In face of the decreasing external demand and the population, resources and environment bonuses, the economic growth in China will gradually dipped to a low growth. The researches on objects and pattern of China’s ‘New Normal’ from the view of Economic Geography have great influence on the development of China. Through certain key indexes, this article focused on the trend of economy and the regional type in the 31 provinces of China. The results indicated that: In the past few years, the growth rate of fiscal revenue, electricity consumption, and volume of railway freight has declined sharply, and meanwhile, many primary industries and ‘three carriages’ (fixed asset investment, export, and total retail sales of consumer goods) as well. Many provinces have the same tendency as the whole China. Moreover, the total 31 provinces are divided into three types: relatively fast growth, light downward pressure, and great downward pressure individually. Provinces with great downward pressure are further divided into four types: developing regions, overall declining regions, energy-owned regions, and others.The same type of regions is geographic agglomeration obviously. Faced with this round of economic downside, different regions should take different measures, and the developing risks of Northeast China and energy-owned regions such as Shanxi should be emphasized on.
China’s manufacturing industry has been formed a export-oriented model, also called ‘world factory’, characterized by export processing industry based on the cheap labor and low added value. The article selected the index system of resources, energy, human capital, capital investment, exports, economic and environmental outputs. Export efficiencies of China and 31 provinces since 2000 to 2013 had been analyzed by data envelopment analysis measure. It was found that from 2000 to 2013, the national and provincial exports’ efficiencies had increased. However due to the financial crisis, there had been fluctuations in the overall efficiency of the manufacturing export factory after 2008. In 2009, 2010 and 2012, national export efficiencies are non-DEA effective, with only 0.866, 0.958 and 0.944 , respectively. In terms of provincial effectiveness, 22 provinces reached DEA-effective in the world-export-plant-model, while 27 provinces effective in 2010, 29 provinces effctive in 2013. In 2005, Liaoning, Jilin and other nine provinces were non-DEA effective. In 2010, the number of non-DEA effective provinces dropped to four, namely Liaoning, Hubei, Sichuan and Gansu, respectively. In 2013, the number of non-DEA effective provinces reduced to 2, Shanxi and Hubei province, respectively. The causes of non-DEA effective regions include redundancies of resources inputs, investment in human capital, exports processing, as well as environmental outputs. The model of exports of processed products in the world factory pattern should be urgently restructured in the future, as the world’s market downturn, some industry overcapacity, gradually disappearance of demographic dividend, pressure of resource and the environment increasing. Key initiatives of restructuring include enhanced capability of independent innovation, speeding up industrial restructuring, transformation from the low end assembly stage to the improved quality phase characterized by high technology content, high added value , etc.
Since 2000, the sustained and rapid growth of Chinese economy and relative rough growth model has lead into the huge increase of energy consumption. China has become the world’s largest energy consumer. Given the huge scale of energy consumption and impact on global climate change, the peak value and its coming time become the important issues for Chinese sustainable development. Through the comparison of energy consumption trend of some developed countries, the social and economic conditions of the peak value were studied. Then, this article estimated the trend of China’s future energy consumption with LEAP model taking the social and economic elements concerned, including growth rate, industrial structure, urbanization rate, population and vehicle-motors. It found that most developed countries, such as Canada, France, Germany, Japan, United Kindom and United States, have really get their energy consumption peak value in the beginning of 21st, when they had really finished the industrialization and urbanization process, the growth rate of GDP slowed down substantially, size of energy and heavy chemical industry stabilized or decreased, and GDP per capita reached to certain level. Given Chinese industrilizaton and urbanization continued, Chinese energy consumption will continue to increase in a long period. This paper forecast that he peak value of industrial energy consumption will be achieved during 2020-2030 with the transformation of industrial structure and capacity saturation of energy-intensive industries,while the residential and transport energy consumption will continue to grow with the improvement of living standard. Only under the strict socio-economic conditions, such as implementing economic development mode transformation, promoting industrial structure conversion and upgrading, maintaining economic growth in moderate speed(5%-6%), pushing forward urbanization steadily(urbanization rate is 70% in 2035 and 75% in 2050), controling the number of motor vehiclesstrictly and promoting new energy vehicleactively, the scale of China’s energy consumption will get to its peak value in 2040 with the size of 5.8 billion tce. Also, such huge energy demands will make China face with great risks and costs in ecological, economic and national security. Therefore, this paper argues that the current academic and political views on Chinese energy consumption turning point of Chinese is not conducive to the realization of China’s economic and social development and long-term goals due to its continued industrialization and urbanization process.On the other hand, China must change its traditional economic growth mode and accelerate industrial restructuring and improve energy exploitation and utilization efficiency. Also, it should carry out international cooperation actively and protect the safety of international oil and gas imports.
Based on the multi-scale analysis of cities at the prefecture level and major function oriented zones (MFOZ), the process of spatial-temporal changes and spatial cluster of major pollutant emissions during 2005 to 2012 in China are analyzed in this article. The results show that: Firstly, the emission intensities of major pollutants present a decreasing trend in the order of optimized zones, prioritized zones, food stuff-security zone sand ecological safety zones,and the emission intensities in urbanized areas is significantly higher than that in restricted development areas. In 2012, the emission intensities of water pollutant in various types of MFOZ continues to strengthen compared to 2005, the rapid growth of emission intensitiesin food stuff-security zones and ecological safety zone sare more prominent.Secondly, the overall emission intensities of water pollutant is still on the rise at the national level, although the emission intensities decrease gradually in partial areas of prefecture-level cities in China. High COD emission areas distribute in the most areas of the East, Northeast and Central China, and show the pattern of continuous distribution in Chengdu-Chongqing region, Hohhot-Baotou-Ordos region of Western China. The nationwide emission intensities of atmospheric pollutantre main relatively stable, and the emission intensities in partial areas of China has alleviated. High SO2 emission areas is mainly located in Shanxi, Midwest Inner Mongolia,Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia-Henan region along the the Changjiang River,Bohai Rim region and the Changjiang River delta.Thirdly, the emissions of major pollutants have significant agglomeration effects which show a trend of increase since 2005, and theNorth China not only has become the high emission agglomeration, but also presented stronger path dependence and effect of spatial locking. Finally, some measures to reduce pollutants emission intensity are put forward,which should include in the transformation of the pattern of economic development, the establishment of control systemof environmental “red line” and the enrichment of environmental comprehensive treatment tools.
For a long time, the economic growth ratio and the national competitiveness/influence have been the focuses for the researchers especially the official decision maker for various countries. However, the relationship between the national economic growth ratio and national competitiveness/national influence need to be suited further. Especially under the background that China’s economic growth ratio reduced gradually, it’s urgent to probe the doubt whether the decrement of economic growth ratio impair the national influence and competitiveness in China. Based on the review on the current research, we discussed the relationship between the national economic growth ratio and national competitiveness/influence from spatial and temporal dimensions. Firstly, we described the evolving path of global power center since 15th century from a historical perspective, and analyzed the changes of economic growth ratio of global power centers such as the UK and the USA to conclude the developing regularities and investigate the relationship between national economic growth ratio and national influence. Furthermore, we discussed the spatial differentiation of current national economic growth ratio and national competitiveness, especially probe the spatial differentiation of their relationship and conclude the major features and regularities. The results show there is no rigorous linear but a curvilinear adaptable relationship between national economic growth and national influence, but the foster and intensification of national influence still need the support by a higher economic growth ratio and the global power center often has lower economic growth ratio of 5%. And a converse relationship is shaped between the national economic growth ratio and national competitiveness, and generally the country with a higher economic growth ratio has a lower national competitiveness but the country with a higher competitiveness has a lower economic growth ratio even show the negative growing trend of economy. Under the background that the economic growth ratio in China has been decreasing in recent years, this research is help to clarify the worry of scholars and policy-makers and the ratio from 5% to 7% of economic growth in China doesn’t reduce the national competitiveness/influence in the world. And the result also shows that the target of 7.5% of economic growth ratio is rational for China to upgrade into a global power center.
Based on the investigation on the spot, using historical records, archaeological investigation, ancient maps, aerial photographs and remote sensing images, this article has reconstructed and analyzed the urban morphology of ancient prefecture city, Guidefu (Shangqiu) in Henan, from the angle of urban historical geography. The research shows that the Guide City has a circular outer edge and a square inner edge, built in different periods and had different functions, which means that the special form of Guide City “round outside but square inside” in fact is the result of comprehensive effect of the natural environment and social environment, and the reflection of time changes, while it is not a simple product of “Feng-shui” thought. The changes of parts of the urban morphology of Guide City do not consistent with each other, the outer part of the city changed a lot while the inner city changed less, and the streets and blocks in the city are nearly the same as it was in Qing Dynasty. The urban morphology and scale of Guide City represent the general characteristics of prefecture cities in Central China of Ming and Qing Dynasties, reflecting the characteristics of local culture and geographical environment of Central China, typical and unique. The walls-gates-moat, the chessboard street pattern, landmark building, such as Confucius' temple, and ancient residence distributed in dots and patches, constitute the main morphology of the ancient Guide City, and deserve special concern and protection. In the process of using Guide City to develop local cultural industry, urban planners should have a profound understanding of urban morphological characteristics, cultural landscape and the changing process of ancient city, in order to realize the combination of protection, development, and utilization in urban planning.
This article examined the coupling characteristics and effect mechanism for rural development and transport infrastructure. Based on socio-economic data, road traffic vector data, using the comprehensive evaluation model, spatial lag model (SLR) and coupled coordination degree model, the rural development level and transport superiority were comprehensively examined in 2000 and 2010, in order to reveal regional structural features of both. Main results for this study are as follows: 1) The regional differences of rural development have not been changed recent the last 10 years, as differences in the eastern, central and western China. The rural comprehensive development level was upgraded by 33.2%, while rural development rate has stabilized in rural areas of the eastern region. However, rural development rate was rapid promotion in the Midwest region of China during 2000 to 2010, because of policy support, industries transferring, urbanization and industrialization. 2) The point-axis spatial structure of transport superiority distribution was significant in China in 2010, which the capital of the prefecture-level city had obvious transportation advantages, and existed some transportation advantages development axis regions around core transportation central place. Regional differences were mainly between the eastern and western China, transportation core hub and the peripheral region. 3) Road density effect on rural development significantly, due to strong accessibility of national, provincial and county roads, which have a positive role in promoting rural development. However, highways and railway had a corridor property of landscape ecology. Highway and railways were “aisle”, through connection, as impenetrable property of its structure, so that region was split into two parts, and the space layout for train station and entrance was important to rural development particularly, otherwise less impact on local development across the region. Prefecture-level city traffic center had an obvious impact on rural development. Because of a strong ability to aggregate in large cities, which resulted in a special regional structure of “center developed and peripheral poverty”. Guiding the core elements radiation output to its surrounding area was extremely important for transport center cities. 4) The spatial coupling cooperative of transport superiority and rural development was low in China, account to 88.25% of the counties in China, especially in the western region, while Tibet was particularly serious, the coordination degree lower than 0.4,transportation development and rural development synergies better geographical concentration in the eastern coastal areas. Only a few counties in western better coordination, mainly synergistic whole capital, prefecture-level cities and border areas, rural development and transport infrastructure was weak. The core theoretical of traffic facilities construction level, stage and long-term effects on integrated rural development and regional economic development, as well as leading or lagging scientific judgment of regional transportation construction, which will be the important field for economic geography and rural geography studies.
Applying the exploratory and confirmatory quantitative research methods, this article measured and analyzed the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics and influence on poverty of farmers’ income diversity in Wuling Mountain Area of Hunan Province during the period of 2000 to 2012. The results showed that, firstly, the diversity degree was low and followed the “U” shape trace, and the diversity gaps between different counties were narrowing gradually. Secondly, the counties which had the similar degrees of farmers’ income diversity were clustered in a few years while scattered randomly in most of other years. Thirdly, the farmers who lived in the subareas of Loushao, Zhangjiajie had more diverse sources of income than those who lived in subareas of Huaihua and Xiangxi, and the farmers who lived in Huaihua subarea had the lowest income diversity degrees and those who lived in Xiangxi subarea experienced the fastest increase of income diversity, generally, more and more counties in the subareas of Loushao and Xiangxi had high diversity of farmers’ income sources. Fourthly, during the period of 2000 to 2012, the local spatial patterns of HH(High-High) and LH (Low-High) had moved dramatically from counties to counties, while the other patterns of HL and LL were stable relatively and stayed in Huaihua subarea in most of years, and the counties which belong to Xiangxi subarea changed their local spatial patterns more frequently. Lastly, the diversity of income had obviously and significantly influence on increasing farmers’ income and reducing poverty.
Considering ignore of traditional urban influential spheres on population analysis, population analysis was made on non-agricultural and influential population growth rate difference, by introducing urban land and minimum time cost to extend current urban influential spheres research, better to instruct urban system planning. Base on minimum time cost, taking urban land area as urban source, urban influential spheres were delineated, by contrast with traditional Voronoi diagram based on point and polygon source. Then based on urban influential spheres, combined with population grid data and urban administrative non-agricultural population, non-agricultural and influential population growth rate difference was calculated and its mean and standard error analysis on non-agricultural and influential population growth rate difference were made to make a deeper exploration on effects of urban land and minimum time cost on urban influential spheres delineation. By employing Getis statistical index of non-agricultural and influential population growth rate difference, cities with significant non-agricultural and influential population growth rate difference were recognized, so special suggestion could be made for each type of city. A case study on the areas along Huanghe River in Ningxia and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 1990, 2000 and 2010, showed after introducing minimum time cost and urban land, edges of urban influential spheres were more exact like urban administrative edges, compared to traditional point and polygon Voronoi diagram; taking urban land instead of urban point as urban source, larger city’s influential sphere was larger, while traffic seemed to narrow the gap between large and small city’s influential sphere which meant traffic helped to enlarge small city’s influential spheres and reduce large city’s spheres; Dongsheng and Yijinhuoluo Counties were typical of cities whose potentially served population grew slower than administrative non-agricultural population, so this type of urban needed to enhance diffusion effect on nearby counties, while as for cities like Dawukou and Huinong whose potentially served population grew faster than non-agricultural population, infrastructure construction emphasis should be placed on aggregation of industry and attracted more population from nearby counties. This work could provide an alternative technique for urban system planning.
As urbanization in China has increased rapidly in recent decades, large numbers of people have moved from rural areas to urban areas in China. As a result, a great number of rural residential land are abandoned or inefficiently used, which becomes a serious problem in China. Based on the data from a nationwide rural ecological landscape survey, called “thousand villages survey”, this study analyzes the status, change modes, causes and the reuse potential of hollowing of rural residential land. Major conclusions of this study are as following: 1) Village-hollowing has been a universal phenomenon in China rural areas, where 93.5% villages have this phenomenon. The average hollowing rate of rural residential land of the surveyed villages is about 10.2%, and 14.9% rural residential land is inefficiently utilized. Therefore, village-hollowing now becomes a great challenge to rural development. 2) The hollowing rate of rural residential land varies significantly across space, where villages in north central and eastern China usually have higher hollowing rates. Therefore, it is an urgent demand to formulate regionally differentiated management and reutilization solutions of rural settlement. 3) There are many reasons related to village hollowing. The survey shows that 39.94% surveyed people believe that rural labor migration is the major reason to village hollowing. 19.51% surveyed people accuse the reason to urbanization of rural people. 25.73% surveyed people think dilapidated houses lead to village hollowing and 14.82% surveyed people trend to believe “One household, multiple housing lands” cause village hollowing. 4) It is large of potential to reuse the idle and abandoned rural housing land to meet future residential land demands from newly increased rural population, although it’s difficult and costly. The survey shows that rural people have strong wills to reutilize the hollowing rural residential land. 34.22% surveyed people choose to change the hollowed rural residential land to public green space. 14.45% and 13.08% surveyed people believe that the hollowed rural residential land should be changed into cultivated land and forest land. Therefore, policy makers should pay more attentions to following three aspects, including improving regulatory and policy for rural residential land management, strengthening the village planning and promoting the construction of beautiful country, and making feasible and differentiated rural residential land reuse schemes. Regional differences of man-earth relationship should be considered in future differential recycling schemes of rural residential land use. However, the abandoned and idle rural residential land are usually scattered in rural resident areas, which make it is difficult to renovate them into farmland in large-scale. Therefore, more attention should be paid to rural settlement planning and improvement of rural living environment.
Inbound tourism development not only drives economic growth, but also significantly influences the local goods prices in the inbound tourism destination. This article tries to build a new theoretical model to explore both GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and inbound tourism’s impact on CPI (consumer price index) in the context of Hong Kong. The study collects seasonal data of inbound tourism, CPI and GDP of Hong Kong from the year 1999 to 2014. Then, this article conducts following methods to complete the analysis. Firstly, it applies SPSS software to analyze the Pearson correlation of the 3 variables; Secondly, it uses Eviews software to estimate the long-term cointegration relationship of the variables; Thirdly, it introduces Granger causality analysis and compulsory response analysis to evaluate the quantitative relationship of inbound tourism, CPI and GDP. In conclusion, the results consisted of 5 aspects. 1) Inbound tourism, GDP and CPI has correlation between each other. 2) It has a stable long-term equilibrium relationship between inbound tourism, GDP and CPI. Meanwhile, the impact of inbound tourism on CPI is higher than the impact of GDP. 3) The unidirectional Granger causality relationship exists under inbound tourism to CPI, GDP to CPI, and inbound tourism to GDP. 4) Compulsory response of CPI to CPI and inbound tourism is sensitive than GDP, while the compulsory response of CPI to GDP has showed more hysteresis effect. 5) The reasons why inbound tourism has a significant impact on the consumer prices is that the inbound tourists scale has become larger and larger from 1999 to 2014, and the inbound market of Hong Kong has been occupied mostly by mainland Chinese tourists in the recently years. The negative impacts are that some local people consider their life quality to be affected by tourism. Moreover, the tourism image of Hong Kong has also been damaged because some protests had violent behaviors toward mainland tourists. Besides, the mutual trust between tourists and residents in Hong Kong has been ruined. Finally, the article suggested some solution for the problem, for example, the government should develop more tourism attraction to meet tourists’ different tourism demand, encouraging more local people to join in the tourism development of Hong Kong and make sure the residents to achieve actual benefits from inbound tourism prosperity.
As the core of ethnic tourism, the cultural interaction between local residents and tourists in ethnic tourism has been paid little attention in Chinese academic research. And the previous studies on China's ethnic communication did not involve the new ethnic exchanges promoted by ethnic tourism under the background of mass tourism. Therefore, to study the role conflicts presented in the process of cultural interaction between locals and tourists not only can help to deepen ethnic tourism research, but also can extend the field of ethnic communication studies. This article, by referring to the theory of role and role conflict from the symbolic interactionism, takes three locals’ households in Baisha Village, Lijiang, China as the micro research sites to conduct a qualitative research on role conflicts between local minority residents and Han tourists at individual level. Its findings show that multiple role conflict phenomena often take place in the interactive processes between the locals and Han tourists. While interacting with tourists, the local residents, on the one hand, intend to get economic interests from tourists by their role playing of “businessman”, and on the other hand, they have to emphasize their other two roles which are the “host” and “minority”. Specifically, the locals try to treat the tourists warmly with their role of “host” in their home space, while to protect their heritage and culture with the role of “minority”. As a result, they can maintain the advantages in the competitive market through performing their own authentic culture. Tourists also involve the intrarole conflicts between the role of “guest” and “customer”. Meanwhile, there are two interrole conflicts between the local residents and tourists, which are the interrole conflict between the tourist’s “customer” role and the local resident’s “host” role, as well as the interrole conflict between the local resident’s “businessman” role and tourist’s “guest” role. These phenomena reflect not only the locals’ pursuit of economic interests, but also the status and power relationships between locals and tourists while interacting with each other. Besides, in terms of theoretical contribution, this study not only enriches the host-guest interaction theory in tourism anthropology by examining the influence of micro space on role interactive process, but also make up for the deficiency of human geography in micro space research and tourism sociology in the aspect of space-power research.
As a typical example of old industrial bases and major grain producing areas, Jilin Province is playing an important role in economic development and food security in China. However, because of relying on extensive mode of growth with high pollution and high energy consumption in a long period, it was paid more attention to output of production and overlooking the promotion of economic efficiency in Jilin Province. To improve the economic efficiency and to make the industrial structure realize the transformation and upgrade are urgent. It is an emergency to improve economic efficiency under the circumstances of economic "new normal". An analysis of economic efficiency difference and spatial pattern evolution in Jilin Province from 2003-2012 is carried by means of DEA. The results show that the total efficiency of economic development is relatively high in Jilin Province, the technical efficiency relatively is stable, the scale efficiency wavelike rises, and in the stage of progressive increase of scale return, the overall efficiency is always influenced by scale efficiency. The overall efficiency level in the central Jilin is higher than eastern and western Jilin. The overall efficiency presents differences among eastern, central and western Jilin, and the difference is mainly the big gap between central and western Jilin. The same as overall efficiency, the technical efficiency and scale efficiency of central Jilin is higher than eastern and western Jilin. The devoted resources level in different cities exist differences because of the unbalanced economic development, the overall efficiency, technical efficiency and scale efficiency. The city size has great influence on the economic efficiency evolution in Jilin Province. The result of quantitative analysis shows that secondary industry, the tertiary industry, transportation, reform of state-owned enterprises and high educators play an important role in the promotion of economic efficiency in Jilin Province; Regional economic policy, market economy, industry base and industrial agglomeration, level of science and technology impact on the spatial pattern evolution of economic efficiency in Jilin Province. The difference of economic efficiency is the foundation to make the regional division come to realize.
Livelihood vulnerability has become a hotspot research of global environment change and it is also one of the important research paradigms of sustainability science. Firstly, according to the web of science database in 1991-2015 which included the literature of livelihood vulnerability, the article analyzed the livelihood vulnerability’s distribution status, in terms of time, area, organization etc,by using statistics and visualization. The results show that the quantity of the international livelihood vulnerability research documents are on arising trend, mostly specializing in the subject of ecology, environment, resources and management or other related topics. Five countries (i.e. the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Germany) and research institutions of University of East Anglia, University of Copenhagen, McGill University, University of Leeds, and University of Sussex show great research strengths of livelihood vulnerability. Secondly, applying the information visualization software CiteSpace Ⅲ, this article drew the document co-citation network of livelihood vulnerability, and discussed the knowledge base and core authors. Scholars like Ellis F, Smit B, Adger W N, Kelly P M, Davies Sand Turner B L etc. and their representative works laid a solid foundation in the establishment of the theoretical elementary knowledge and other related researches. Finally, based on the keywords and burst phrases analysis of co-word and word frequency, this article drew the evolution network of livelihood vulnerability research hotspot, and explored the frontier proposition research of famine, political economics, social-ecological system, livelihood strategies, poverty reduction and so on. Because of researcher's different situation and various research motives, the research hotspots of livelihood vulnerability are mainly concentrated in the following four categories:1) Residents in ecologically fragile areas are currently being much more dependent on the natural environment and natural resources than before, climate change and agriculture research has therefore become the hotspot in livelihood vulnerability research. 2) In order to analyze food security vulnerability of different groups and help them improve their ability to deal with those problems, WFP launched the vulnerability analysis and mapping project. The way to improve adaptability, resilience and level of scientific management is always the main target in livelihood vulnerability research. 3) Poverty and risk have being two of the core issues in research course, under developed areas are often poor in resource of health care, and they also exists instability in social and political environment, leading to birth risks faced by the local population greatly increased. 4) Continuous conflict from dry weather and regional impact of fragile conditions both pose a great challenge to the well-being of local dwellings. And Africa continues to be the key areas of livelihood vulnerability research.
By ArcGIS spatial analysis software, this study aimed to carry out the space recognition and distribution simulation for each pollution type (i.e., air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution) and comprehensive pollution within Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan Urban Agglomeration, and discussed their characteristics. It can be concluded that: 1) The atmospheric environment pollution is given priority to fugitive dust and coal smoke with the main pollutants as PM10 and SO2, and the key pollution areas are the central downtowns of Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan City, exhibiting dots distribution; 2) The whole water quality basically reaches the standard, and water environment pollution mainly resulted from ammonia, nitrogen and various heavy metals with the significant seasonal variation; 3) Soil pollution is rather serious with a wide coverage. Taking Shifeng District of Zhuzhou City as a representative, Cadmium pollution is the most serious one, which is caused by the accumulation of heavy chemical industry pollution; 4) Overall, Zhuzhou is the most polluted, which is followed by Xiangtan and Changsha. The formation of pollution space is greatly related with the terrain and topography of Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan Urban Agglomeration, and influenced by the transformation among these three kinds of pollution elements.
Based on detailed field surveys, comparison of strata of typical profiles and experimental analysis (including grain size, geochemical analysis and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating) of samples collected at the Yanbangdang (YBD) site, we explored the environmental evolution from Late Pleistocene to Middle Holocene and its impact on human activities, especially on the origin and development of rice agriculture in Liyang Plain. The results showed that the climate of the Liyang Pain during 30-6 ka B.P. experienced five stages: relatively warm and humid in the Late Pleistocene, cool and humid during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), fluctuated warming in the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene, and warm and humid during the Middle Holocene. In the Late Pleistocene, landforms of the Liyang Plain were characterized by tablelands drained by rivers and gullies in the Late Pleistocene, with topographic relief much higher than present. As climatic amelioration during the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene, continuous filling and siltation occurred in Liyang Plain and large areas of wetland was formed. Landscapes of the Liyang Plain at this time were mainly plains and hillocks with dense rivers and lakes and the topographic relief was gradually reduced. During the Middle Holocene, landforms of Liyang Plain were mainly alluvial and lacustrine plains with scattered mounds and hillocks. Under the relatively suitable environmental condition of the Late Pleistocene, the Late Paleolithic human activities existed continuously in Liyang Plain especially in the surrounding mountain and hill areas. Climate cooling during the LGM did not cause severe damages to regional ecosystem and ancient people also took steps to temperature drop, which allowed continued development of transitional culture from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic in Liyang Plain. Liyang Plain had favorable environmental conditions (e.g., abundant moisture, proper temperature, suitable landforms and rich fertile soil) and solid cultural foundation (continuous human activities and a long history of rice exploitation) in Early Holocene, which contributed to the origin and development of rice agriculture in this area. The warm and humid of the Middle Holocene climate promoted rice agriculture to a new level and the Neolithic culture expanded to the lower flat plain areas.
Shrinkage of urban surface water bodies has caused a series of problems, such as degeneration of urban ecological quality and the intensification of urban heat island phenomenon, which severely affect human living quality. Fuzhou City, as the capital city of Fujian Province in southeastern China, has witnessed a rapid urban expansion process during the last three decades. The rapid urban growth of Fuzhou City has led to the shrinkage of urban surface water bodies and induced a series of urban environmental problems. To reveal the relationship between the change of surface water area and urban heat environment, remote sensing technique was employed using multi-temporal Landsat TM/OLI/TIRS images of 1989, 1996, 2006 and 2014. The use of the modified normalized different water index (MNDWI) has successfully extracted the information of the city’s surface water bodies from the images. The selected thresholds for the extraction of water bodies of the four study years (1989, 1996, 2006, 2014) were 0.1, 0.1, -0.05 and -0.05, respectively. Because the water area of both Min River and Wulong River, which flow through the study area, were basically unchanged in the four-study years, they were masked out in this study. The assessment of the accuracy shows that the overall accuracies of the water extraction of the four years are all greater than 90.0%, which met accuracy requirements. The extracted urban surface water bodies were classified into three types: river, lake and pond by using shape index. Furthermore, the impervious surfaces and vegetation were extracted by two remote sensing indices, i.e., normalized difference impervious surface index (NDISI), and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), respectively. While, the land surface temperature (LST) was retrieved using the single channel algorithm (SC). Combined with LST, impervious surfaces, and vegetation information, the extracted water images were used to analyze the spatiotemporal variation of Fuzhou’s surface water in 1989-2014. Regression analysis was carried out to investigate the quantitative relationship between water and LST. The result shows that all three types of surface waters in Fuzhou urban built-up area have decreased substantially in 1989-2014. Water area decreased by 1 490.67 hm2 in 25 years and 70% of the decreased waters converted into impervious surfaces. Of the reduced water, river area decreased by 1 490.67 hm2, pond area decreased by 951.21 hm2, and lake area decreased by 408.15 hm2 during the period. The calculation shows that difference in LST between water and impervious surface is 11.12℃, while the difference between water and vegetation was 4.38℃. A significant negative correlation between the proportion of urban surface water and LST has been detected. According to the regression model, the decrease of surface waters in Fuzhou built-up area in 1989-2014 has contributed to the temperature rise by 1.03℃. However, in the local area where water area has reduced substantially, the warming effect is more obvious. Taking Puxia wetland as an example, the decrease of the surface water area of the wetland in 1989-2014 has contributed to the temperature rise by 3.6℃. Obviously, the reduction of urban surface waters has significantly intensified the urban heat island phenomenon of the city.
Soil fauna play an important role in terrestrial ecosystems. They are closely connected with the above and under ground ecosystems. The effect of basalt platform on the diversity and ecological geographic distribution of the below ground soil fauna is unknown. In the present study, an investigation of diversity and ecological geographic distribution of the below ground soil fauna was conducted in the basalt platform of the Changbai Mountains with four habitats types (original conifer and broad-leaved mixed forest, secondary conifer and broad-leaved mixed forest, secondary deciduous broadleaved forest and arable land). The plots (5 m×5 m) were established using permanent signs in each of the arable land. The plots (20 m×20 m) were established using permanent signs in each of the other three habitats types. Within each plot, five subplots were selected randomly, and 25 cm×25 cm and 10 cm×10 cm areas were collected from the litter layer, 0-10 cm, 10-20 cm and 20-30 cm soil layers in each subplot during spring, summer, and autumn 2014. Soil macrofauna and soil meso-microfauna were extracted from each of the soil samples using hand collection methods and Tullgren funnel extractor, respectively. The effects of habitat types, seasonal variations and soil layers on the abundance, richness of soil fauna were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and multivariate analysis. Indexes of diversity were calculated to describe the characteristics of the diversity of soil fauna. The influence of soil environmental factors on soil faunal diversity was examined using redundancy analysis (RDA). The results showed that the dominant groups were Isotomidae, Oribatida and Hypogastruridae. The common groups included Gamasida, Actinedida, Pseudachorutidae, Diptera larva, Sminthuridae and Tomoceridae. In spring, the secondary conifer and broad-leaved mixed forest had the highest diversity of soil macrofauna among the four habitats. For soil macrofauna, in summer and autumn, original conifer and broad-leaved mixed forest had the highest diversity among the four habitats. However, in spring, summer, and autumn, the arable land had the lowest diversity among the four habitats. For soil meso-microfauna, in spring and autumn, original conifer and broad-leaved mixed forest had the highest diversity among the four habitats. In summer, secondary conifer and broad-leaved mixed forest had the highest diversity among the four habitats. However, in spring, summer, and autumn, the arable land had the lowest diversity of soil meso-microfauna among the four habitats. The one-way ANOVA showed that a significantly lower abundance and richness of soil fauna was evident in the arable land when compared to all other habitats in spring, summer, autumn (P < 0.05). However, abundance and richness of soil fauna did not respond significantly to variations in seasons (P > 0.05). From the vertical distribution, the diversity of soil fauna in each habitat was shown that it was decreased with the increasing soil depth. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that diversity and ecological geographic distribution of the below ground soil fauna was correlated significantly with soil temperature, available P, organic matter, soil moisture.
This study was to compare the relationship between western pacific subtropical High(WPSH) and summer precipitation from different precipitation data in Dongting Lake Basin (107°13'-114°18'E,24°35′-30°27′N). The data included observation precipitation of 27 meteorological stations from China meteorological data sharing service system (CMD), and the reanalysis precipitation data such as European centre for medium-range weather forecasts ERA-Interim reanalyse data (ERA-Interim), climatic research unit time-series version 3.21 of high resolution gridded data of month-by-month variation in climate (CRU-TS 3.21), and the version 2 global precipitation climatology project monthly precipitation analysis (GPCP V2.2). Employed multivariate regression analysis,standard multiple regression equations were set up by using five indices of WPSH and monthly precipitation data from June to August. The distribution and change of the partial regression coefficients of five subtropical high indices were discussed, and the composite influence of subtropical high indices on the precipitation was analyzed by multiple correlation coefficient of every equation. The results indicated that the CMD precipitation in most area of Dongting Lake Basin increased but decreased in August by the position of ridge line moving northward in June and July. The position variation of ridge line in July and August made significant changes in precipitation. For precipitation from ERA-Interim data in June, all reanalysis data in July, CRU data in August, the ridge indice performed the same influence as it did on CMD. With the position of northern boundary moving northward, the precipitation in June and July increased in northwest but decreased in sourtheast, and increased in August in most area of Dongting Lake Basin. The position variation of northern boundary in July and August effected significantly. The influences of northern boundary indice on three reanalysis precipitation data in June and July were similar to that of CMD, but different in July. When the west-extending ridge point position moved easterward, the rainfall area enlarged from east to west, but the precipitation changes in June only was effected significantly by its variation. The influences of west-extending ridge point indice on three reanalysis precipitation data were generally coincident with that of CMD except GPCP in August. There were more precipitation in east and south, but less in west and north because of strengthening Intensity of WPSH in June, which made less precipitation in July and August to most area of Dongting Lake Basin. From June to August, intensity indice did not effect significantly. All three reanalysis data could reflect the influence what the intensity indice did on CMD. According to the methods used in this study, the area indice and the intensity indice showed the reverse effect on precipitation.The fitting ability of five indices of WPSH exhibited differently in time and space for CMD precipitation data. Based on time perspective, the fitting ability in June was better than July and August. Spatially, it showed good fitting ability in west and east of Dongting Lake Basin in June, so did in south and north in July and August. For ERA-Interim, CRU and GPCP data, the fitting ability of five indicators of WPSH in some areas agreed with what CMD showed in June and July. But in August, it had a good consistance with that of CMD in the whole basin for ERA-Interim.
