural resources by calculating the ecological footprint needs of gross domestic product (GDP).

Based on the land use maps of Beijing in 1982, 1992 and 1997, its spatial and temporal process of urban land use growth was analyzed through spatial clustering and historical morphological approaches. The growth intensity index （GII）, was employed instead of growth speed to describe the spatial differentiation of urban land use growth. Assisted by spatial analysis techniques of GIS, the average GIIs per year （AGIIPY） of 155 communes or towns during 1982～1992 and 1992～1997 were calculated and then classified through the Natural Breaks method, and the spatial differentiation maps of urban land use growth in Beijing during 1982～1992 and 1992～1997 were made. This paper found: （1） Industrial land is the most important element of urban land use growth in Beijing, and its contribution rate is on the increase, which is different from the general Western urban growth model driven by residential expansion. Since 1982, the industrial land had been keeping expanded at the average rate of 24～25 km² per year. It is extraordinary high especially during the 1992～1997 period, while that of residential land and urban land use dropped by 59% and 24%, to 3 4 km² per year and 29 8 km² per year respectively. Thus, the contribution rate of industrial land to urban land use growth increased from 64 91% in 1982～1992 to 80 67% in 1992～1997. （2） The spatial pattern of urban land use growth in Beijing was in distinct concentric sprawl. With the growth centers’ gradual shift from the inner to outside, the new added urban land use were increased in distinct concentric zones and continually encroached upon the green spaces among the central mass and those “dispersed constellations”. The total area of green spaces for isolating built up areas in General Plan of Beijing, was 314 km² in 1958, reduced to 260 km² in 1983 and 160 km² in 1993. The concentric sprawl pattern seriously destroyed the spatial structure of “dispersed constellations” designed by the General Plan of Beijing, and also badly worsened the regional ecological environment. （3） The growth axes of urban land use in the southern and eastern part of Beijing had stepped into their decline period. The southern and eastern part of Beijing is located in the North China Plain and have advantages in urban development space, economic and transport communication, etc., so that they are determined as the main urban development areas and direction by the latest General Plan （1991～2010）. But this paper found, the two major growth axes of urban land use along the Beijing Tian Jin and Beijing Shen Zhen highways in the southern and eastern part of Beijing, had stepped into their decline period during 1992～1997. Their AGIIPY decreased from 1 63 and 1 58 during 1982～1992 to 0 86 and 0 67 respectively, and the spatial growth pattern have also switched from vigorous axial expansion to fill in among axes.

The research on land use and land cover change is a core for studies on the global changes. Also the research of spatial-temporal features of land use/land cover change is significantly important for better understanding land use/land cover change and environmental management for sustainable development. In order to study the spatial-temporal changes of land use and land cover, the technologies of remote sensing and geographical information system were used to analyze the spatial dynamical features and temporal dynamical features of land use in China. The mathematical methodology for study on land use change was explored and developed. This research focuses on the dynamical analysis of spatial-temporal features of land use and land cover change of China in recent five years, such as land use types, land use degree, plantation status, city expansion, and so on. The results are: the cultivated land, water area, built-up or non-arable land area are increasing and forestland and grassland keep decreasing in the five years. The change of land cover types is not obvious in the corresponding period. The area-change of cultivated land has taken place mostly in the middle and eastern China. However, the area-change of forestland and grassland and unused land has mainly taken place in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Inner-Mongolia Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang Province in China.

Though analyze the potential impacts of global climate change on China’s agriculture, the meaningful reference for China’s agriculture in the future can be shown. First, according to the historical meteorological data from 310 climatological stations during 1958¹997, the baseline climate in China is analyzed. Then, three general circulation models, i.e., HadCM2, CGCM1 and ECHAM4 are chosen and meanwhile six climate change scenarios constructed. Three models above are used to simulate China’s climate changes under different scenarios for three periods 2020s, 2050s and 2080s. Under three model runs, air temperature is expected to increase in all regions of China. For example, under HadCM2 GX scenario, annual mean air temperature will increase 1.5℃, 2.5℃ and 3.8℃ in 2020s, 2050s, 2080s respectively. In addition, the increasing magnitude of air temperature in high latitude area is larger than that in low latitude area, and in inland area larger than that in coastal area. Finally, based on three GCMs results, an explicit geographic model, i.e., the AEZ model developed and improved at IIASA, is applied to assess the impacts of climate change on China’s agricultural land productivity. The impact assessment mainly focuses on the changes of multi cropping index, land productivity, arable land area and total potential cereal production. The findings show: （1） The average magnitude of increase in multi cropping index is larger in the southwest, central and north of China than that in the northwest and south of China. （2） Due to climate change, the increasing temperature and rainfall in the northeast, northwest and plateau of China has a positive influence on their arable land area and total potential cereal production. Conversely, the increasing temperature and decreasing rainfall in the southeast, central and southwest of China has a negative influence on their arable land area and potential cereal production. For whole China, arable land area is projected to increase in a new climate condition. The changing scope of arable land area varies from 2 5% to 16 2% under irrigated and rain fed condition, and from 2 3% to 18 0% under rain fed condition. （3） Climate change affects land productively in northeastern China positively. However, it has a negative influence on land productively in southwestern China and Tibet. On the average, climate change affects land productivity in China negatively. The decreasing scope changes from 1.5% to 7.0% under irrigated and rain fed condition, and from 1.1% to 12.6% under rain fed condition.

From the essential meaning of urbanization, this paper establishes a comprehensive evaluation index system, including four aspects changing: population, economy, society and land. Based on the method of entropy, the measure and evolution of China's urbanization are analyzed since 1981. The results show that China's comprehensive urbanization level continues improving. Economic growth and geographical landscape are the main features of rapid evolution of urbanization, followed by the population urbanization, and the medical care level of social urbanization is the least advanced. The evolution of all the four subsystems has unique characteristics. The analysis of multiple regression model shows that the driving factors have been diversified. The market force is the most powerful driving force of China's urbanization, followed by intrinsic force, administration force, exterior force. From different stages of urbanization, the effects of market force, exterior force and the administration force on urbanization are increasing, while intrinsic force is decreasing. China's urbanization is the main endogenous process, hence more policies should be formulated to strengthen the market economy reform and coordinate urban and rural development.

Because humans consume the products and services of nature, every one of us has an impact on the earth. Does the human load stay within global carrying capacity? The ecological footprint concept has been designed to answer this question and estimate man’s impact on nature. The ecological footprint of any defined population (from a single individual to a whole city or country) is the total area of ecologically productive land and water occupied exclusively to produce all the resources consumed and to assimilate all the wastes generated by population. The ecological footprint method presents a simple framework for national natural capital accounting. The concept of ecological footprint and its calculation method is introduced in this paper. The paper also analyses the advantages and disadvantages of the ecological footprint model, and addresses the types of ecologically productive lands. The article calculates and analyses the ecological footprint of Gansu province in 1998. The ecological footprint ledger is composed of three main section. The first ledger is basic biotic resources consumption including its byproducts, the second is energy consumption, the third is trade balance. Trade balance through more detailed trade flow analyses can mitigate the influence of import and export product on consumption variations. Based on the ecological footprint concept and analysis framework, human consumption can be compared with regional level natural capital production using existing data. In the case of Gansu province, the ecological deficit of Gansu is 0 564 2 hm² per capita. Simplification of calculation methodology to certain extent results in over optimistic estimates. Finally, the ecological footprint model’s advantages and disadvantages are identified. Ecological footprint index is an excellent aggregate index that connects many issues of sustainability, development and equity. The model can reveal the extent to which local carrying capacity has been exceeded and allows a cumulative approach to impact analysis. The use of ecological productive area as a numeraire, rather than money or energy, makes the footprints easy to be understood, and also permits provocative calculations. The limitations of the model is that it doesn’t include several important issues, which are even directly related to land use: land areas lost to biological productivity loss of land because of contamination, erosion and urban “hardening” and dissertation (especially in north western China). Methodologically, the assessments could be more complete by including the ecological spaces used for freshwater use, a particular important issue in arid area of north western China.

Cultivated land, different from other resources, is fundamental to the sustainable development of Chinese agriculture, society and economy. Market mechanism inevitably drives cultivated land into industrial and urban uses. Rapid industrialization and urbanization lead the scarce cultivated land resources to more crises. So market is a failure to allocate this kind of resource which can be regarded as common property in a certain sense. Government intervention is necessary for optimization allocation of cultivated land. Current policy of macro-administration for cultivated land conservation is oriented to total quantitative control. Every province is demanded that the total number of cultivated land remains not decreased. This policy is difficult for practicing because it does not consider various situations in different regions. For example, in eastern provinces where rapid industrialization and urbanization is proceeding and reserved arable land is scarce, the total number of cultivated land will inevitably decrease unless at the cost of lowering the economic growth. Therefore, it is necessary to innovate the policy of cultivated land resources conservation and utilization. The authors put forward the concept of minimum area per capita of cultivated land (MAPCCL) as a new insight into the optimization of land resource allocation for policy making. MAPCCL can be defined as the minimum number of cultivated land that can meet the needs of food consumption under certain food self-sufficient rate and land productivity. PICL provides a threshold of cultivated land conservation. If K<1, some cultivated land may be conversed into urban and industrial uses and planting structure may be adjusted for more cash crops. If K>1, cultivated land should not be conversed into other uses or land quality and productivity should be enhanced by means of increasing input and technological innovation.

Contemporary China’s urbanization has evolved along two lines: the growth of cities following urban economic development and population concentration, and rural urbanization based on the growth of towns in rural areas. The latter,conceptualized as “urbanization form below” has been propelled by the rise of rural enterprises, resulting in rapid rural employment transformation and the growth of towns. Rural urbanization since the reforms has developed rapidly. In 1995, the share of the designated towns’ nonagricultural population accounted for 9 5% of the nation’s total population, an increase of 5 3 percentage points over that of 1978. This nonagricultural population was 12 5% of the total rural population which was 7 5 percentage points higher than 1978. It constituted 42 5% of the total nonagricultural population of all cities and towns for the nation, rapidly catching up with the share of urbanization contributed by cities. Urbanization from below has been driven by the activities of rural governments and peasants. Three stages of development can be recognized. After the initial period of growth during 1978～1983, it experienced rapid take off during 1984～1988. It entered a period of expansion since 1990. However, the level of rural urbanization has lagged far behind the level of rural nonagriculturalization as well as the nation’s urbanization level in general. As rural enterprises will remain the mainstay of the China’s rural economy for a long period of time, they will continue to cause rural labor transformation and rural urbanization. But with increasing economic liberalization in urban economy and industries moving out the cities, the fact meaning of “urbanization from below” will have to be broadened to include all domestic and overseas forces affecting town growth that are non state in nature.

Major function oriented zoning (MFOZ hereafter) is the guideline for optimizing the spatial pattern of regional development in China, which entails both theoretical and methodological innovation in the academic field of economic geography. This study analyzes the basic features of territorial function and puts forward a spatially equilibrium model for regional development. It argues that there exists a trend of regional convergence in almost any indicator measuring the average level of regional development status. Based on this finding, the study illustrates that the formation of functional zone should be conducive to the reduction of regional inequality and that free flow of resources across region is the prerequisite to spatial equilibrium. It also investigates the impact of territorial functional evolution on spatial processes of equilibrium and suggests that the benefit to be derived from zoning proposal is contingent upon the method of regional division and correct understanding of temporal change of territorial function. After that, this study goes to examine the scientific foundation of several issues concerning the reconciliation of contradictory functions of development and protection, the selection of indicators and the spatial and temporal features of MFOZ. It is then followed by an interrogation of the rationality of achieving dual goals of efficiency and equality simultaneously through three-dimensional flow and spatial equilibrium. The paper ends with a discussion of the position, implementation and coordination of MFOZ from the perspective of institutional arrangements of spatial governance including law, planning and government policy.

Study on change of weather and climate extremes has become an important aspect in modern climate change research. Based on the daily surface air temperature data from 200 stations and daily precipitation data from 739 stations during the second half of the 20th century, schemes for analyzing climate extremes were designed mainly according to percentiles of a non-parametric distribution and the gross errors in the daily data were removed based on a newly designed quality control procedure. The spatial and temporal characteristics of change of climate extremes over northern China were studied. The main conclusions are summarized as follows: 1) The number of days with maximum temperatures over 35^oC decreased slightly. The decreasing trends are obvious in the North China Plain and the Hexi Corridor. However, since the 1990s, the extreme hot days increased greatly. Meanwhile, the frost days decreased significantly in northern China, especially in the eastern part of northern China and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Increase trends were found for the 95th percentiles of daily maximum temperatures except in the southern part of North China, while obvious decrease trends were found for the 5th percentiles of daily minimum temperatures. 2) The extreme intense precipitation events obviously increased in much of northwestern China but decreased in the eastern part of northeastern China and most parts of North China. The number of heavy rain days increased in eastern Inner Mongolia and eastern Northeast China, but obviously decreased in the Northeast China Plain and North China.

Regional land use change is an important part of global change The Bohai Rim is one of the hot spots for socio economic development in China, so the land use change will be improved greatly Based on the RS and GIS methods, we analyze the land use information from 1985 and 1995 TM images, then in both spatial and temporal aspects, we analyze the situation of land use change in the region It is found: (1) The land use changed greatly in the Bohai Rim during 1985～1995 The cultivated land decreased by 1 800 000 hm 2, forestland increased by 600 389 hm 2 and land for housing and other construction purposes increased remarkably in the last ten years (2) The speed of the land use change in the region was up to 0 85% per year The cultivated land decreased at the rate of 1 26% per year, land for housing and other construction purposes, water area, and forestland increased at different rates, among which land for housing and other construction purposes and water area were the highest (up to 6 40% and 6 95% per year respectively) (3) There were notable differences of land use change among the sub areas in the region For cultivated land change, Beijing and Liaoning Province (partly) was the greatest, Hebei Province the smallest For land for housing and other construction purposes, Liaoning (partly) was the greatest, Beijing the second, Tianjin the smallest in land use change (4) As to the spatial change, 30% of the area in the region was under the changing process, major types of which were cultivated land turned to be land for housing and other construction purposes, and cultivated land turned to be forestland and grassland Those types of land were distributed widely and differently in different areas, but mostly near the mountains and in areas joining the town and country (5) The direction of land use change in the region was to occupy cultivated land for and convert land between forest and cultivated land at different units into that for housing and other contruction purposes.

The paleo lake shorelines and lake deposits are widely distributed in the lake basins on the Xizang （Tibetan） Plateau. Deduced from the highest lake shorelines, the lakes area during the last Greatest Lake Period （GLP） was several to tens times larger than their present area. However, there are still divarication on its age, e.g. some thought GLP was formed in the early and middle Holocene, some thought GLP in the Last Glacial Interval, also some thought in the early middle period of Pleistocene. There is no final conclusion related to the last GLP on the total plateau. According to the analyses of the lake deposits and 14 C dating from 12 lakes such as Tianshuihai Lake, etc., the GLP on the Xizang Plateau was formed generally from 50 ka BP to 30～20 ka BP, even some appeared in a little newer time. Because of the difference of climatic environment and lake landform in different areas, there are also differentiation on the end age of GLP and ratio of paleo and present lake area. The GLP in the northern part of the Plateau and the middle west part of Qiangtang Plateau approximately ended at 25 ka BP while the ratio was bigger between paleo and present lake area. It was a little later to the closed time of the lakes in the south and east part of the Plateau. Some big lakes even were exterior lakes in the late Holocene while the ratio was smaller between paleo and present lake area. The GLP that represented a special warm humid stage in Xizang area generally appeared from 40 to 25 ka BP. This corresponded to the third stage of marine oxygen isotope records and Last Glacial Interval. During this period, the lake areas were bigger and lakes levels were higher than those in the best period of the Holocene. Reflected by the relics of high lake level, the climate in the Xizang area was abnormally warm in the Last Glacial Interval compared with the records of environmental change from Antarctica and Greenland. This was also documented by the records from ice core and lake deposits, even reflected in the Tengger Desert to the north of the Plateau and north China area. It may be related to two factors: one was that the incidence solar radiation between 50°N 30°S was higher than that in the high latitude area in GLP; the other was that the powerful Australia high pressure might get across the equator line in that period. This caused the strong summer monsoon on the Plateau that brought plenty of water content from the south to the north interior land.

Three thousand three hundred and ninety four questionnaires were received respectively from Shanghai, Xi’an, Chengdu and Changchun during 1992～1995. Data about destination choice behavior of the respondents in the 4 cities were collected and dealed with computer aided techniques. Traveling behaviors discussed in this paper include both tourists and leisurers in the population of urban areas. An average visited rate was used to demonstrate distance delay of destination utilities by urban residents, which consisted of that of the first five favorite destinations in urban area (0～15 km from origin), suburban area (15 km～50 km), and belts around city with radii of 50 km～500 km, 500 km～1500 km and that more than 1500 km. Destinations situated in urban area have a mean visited rate of 91.2%, suburban area has 59.5%, belt around city with radii of 50 km～500 km reaches 52.1%, 500 km～1500 km reacheds 29.9%, and that more than 1500 km 14.9%. Taking the total market fragmentation of a city as 100, more than 80 of it distributed within a distance less than 500 km from the city. Total destination choice behavior beyond 500 km of a city was biased toward other cities and sites near them, but not destinations of scenic spots far away from them. And those cities which were more favorite by urban residents often located along coastal belts, including Dalian, Qinhuangdao, Beijing, Tianjin, the medium sized cities in the Shandong Peninsular, the cities in the Changjiang Delta, Amoy, Shenzhen, Canton and Haikou. The main destination choice behavior from a city by those non local residents dominantly occurs in a range of 250 km away from the city. There was a distinguished difference between destination choice behavior and attitude. Most of the respondents had a strong preference to destinations located far away from metropolitan area with beautiful scenery and clear air and water in their attitude for recreation , while most of them actually had a behavior of traveling more often to destinations in the metropolitan. Two factors caused above phenomena of contradictions: various natures of the destinations will change the actual visited rate of it; determinants, besides attitude, especially under the circumstances around tourists, would influence destination choice behavior greatly. Characteristics of tourists and leisurers also had important impact on destination choice behavior. A difference existed between male and female respondents in their emissiveness, male respondents occupied a 55.92 percent of the total, while female occupied 44.08 percent. Male and female respondents had slight different preferences to destination types. Age groups determined destination choice behavior. Site of scenic spots far away from the metropolis means more difficulties for tourists, and it is not surprised that young people had more preferences to them than those who were older. At the same time, elders appeared more interested in sites with rich historic and cultural contents than young persons. Occupations to a certain extent determined income and destination choice behavior. Respondents of some vocations with higher income had more opportunities to visit more destinations. Education level influenced behavior of tourists. A case study was given about Xi’an Tablet Forest and Huashan Mountain (the West Sacred Mt.) by the authors to tell a detail story. The Xi’an Tablet Forest is a historic site in the former capital of ancient China, while Huashan Mt. is a physical landscape with steep cliff and overhanging rocks. Tourists at Tablet Forest were more educated than those at Huashan Mt.

The development of Chinese urban fringe is making way into a new stage. It has the characteristic that urban expansion and rural-urbanization promote or carry on simultaneously. This development way of urban fringe is different from that of developed and the other de-veloping countries. The development and changes of Chinese urban fringe is related to de-veloping stage of industrialization and urb;mization. It could divided into three stage: 1) Agri-cultural type's fringe stage (1949-1959), 2) semi-industry type's fringe stage (1960-1978), 3) industry type's fringe (1979-1989). At present, the main problems of Chinese urban fringe are shown as follow: 1) The con-struction of urban fringe is very disordered because of the lack of effective planning policies and theoretical guidance, so there are a lot of problems in achieving an appropriate balance between urban development and resources and environmental protection 2) Since urban frings is situated in city-country combinative area that is no longer rural but is not yet urban, its plann-ing is not only different from that of rural, various built-up area, but also different from that of rural, various index of planning is urucertain. 3) Urban fringe is also a dynamic zone that is undergoing because of it contact with the city, the contradictory of city's expansion and farmland is very prominent, city's expansion caused the heavy loss of prime farmland of fringe. 4) The social and industrial structure of fringe is not stable, economic system is very complex and economic activities and resources tend to focus on the short-term benefits.

The authors made a survey of the current situation of Chinese megalopolises.such as Beijing，Shanghai,Guangzhou,and Nanjing,and found that changes of the urban fringes in these cities are more and more important because the urban economic made a great progress since the reforming and opening of China .This paper focused on the study of the urban fringe's specific properties in the Chinese megalopolises. Firstly，this paper discusssed the division of the urban fringe on the base of the survey of Guangahou city. The urban fringe consists of two parts,i e，the inner fringe and the outer fringe. The urban-rural continuum is only one part of the inner fringe. Secondly， this paper expounded in details the characteristics of the urban fringe in Chinese Megalopolises,in- eluding:(1)the density of population and the population structure; (2) the community structure， sociometry and social problems;(3)the economic structure and patterns of the diversified econo- my and(4)the impact of urban expansion on agricultural Land. Finally .this paper discussed also the evolution laws of the spatial expansion in the urban fringe，such as the Beijing model，the Shanghai model,the Wuxi model and the Guangzhou model.

Recently, many sorts of index models have been widely adopted in the analysis of land use change in China. And they do play an important role in summarizing the rule of regional land use changes. However, according to the present research papers, there are some confusions and misuses in their applications, which root in faultiness, abnormity and misunderstanding of the indices or index calculation. By detailed exploration of the indices embedded in research materials, three classifications are identified on the basis of their application purposes: the change of regional land resources (change rate index and level change index), the direction of land use change (transition matrix and flow direction rate) and the spatial pattern of land use change (dynamic degree, relative change rate, adjacency degree, barycenter, frequency degree and importance degree). Then all the indices listed above are discussed under the purposed framework, including their concepts, calculation methods, application fields, misuses, and some application suggestions. This paper also gives a remark in the end that the research of land use change needs new breakthroughs in both theory and methodology. Index method is only a simple kind with limited functions, and much more efforts should be devoted to integrative, predictive methods in the coming days.

The terrestrial transects of IGBP emphasize on explaining issues concerning global change through gradient methods, and land use is one of the gradient factors. The socio economic development extent, largely influencing decade scale land use change, is mainly taken into account to determine the research sphere of transect of the Yangtse River. Accordingly, considering the boundary of district, it covers an area of 1.12 million km 2 or so, contains 310 counties/cities, under jurisdiction of 11 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) of Shanghai, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Tibet. Supported by geographic information system, the land use pattern after a decade or more rapid socio economic development in transect of the Yangtse River is obtained through analyzing and dealing with the land use data of the mid 1990s. Then, canonical correlation analysis is applied to identify the influential factors of land use pattern in transect of the Yangtse River. Through operations of the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and specific analysis of the results, the contribution of each influential factor to land use pattern can be identified quantitatively. At the same time, tests are carried out through the canonical correlation coefficient and redundancy analysis. It is concluded that the land use pattern in transect of the Yangtse River is affected by physical factors and socio economic factors synthetically. Through foregoing analysis, abstracted influential factors involve height above sea level, temperature, terrain, economic density (i.e. GDP value per km 2), and village labors density. The distribution of pasture shows positive correlation with height above sea level and negative correlation with the warmest month average temperature, and it implies that pasture is usually distributed in the region with high sea level and low temperature. The positive correlation between economic density and the distribution of land for urban and rural construction shows that rapid socio economic development has been resulting in continuing sprawl of land for urban and rural development. The two factors of the coldest month average temperature and slope have positive correlation with the distribution of woodland. Furthermore, positive correlation between village labors density and the distribution of farmland implies the more village labors in a region, the more farmland proportion.

Based on the theory and method of ecological footprint, combined with the ecological consumption and its structural character of tourist, the paper, taking the Huangshan City as an example, calculates and analyses the touristic ecological footprint and its efficiency of Huangshan City in 2002. Six characteristics have been summarized: (1) The touristic ecological footprint of Huangshan City is 0.106 hm² per capita in 2002. In comparison, the fossil energy land is about 88.23% of this footprint, tourist transportation and food are the main constitutes of the total footprint, about 55.67% and 33.90%. (2) The ecological deficit of Huangshan City is 0.219 hm² per capita in 2002. About 48.40% of the ecological deficit is a result of touristic ecological footprint. (3) Extrapolating the footprint of a tourist to Huangshan City (3.13 days) to 1 year, results in an area of 12.36 hm² per capita in 2002, almost 9 times that of the average footprints of citizens of Huangshan City. (4) In Huangshan City, the average tourist output of 1 hm² ecological footprint is US$684, 1.17 times the average output of the Huangshan City' citizens ecological footprint, 61.84% that of the world. (5) Dimensions of tourist flows, tourist consumption level and model, tourist spatial behavior, the policy and stratagem of the tourist destination are the key factors to affect the size of touristic ecological footprint. (6) The shift of TEF among regions will result in shift and diffusibility of tourist ecological responsibility, ecological influence and ecological stress among regions in the world, and tourism development may have profound impacts on global environments.

Based on the panel and serial statistical data, the main factors of regional urbanization and eco-environment coupling, temporal-spatial distribution of the coupling degrees have been researched. The results show: 1) Through grey associative degree analysis, it can be seen that the urban population transfer, economic growth, social service function and level are the main momentums for urbanization to affect eco-environment. Furthermore, the paper selects 16 items of urbanization and 10 items of eco-environment to reveal the coupling mechanism of regional urbanization and eco-environment. 2) The distribution of the coupling degrees basically conforms to the discrepant rule that the coupling degrees are lower in the eastern belt and the western belt, and higher in the middle with an inverse "U" shape. According to the coupling degree distributions and the stages of regional urbanization and economic development, the 31 provinces can be divided into four types, i.e., that are harmony, amelioration, confliction and low-level coupling, but the conflictive type is dominant, reaching 50%. 3) There exist significant phases and undulatory characteristics for the temporal evolvement of urbanization and eco-environment coupling, in which the former stage takes on inverse "U" shape and the latter stage rising curve shape.

Spatial interpolation of climate data is frequently required to provide input for regional plant growth models. As no single method among so many available ones to spatial interpolation of climate variables is optimal for all regions and all variables, it is very important to compare the results obtained using alternative methods applied to each set of data. For estimating 30-year of 10-day mean air temperature and monthly photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) fluxes at specific sites in China, we examined ordinary Kriging (OK) and other two relatively simple methods, one is inverse distance squared (IDS) technique and the other is gradient plus inverse-distance-squared (GIDS) technique. Based on the mean absolute errors from cross-validation tests, the methods were ranked as GIDS>OK>IDS for interpolating 10-day mean temperature, and IDS>GIDS>OK for interpolating monthly mean PAR fluxes. GIDS gives the lowest errors which averaged 1.3 oC for 10-day mean temperature. IDS gives the lowest errors averaged 0.46 MJ/(m²·d) for monthly PAR fluxes. Although OK errors were more consistent for temperatures of different seasons, yet GIDS had lower errors during crop growth seasons. Compared with OK, GIDS was simple to apply for interpolating 10-day mean temperature. Since PAR was affected by so many factors, the performance of GIDS and OK were not as good as we expected. It also implied that the complex methods could not ensure the best results. The multiple linear regressions carried out for GIDS revealed strong gradients in temperature and PAR fluxes varied by month in a fairly consistent way. For all 10-days, r was above 0.94 for temperature, and temperatures decreased with increasing latitude, longitude and elevation. The elevation coefficient for temperature during the year ranged from -0.0033~-0.0048 oC/m. For PAR, r was lower than that for temperature. The coefficients of PAR for latitude, longitude and elevation ranged from positive values to negative values during the year. Using a 1 km Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for China, the first 10-day mean temperature and monthly mean PAR flux of July were estimated for each pixel to assess the performance of the three interpolation techniques. From temperature maps, we can see that GIDS gives more reasonable estimates in valleys and mountainous area than the other two techniques. The temperature map generated by GIDS shows the elevation effects of temperature in West China especially in valleys and Tibet Plateau. The strong temperature trends towards the northeast in East China and PAR trends towards the northwest were also shown in the maps.

Land use and land cover change as the core of coupled human-environment systems has become a potential field of land change science (LCS) in the study of global environment change. Based on remotely sensed data of land use change with the spatial resolution of 1km ×1km on national scale among every five years, this paper designed a new dynamic regionalization according to the comprehensive characteristics of land use including regional differentiation, physical, economic, and macro-policy factors as well. Spatial pattern of land use change and its driving forces were investigated in Chia in the early 21st century. To sum up, land use pattern of this period was characterized by rapid changes in the whole country. Over the agricultural zones,e.g., Huang-Huai-Hai Plains, the southeast coastal area and Sichuan Basin, the built-up and residential areas were considerably expanded to a great proportion in the northwestern oasis agricultural zones and the northeastern zone led to a slight increase of arable land aea in the northern China. Due to the "grain for green" policy, forest area was significantly increased in the middle and western developing region,Where the vegetation coverage was substanially enlarged, likewise. This paper argued the main driving forces as the implementation of the strategy on land use and regional development, such as the "Western Development", "the Revitalization of the Northeast" policy, coupled with rapidly economic development during this period.

This paper analyses regional economic disparities in China using nationwide county level data. Firstly, in contrast to the enlarging trend indicated by provincial level studies, economic disparities between counties were narrowed in the 1990s. This finding does not apply in the comparison between coastal and inland areas. The disparities between the two parts were continuously widened. Secondly, the counties with faster growth rates than the national average were spread from several growth centers to outside. Consequently, three growth corridors gradually appeared, namely, the Coastal Corridor (along the nation’s coastal line), Beijing-Guangzhou Corridor (along the railway from Beijing to Guangzhou), and the Changjiang River Corridor (along the Changjiang River from Chengdu to Shanghai). Thirdly, regional disparities exist within each corridor. There were numbers of relatively underdeveloped counties in the Coastal Corridor. Similarly, relatively developed counties were found in Western China. Fourthly, general speaking, the less developed counties were mainly located in the western part of China. The distribution pattern of less developed counties is consistent with the disadvantageous development conditions in mountainous, cold and dry areas, as well as with the isolation in the provincial border regions. Finally, this paper classifies counties into four categories by using their development status in 1990 and their growth rates from 1990 to 1998.

This paper uses the first-hand data of 1987 and 1999 to analyze the spatial evolvement of Guilin's domestic tourist origins of the years concerned. It is revealed that the number of tourists increased steadily after 1980, while the 1980s were the golden era of Guilin's domestic tourism development. The spatial concentration index (SCI) of tourist origins indicates a drop of 12% from 1987's 43.50 to 1999's 38.27, which means that after 12 years, Guilin's tourist origins have expanded and have become more stable, while the spatial distribution has become less concentrated. Taking into account the increment percentage of tourists from each tourist origin, the paper develops a formula to calculate the attraction radius (AR) of tourist destination (TD) revised from the formula of standard distance given by Stephen Smith (1989). Using the railway distance between Guilin and the capital city of each province as the mean of the traveling distance from each region, the paper shows that Guilin's AR raised by 40.84% from 1987's 568.12 km to 1999's 800.14 km. From the view of macroeconomics, we consider the following as the possible reasons for the drop of Guilin's SCI and the rise of its AR: firstly, as a long-established tourist destination, Guilin's word-of-mouth reputation played a very important role in attracting tourists. Secondly, the rapid increase of living standard and the practice of long weekends/vacations has brought China to a golden era of domestic tourism where more people travel more frequently than before. Thirdly, the social and economic development in areas such as Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong, has made it possible for Guilin to attract more tourists from them. As a result, the spatial distribution of Guilin's domestic tourists origins has developed a pattern that is different from the law of distance decay. Fourthly, the degree of increment in a tourist origin is mainly due to two factors--spatial distance and the level of economic development. A place near a tourist destination may have a low increment of market share because of its low level of economic development. A place far from a tourist destination may have a high increment of market share because of its high level of economic development. The intervening opportunity is probably the fundamental factor to analyze this phenomenon. According to the conclusion, the paper proposes some guidelines for Guilin's tourism marketing. Finally, the paper discusses briefly the difference of evolvement in the domestic tourist markets between Guilin and Huangshan.

It is significant to estimate terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) accurately not only for global change research, but also for natural resources management to achieve sustainable development. The estimation of NPP by climate data is only a potential NPP rather than true NPP. But remote sensing data can describe large scale distribution of plant resources better. So, 1 km AVHRR NDVI data was used adopted here to estimate the distribution of NPP in China. First, the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) by vegetation is derived from NDVI data using the linear relationship between FPAR and vegetation index. The incident PAR was estimated by climate data. Then NPP was calculated with absorbed PAR and energy efficiency ε * g . In order to estimate NPP more accurate, the effects of temperaturely, soil water content and plant respiration were also considered in the model. The model can be described as below:NPP=ε g×f 1(T)×f 2(β)×FPAR×PAR-Rin which f 1(T) and f 2(β) mean the temperature and soil water content effects on photosynthesis, R means plant respiration including maintenance respiration and growth respiration. Monthly and annual net primary productivity in China was computed by monthly 1km AVHRR NDVI data, climate data between April, 1992 and March, 1993, vegetation type map and soil texture map. The results gained were compared with ground-observation and Miami model results. It shows that the results using remote sensing data are closer to truth. Total annual NPP in China is 2 645×10 9tC. The distribution of NPP in China is mainly effected by precipitation and has the trend of decreasing from south east to north west. Finally, the seasonal change of NPP was investigated on the basis of monthly NPP.

Landsat TM data has a thermal band (TM6) to monitor the thermal radiance and surface temperature of the earth. For a long time, retrieval of surface temperature from TM6 data is done through the method called atmospheric correction, which requires the estimate of atmospheric thermal radiance and absorption. The computation is complicated and the accuracy is strongly subjected to the estimate, hence has few applications in real world. In this paper, a new method with simple computation and high accuracy is developed on the basis of thermal radiance transfer equation of the ground. The impacts of both atmosphere and the emitted ground on the thermal radiance transfer of the ground are directly involved into the proposed algorithm, which requires 3 essential parameters for the retrieval: emissivity, transmittance and atmospheric average temperature. Validation indicates that the accuracy of the algorithm is high up to <0.4℃ for the estimate of the essential parameters with no errors and <1.1℃ for the estimate moderate errors. Since the method is applicable for the remote sensing data with only one thermal band, it has been termed as mono window algorithm.

Industrial cluster has become the hot topic in Chinese regional studies and the new idea of the government officials in regional and sectorial development. However, confusions in the cluster related concepts greatly hamper the Chinese cluster development. This paper aims at the frequently asked questions in the website of Chinese cluster studies and discusses some concepts related to local industrial clusters in Chinese context, such as agglomeration, geographical concentration, innovative cluster, industrial chain and industrial park.

The Tibetan Plateau is one of the best places to study global climate change. Aridity or humidity status of land surface is an important outcome that has close relations with a set of climatic factors such as precipitation, temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity and wind, but the relationship between them is complicated. This paper calculated potential evapotranspiration by applying Penman-Monteith model which was recommended by FAO in 1998, and aridity index by Vyshotskii model to indicate aridity or humidity status of the Tibetan Plateau during the period 1971-2000. Then it analyzed the changing trends of observed climatic factors (temperature and precipitation) and calculated factors (potential evapotranspiration and aridity index), and showed the spatial distribution of aridity/humidity status over the Tibetan Plateau during the period 1971-2000. Trends calculated by linear regression were tested through Mann-Kendall test. Results of 77 meteorological stations on the Tibetan Plateau showed that the main trends of climate change are temperature rise and precipitation increase; potential evapotranspiration decrease and most of the areas was ascending to more humid status. Results suggested that aridity or humidity status cannot be presented only with precipitation.

In this paper, the indexes and models are used to measure the accessibility of transport network, such as total transport distance Di and accessibility coefficient. On the basis of "The Shortest Route Model", the evolution of railway network, changes of the spatial structure in accessibility, the relationship between railway network distribution and spatial economic growth in the past several hundred years in China are analyzed. The results show that the evolution of railway network in China experienced 4 stages, i.e., initial stage, constructing stage, extending stage and optimizing stage, but the speed of spatial expanding is relatively slow. One hundred years' construction of railway leads to "time-space convergence". The spatial structure of accessibility displays "different circles with one core", and radiates from North China to the surroundings. The area, higher than the national average level in accessibility, expands from North China to East China and Central China, and the center of accessibility moved from Tianjin to Zhengzhou gradually.