Ecosystem services are premises for human beings to exist and develop in the world, and it is of importance to study effects of land use change on ecosystem functions. Songnen plain, located in Northeast China, is one of the national key bases for agricultural production. Because there were remarkable variations in land use in recent years, it can supply specific foundation for protection and restoration of regional eco-environment to explore changes in its values of ecosystem services. This study aims to qualify long-term changes in land use of Songnen plain from 1980 to 2000, and to explore the impact of land use change on ecosystem services. With 2-period land use data using RS and GIS, this paper analyzed changes in land use and in ecosystem service values using the ecosystem service value coefficients (VC) put forward by Costanza et al. Results showed that from 1980 to 2000, area of rangeland, water area and wetlands and area of cropland decreased, but urban area and unused land increased. Due to cropland's comparatively low VC and comparatively high VC of wetlands and water area, increment in cultivated land could not offset the total decrement in regional ecosystem service values because of the decrease in area of wetlands and water area. Meanwhile, city sprawl has also led to loss of ecological values. Total ecosystem service values of the study area reduced dramatically, from 34,926.10×10⁶$ to 31,744.54×10⁶$ in the period 1980-2000. This represents a 9.11% net decline in annual value of ecosystem services in the study area.

Under Rayleigh equilibrium condition, stable isotopic ratio in residual water increases with the decrease of the residual water proportion f exponentially, and the fractionation rate of stable isotopes is inversely proportional to temperature. However, under kinetic evaporation condition, the fractionation of stable isotopes is not only related to the phase temperature but also influenced by the atmospheric humidity and the mass exchange between liquid and vapor phases. The ratio δ in residual water will not change with f after undergoing evaporation of a long time for great relative humidity. The rate that the evaporating water body reaches isotopic steady state is mainly dependent on the relative humidity in atmosphere. The analysis shows that the actual mean linear variety rates, about -30.0, of the δ18O in residual water versus the residual water proportion at Nagqu and Amdo stations are consistent with the simulated process under temperature of 20 oC and relative humidity of 50%. The distillation line simulated under Rayleigh equilibrium condition is analogous to the global meteoric water line (MWL) as the temperature is about 20 oC. Under non-equilibrium condition, the slope and constant values of distillation line are directly proportional to temperature and relative humidity. According to the basic data, the simulated distillation line is very consistent with the actual distillation line of Qinghai Lake.

In this paper, we discuss the development of electronic atlas in China, with focus on the issues of visualization. We particularly categorise this development into four periods, and then analyse the characters in each period and discuss the visualization issues. The four periods are highlighted: 1) Infant period (<1990) characterized as computer assisted mapping with products of screen maps; 2) Starting period (1991-1995) characterized as object-oriented mapping with products of interactive maps/atlases; 3) Advancing period (1996-2000) characterized as integrated mapping with products of multimedia cartographic maps; 4) New era (> 2001) characterized as web mapping and adaptive map design with products of Internet maps and atlas as well as adaptive maps. It is obvious that the development follows the logical way from static to dynamic, and even real time visualization, from single user to multiple users, from presentation to exploration for effective communication and knowledge construction. Current research and development projects are focused on customisation of atlas information systems for real-time tasks, Internet operability, small displays and mobile environments. The major challenges involved in each of such customisation processes are identified and commented in relation to the further development of visualization.

The role of remote sensing in phenological studies is increasingly regarded as a key to understand large area seasonal phenomena. This paper describes the application of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time series data for forest phenological patterns. The forest phenological phase of Northeast China (NE China) and its spatial characteristics were inferred using 1-km 10-day MODIS normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) datasets of 2002. The threshold-based method was used to estimate three key forest phenological variables, which are the start of growing season (SOS), the end of growing season (EOS) and growing season length (GSL). Then the spatial patterns of forest phenological variables of NE China were mapped and analyzed. The derived phenological variables were validated by the field observed data from published papers in the same study area. Results indicate that forest phenological phase from MODIS data is comparable with the observed data. As the derived forest phenological pattern is related to forest type distribution, it is helpful to discriminate between forest types.

Through detailed statistics and analysis of drought and water disasters in the Weihe Plain in the historical period, we discovered that in more than 2300 years (from 370 BC to 2000 AD), natural disasters occurred most frequently in two periods. One is from 610 to 850 AD (from the late Sui Dynasty to the late Tang Dynasty) and the other is from 1580 to 2000 AD (after the late Ming Dynasty). Different natural disasters occurred synchronously, that is to say, when the drought occurred frequently, water disasters occurred frequently in the same periods. Frequencies of natural disasters, on the one hand, connected with climate changes and development course of ancient cities, while on the other, related closely to population changes. The excessive exploitation of natural resources and human disturbance and damages to ecological environment are the major reasons for the increased drought and water disasters.

The landscape fragmentation caused by road construction has many direct and indirect impacts on wildlife and ecosystems. By using the GIS and statistic software of fragmentation computation, a comprehensive index, road-induced landscape fragmentation index (RLFI), is proposed to quantify the degree of landscape fragmentation resulting from different levels of road constructions. The results show that road-induced fragmentation index in China ranges from 0.987 to 3.357, with a mean of 1.846 in 2002. The regional differences of landscape fragmentation are obvious and scoring sequence is: North China (2.65) > East China (2.62) > Central China (2.60) > South China (2.51) > Southwest China (2.34) > Northeast China (2.19) > Inner Mongolia (1.88) > Northwest China (1.67) > Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (1.65). The anisotropic analysis indicates that the variation of fragmentation index in east-west direction is larger than that in south-north direction.

The investigations on the organic carbon (OC) of core sediments were carried out in Chongming east tidal flat (CM) during Scirpus mariqueter growing stage (from April to December 2004) in Yangtze Estuary. The Yangtze River annually transports a runoff discharge of 30,000 m3/s, carrying about 480 million tons of sediments to the estuarine and coastal area, which formed a great OC pool. In the sampling spots, seven quadrats of 50 cm × 50 cm and five sediments cores of 20 cm deep (40 cm deep in December) were randomly established in order to collect vegetations and core sediments samples during the low tide each month except November. After pretreatment, the core sediments were sieved and their OC contents were measured according to the potassium dichromate method. The results show that the higher surface sediment OC content in summer comes from allochthonous terrigenous particle settlements on the Chongming east middle tidal flat S. mariqueter zone. In autumn and winter, the decomposing of the defoliated S. mariqueter increases the surface sediments OC content. Settling velocity, sediment temperature and S. mariqueter growth are the main factors that can control the sediment carbon content. Summer is the "carbon losing" period of the tidal flat sediments, while from September, it changes into the "carbon accumulating" period of sediment OC pool because of the decomposing of dead S. mariqueter community in the sediments. From this alternation of "carbon losing" period and "carbon accumulating" period, we conclude that carbon in the OC pool of the middle tidal flat S. mariqueter zone sediments mainly comes from the atmospheric carbon rooted by S. mariqueter photosynthesis.

Theoretical difficulties for mapping and for estimating river regime characteristics in a large-scale basin remain because of the nature of the variable under study: river flows are related to a specific area, i.e. the drainage basin, and are hierarchically organized in space through the river network with upstream-downstream dependencies. Another limitation is there are not enough gauge stations in developing countries. This presentation aims at developing the hydro-stochastic approach for producing choropleth maps of average annual runoff and computing mean discharge along the main river network for a large-scale basin. The approach applied to mean annual runoff is based on geostatistical interpolation procedures coupled with water balance and data uncertainty analyses. It is proved by an application in the upstream at Bengbu in the Huaihe River Basin, a typical large-scale basin in China. Hydro-stochasitic approach in a first step interpolates to a regular grid net and in a second step the grid values are integrated along rivers. The interpolation scheme includes a constraint to be able to account for the lateral water balance along the rivers. Grid runoff map with 10 km × 10 km resolution and the discharge map along the river with the 1 km basic length unit are the main results in this study. This kind of statistic approach can be widely used because it avoids the complexity of hydrological models and does not depend on the meteorological data.

Evapotranspiration is one of the key components of hydrological processes. Assessing the impact of climate factors on evapotranspiration is helpful in understanding the impact of climate change on hydrological processes. In this paper, based on the daily meteorological data from 1960 to 2007 within and around the Aksu River Basin, reference evapotranspiration (RET) was estimated with the FAO Penman-Monteith method. The temporal and spatial variations of RET were analyzed by using ARCGIS and Mann-Kendall method. Multiple Regression Analysis was employed to attribute the effects of the variations of air temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity, vapour pressure and wind speed on RET. The results showed that average annual RET in the eastern plain area of the Aksu River Basin was about 1100 mm, which was nearly twice as much as that in the western mountainous area. The trend of annual RET had significant spatial variability. Annual RET was reduced significantly in the southeastern oasis area and southwestern plain area and increased slightly in the mountain areas. The amplitude of the change of RET reached the highest in summer, contributing most of the annual change of RET. Except in some high elevation areas where relative humidity predominated the change of the RET, the variations of wind velocity predominated the changes of RET almost throughout the basin. Taking Kuqa and Ulugqat stations as an example, the variations of wind velocity accounted for more than 50% of the changes of RET.

The Annual Meeting of China's Geographical Journals Editing was held in Fuzhou city on April 21-25, 2011. This meeting was co-sponsored by the Working Committee for Editing and Publication under The Geographical Society of China (EPWC, GSC) and Fujian Normal University. The theme of the meeting was "Innovation and Development of the Geographical Journals in China".

The source regions of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers are important water conservation areas of China. In recent years, ecological deterioration trend of the source regions caused by global climate change and unreasonable resource development increased gradually. In this paper, the spatial distribution and dynamic change of vegetation cover in the source regions of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers are analyzed in recent 10 years based on 1-km resolution multi-temporal SPOTVGT-DN data from 1998 to 2007. Meanwhile, the correlation relationships between air temperature, precipitation, shallow ground temperature and NDVI, which is 3×3 pixel at the center of Wudaoliang, Tuotuohe, Qumalai, Maduo, and Dari meteorological stations were analyzed. The results show that the NDVI values in these two source regions are increasing in recent 10 years. Spatial distribution of NDVI which was consistent with hydrothermal condition decreased from southeast to northwest of the source regions. NDVI with a value over 0.54 was mainly distributed in the southeastern source region of the Yellow River, and most NDVI values in the northwestern source region of the Yangtze River were less than 0.22. Spatial changing trend of NDVI has great difference and most parts in the source regions of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers witnessed indistinct change. The regions with marked increasing trend were mainly distributed on the south side of the Tongtian River, some part of Keqianqu, Tongtian, Chumaer, and Tuotuo rivers in the source region of the Yangtze River and Xingsuhai, and southern Dari county in the source region of the Yellow River. The regions with very marked increasing tendency were mainly distributed on the south side of Tongtian Rriver and sporadically distributed in hinterland of the source region of the Yangtze River. The north side of Tangula Range in the source region of the Yangtze River and Dari and Maduo counties in the source region of the Yellow River were areas in which NDVI changed with marked decreasing tendency. The NDVI change was positively correlated with average temperature, precipitation and shallow ground temperature. Shallow ground temperature had the greatest effect on NDVI change, and the second greatest factor influencing NDVI was average temperature. The correlation between NDVI and shallow ground temperature in the source regions of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers increased significantly with the depth of soil layer.

The changing pattern of the Lower Yellow River (LYR) obtained from the traditional studies, which mainly did literal analysis based on historical documents related to the LYR are too macroscopic and absent of intuitiveness. This paper integrates all the records in historical documents related to course shift, flood and overflow of the last 3000 years and stores them in a GIS database. Then, all the data will be visualized in the form of map, which is helpful to show and understand the rules those events conform more intuitively and accurately. Taking these data as foundation, this study summarizes characteristics of the LYR’s courses and influence scope, and classifies them both into three types; divides the flow directions of the LYR’s courses into two periods, and proposes its changing pattern; concludes the characteristic of diversion points of courses shift events; calculates the velocity of courses shifts, gradient and sinuosity, and analyzes their changing patterns. Finally, this study classifies factors that may influence the occurrence of a course shift into two types: the internal factors, such as sediment rate, gradient and sinuosity of the river, and the external factors, such as precipitation and human activities.

The scientific environmental ethics plays a key role in the recognition of the human- environment interactions. Modern environmental ethics is the philosophical re-thinking of modern human race environmental behavior. The development of environmental ethics theory, as well as its application in reality, determines the viewpoints of environmental ethics. Sustainable development implies harmony on human-environment interactions and inter- generation responsibility, with emphasis on a harmonious relationship among population, resources, environment and development, so as to lay a sustainable and healthy foundation of resources and environment for future generations. The harmonious society construction in China that is raised by the Chinese central government should be covered by environmental ethics. The connotation of open environmental ethics includes a respect for nature, care for the individual human race, and respect for the development of future generations, which means giving consideration to natural values, individual and human race benefits and welfare across generations. The role of environmental ethics in regional development consists of cognition, criticism, education, inspiration, adjusting, legislation and promoting environmental regulations. The major problems in regional development are extensive resource exploration, fast population growth, irrational industrial structure, unfair welfare distribution and the twofold effects of science and technology development. The formulation of environmental ethics that aims at regional sustainable development, can not only harmonize the relationship of population, resource, environment and economic development, but also guide behavior selection, push social and political system transformation, strengthen the legal system, and raise environmental awareness of the public.

The spatial differentiation of land use changes of Tuticorin is studied using high resolution LISS III satellite imagery and Maximum Likelihood algorithms. The classification accuracy of 95.2% was obtained. In this study, the land use of Tuticorin is classified as settlement, salt pan, agricultural land, wasteland, water bodies and shrubs. The settlement area is increased to 4.6 km² during the year 2001 and 2006. The settlement area change is mainly driven by growth of industries and migration of people from peripheral villages. Shrub is increased to 3.63 km² in the six year period. Water logging due to growth of shrubs in Tuticorin leads to several environmental and health hazard. This study warrants proper urban planning for Tuticorin for sustainable use of resource and environment.

Parameters of weather generator BCC/RCG-WG for daily non-precipitation variables including maximum temperature, minimum temperature and sunshine hours at 669 stations in China are estimated using history daily records from 1951 to 1978 and from 1979 to 2007 respectively. The changes in the parameters for the two periods are revealed to explore the impact of climate change on these parameters. The results show that the parameters of the non-precipitation variables have experienced different changes. While the annual means and the amplitudes of the seasonal cycle show a clear change, the interannual variability, the timings of the seasonal cycles, and the temporal correlations for each variable remain practically unchanged. This indicates that climate changes in China over the last 57 years are mainly reflected in variations in the means and in the strength of the seasonal cycles. The changed parameters have implications for the stationary assumption implied in the parameter estimation and use of the weather generator for climate change studies.

There exists great potential of rural land consolidation in China due to the aggravated hollowed villages against the background of rapid rural-urban transformation. The paper aims to investigate the potential of rural land consolidation within four urbanization scenarios: Complete urbanization, Semi-urbanization, Urbanization in batches and prospective urbanization in 2020. Research findings show that, (1) the potentials of rural land consolidation in complete and semi-urbanization are 809.89×10⁴ hm² and 699.19×10⁴ hm² respectively while rural consolidation rates are 50.70% and 43.77%. As for the urbanization in batches and urbanization in 2020, the potentials are 757.89×10⁴ hm² and 992.16×10⁴ hm². (2) Beside Tibet and Ningxia, rural consolidation rates in most provinces are between 40% and 60%, and the land increase rates are between 3% and 12%. Significant correlation between potential of rural land consolidation and the degree of hollowed villages is also found. (3) Evident differences of potential of rural land consolidation exist across provinces. Rural consolidation rates in the East and Central provinces are higher than that in the West provinces. Villages in the developed areas have higher consolidation rates than those in the less developed areas, and villages in the plain areas tend to have higher consolidation rates than those in the mountainous areas.

At present, land use optimization at small watershed scale is the key measure to control soil erosion, restore the eco-environment and improve the farmers’ living standard on the Loess Plateau, China. Based on the land use survey maps of 1966, 1988, 1997, 2003 and the digital topographic map of 1984 in Yangou watershed, and assisted by spatial techniques of GIS, the basic characteristics and driving forces of land use change in Yangou watershed are analyzed. According to the summarization of land-use optimization characteristics since 1997, and with the help of continuous monitoring data for years and farmer investigation data, this paper appraises eco-environmental benefits, economic benefits and sustainability of Yangou watershed. We have used sediment reduction benefits, coverage ratio of permanent vegetation, per capita food production and per capita income of farmers as indices. The results show that Yangou watershed project has successfully controlled the soil and water loss and the farmers’ living standard has been improved markedly by reasonable adjustment to land use structure. The benefit of sediment reduction is higher than 80% and the coverage ratio of permanent vegetation reaches 61.03%. In 2006, the per capita income increased by 1493 yuan compared with the year 1998.The successful measures and experiences of Yangou watershed are worth promoting on the Loess Plateau.

It is a very complicated problem to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) over a large area of land surface. In this paper, the evapotranspiration estimation models for dense vegetation and bare soil are presented, based on the information of parameters like vegetation cover-degree and surface albedo. Combined with vegetation cover-degree data, a model for regional evapotranspiration estimation over the heterogeneous landscape is derived. Through a case study using remote sensing data over Northwest China, the accuracy of the model for regional evapotranspiration estimation is checked. The result shows that the accuracy of the model is satisfactory. The features of evapotranspiration over Northwest China are also discussed with the application of the model.

Based on monthly mean, maximum, and minimum air temperature and monthly mean precipitation data from 10 meteorological stations on the southern slope of the Mt. Qomolangma region in Nepal between 1971 and 2009, the spatial and temporal characteristics of climatic change in this region were analyzed using climatic linear trend, Sen's Slope Estimates and Mann-Kendall Test analysis methods. This paper focuses only on the southern slope and attempts to compare the results with those from the northern slope to clarify the characteristics and trends of climatic change in the Mt. Qomolangma region. The results showed that: (1) between 1971 and 2009, the annual mean temperature in the study area was 20.0℃, the rising rate of annual mean temperature was 0.25℃/10a, and the temperature increases were highly influenced by the maximum temperature in this region. On the other hand, the temperature increases on the northern slope of Mt. Qomolangma region were highly influenced by the minimum temperature. In 1974 and 1992, the temperature rose noticeably in February and September in the southern region when the increment passed 0.9℃. (2) Precipitation had an asymmetric distribution; between 1971 and 2009, the annual precipitation was 1729.01 mm. In this region, precipitation showed an increasing trend of 4.27 mm/a, but this was not statistically significant. In addition, the increase in rainfall was mainly concentrated in the period from April to October, including the entire monsoon period (from June to September) when precipitation accounts for about 78.9% of the annual total. (3) The influence of altitude on climate warming was not clear in the southern region, whereas the trend of climate warming was obvious on the northern slope of Mt. Qomolangma. The annual mean precipitation in the southern region was much higher than that of the northern slope of the Mt. Qomolangma region. This shows the barrier effect of the Himalayas as a whole and Mt. Qomolangma in particular.

Study on hydroclimatological changes in the mountainous river basins has attracted great interest in recent years. Changes in temperature, precipitation and river discharge pattern could be considered as indicators of hydroclimatological changes of the river basins. In this study, the temperatures (maximum and minimum), precipitation, and discharge data from 1980 to 2009 were used to detect the hydroclimatological changes in the Bagmati River Basin, Nepal. Simple linear regression and Mann-Kendall test statistic were used to examine the significant trend of temperature, precipitation, and discharge. Increasing trend of temperature was found in all seasons, although the change rate was different in different seasons for both minimum and maximum temperatures. However, stronger warming trend was found in maximum temperature in comparison to the minimum in the whole basin. Both precipitation and discharge trend were increasing in the pre-monsoon season, but decreasing in the post-monsoon season. The significant trend of precipitation could not be observed in winter, although discharge trend was decreasing. Furthermore, the intensity of peak discharge was increasing, though there was not an obvious change in the intensity of maximum precipitation events. It is expected that all these changes have effects on agriculture, hydropower plant, and natural biodiversity in the mountainous river basin of Nepal.

Monitoring alpine lakes is important for understanding the regional environmental changes caused by global warming. In this study, we provided a detailed analysis of alpine lake changes in the Tianshan Mountains (TS) and discussed their driving forces based on Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI, WorldView-2, Bing, Google Earth, and ASTER imagery, along with climatic data from 1990 to 2015. The results showed that during the study period, the total number and area of alpine lakes in the eastern TS exhibited an increasing trend, by 64.06% and 47.92%, respectively. Furthermore, the continuous expansion of glacial lakes contributed 95.12% and 94.17% to the total increase in the number and area, respectively, of alpine lakes. Non-glacial lakes exhibited only intermittent expansion. Since the 1990s, the new glacial lakes in the eastern TS have been mainly proglacial and extraglacial lakes. Over the past 25 years, eastern TS has experienced a temperature increase rate of 0.47 °C/10a, which is higher than that in other TS regions. The rapidly warming climate and glacier recession are the primary causes of the accelerated expansion of glacial lakes in the eastern TS.

Snowmelt runoff is a vital source of fresh water in cold regions. Accurate snowmelt runoff forecasting is crucial in supporting the integrated management of water resources in these regions. However, the performances of such forecasts are often very low as they involve many meteorological factors and complex physical processes. Aiming to improve the understanding of these influencing factors on snowmelt runoff forecast, this study investigated the time lag of various meteorological factors before identifying the key factor in snowmelt processes. The results show that solar radiation, followed by temperature, are the two critical influencing factors with time lags being 0 and 2 days, respectively. This study further quantifies the effect of the two factors in terms of their contribution rate using a set of empirical equations developed. Their contribution rates as to yearly snowmelt runoff are found to be 56% and 44%, respectively. A mid-long term snowmelt forecasting model is developed using machine learning techniques and the identified most critical influencing factor with the biggest contribution rate. It is shown that forecasting based on Supporting Vector Regression (SVR) method can meet the requirements of forecast standards.

The evolution of point bars in changing sections of a downstream tidal current limit is periodic. Accordingly, assessing the critical morphology and hydrodynamic characteristics of point bar scour and the sediment transport process of scour sediment bodies can support river regulation and waterway maintenance. The frequent scour of point bars in changing sections of tidal current limits within the Yangtze River directly restricts waterway stability. This study examined the Fujiangsha reach of the Yangtze River, hydrological data on sediment transport, and riverbed topography from 1950. The Jingjiang bank tail exhibited an evolutionary cycle (siltation>scour>siltation), with a primary period ranging from 3-6 years. Additionally, certain morphological and dynamic conditions were necessary for scour. The Datong station flow (Q) ranged from 20,000-40,000 m³·s^-1 for ≥180 days·yr^-1, enabling the bank silt layers to widen. Scour occurred during flooding and was concentrated in areas 5.0-7.5 km downstream from Ebizui. When Q≥40,000 m³·s^-1, scouring occurred in the bank middle and lower reaches, whereas Q≥50,000 m³·s^-1 for >50 consecutive days, scour occurred at the tail as well. Moreover, the volume of the scour shoals increased with the number of high-flow days (≥60,000 m³·s^-1). Bottom sand transport mainly occurred in the low-bank zone. Before the project’s second phase, the longitudinal transport of the scouring sand bodies occurred as follows: Jingjiang bank > low bank on the north side of Shuangjiansha > Fubei anabranch. During the second phase, the longitudinal transport route changed to Jingjiang bank > Fubei anabranch. The Jingjiang bank volume was also reduced; thus, its development was controlled. Owing to changes in the longitudinal transport routes, dredging should be conducted in areas where scouring sand bodies are separately transported from the tail, thereby reducing the load of dredging and maintenance for the Fubei anabranch during dry years.

Using ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) infrared remote sensing data we inversed the parameters of urban surface heat fluxes applying the PCACA model and theoretical position algorithm, and then we analyzed the influence of different land use types on the surface heat fluxes and energy balance. In this study, Kumagaya, a city in Saitama Prefecture, Japan, was selected as the experimental area. The result shows that the PCACA model is feasible for the surface heat fluxes estimation in urban areas because this model requires less parameters in the procedure of heat fluxes estimation in urban areas with complicated surface structure and can decrease the uncertainty. And we found that different land-use types have indicated the height heterogeneity on the surface heat fluxes significantly. The magnitudes of Bowen ratio in descending order are industrial, residential, transportation, institutional, dry farmland, green space, and water body. Under the same meteorological condition, there are distinct characteristics and regional differences in Bowen ratios among different surface covers, indicating higher sensible heat flux and lower latent heat flux in the urban construction land, while lower sensible heat flux and higher latent heat flux in the vegetation-covered area, the outskirt of the urban area. The increase of urban impervious surface area caused by the urban sprawl can enlarge the sensible heat flux and the Bowen ratio, so that it causes the increasing of urban surface temperature and air temperature, which is the mechanism of the so-called heat island effect.

Soil loss tolerance (T) is the maximum rate of annual soil erosion that is tolerated and still allows a high level of crop productivity to be sustained economically and indefinitely. In the black soil region of Northeast China, an empirically determined, default T value of 200 (t/km²·a) is used for designing land restoration strategies for different types of soils. The objective of this study was to provide a methodology to calculate a quantitative T for different black soil species. A field investigation was conducted to determine the typical soil profiles of 21 black soil species in the study area and a quantitative methodology based on a modified soil productivity index model was established to calculate the T values. These values, which varied from 68 t/km²·a to 358 t/km²·a, yielded an average T value of 141 t/km²·a for the 21 soil species. This is 29.5% lower than the current national standard T value. Two significant factors that influenced the T value were soil thickness and vulnerability to erosion. An acceptable reduction rate of soil productivity over a planned time period of 1% is recommended as necessary for maintaining long-term sustainable soil productivity. Compared with the currently used of regional unified standard T value, the proposed method, which determines T using specific soil profile indices, has more practical implications for effective, sustainable management of soil and water conservation.

High accuracy surface modeling (HASM) is a method which can be applied to soil property interpolation. In this paper, we present a method of HASM combined geographic information for soil property interpolation (HASM-SP) to improve the accuracy. Based on soil types, land use types and parent rocks, HASM-SP was applied to interpolate soil available P, Li, pH, alkali-hydrolyzable N, total K and Cr in a typical red soil hilly region. To evaluate the performance of HASM-SP, we compared its performance with that of ordinary kriging (OK), ordinary kriging combined geographic information (OK-Geo) and stratified kriging (SK). The results showed that the methods combined with geographic information including HASM-SP and OK-Geo obtained a lower estimation bias. HASM-SP also showed less MAEs and RMSEs when it was compared with the other three methods (OK-Geo, OK and SK). Much more details were presented in the HASM-SP maps for soil properties due to the combination of different types of geographic information which gave abrupt boundary for the spatial variation of soil properties. Therefore, HASM-SP can not only reduce prediction errors but also can be accordant with the distribution of geographic information, which make the spatial simulation of soil property more reasonable. HASM-SP has not only enriched the theory of high accuracy surface modeling of soil property, but also provided a scientific method for the application in resource management and environment planning.

The Bohai Rim region is one the most important bases for commodity grain production in China. With the rapid pace of agricultural industrialization, nitrogenous fertilizer has been used at an ever increasing rate, which resulted in the trace of accumulative nitrogen in the soil and caused serious environmental problems. In this study we made use of the farmland nitrogen balance model to assess the spatial difference of farmland nitrogen nutrient budget in the Bohai Rim region in 2008 with the assistance of GIS. Our results indicated that: 1) Farmland in this region has a nitrogen surplus totaling 5.0822 million tons, or an average of 288.54 kg/ha. 2) In the Bohai Rim region, farmland nitrogen input and farmland nitrogen budget both show a spatial differentiation. Major grain-producing areas have a higher nitrogen input than that of the grazing-farming areas. The main sources of nitrogen input include chemical fertilizer, organic fertilizer, deposition from atmospheric drying and wetting, and biological fixation, which account for 79.47%, 9.53%, 4.62%, and 3.58% of the total input, respectively. Therefore, chemical fertilizer is the predominant source of nitrogen input to farmland. 3) A total of 3.3398 million tons of nitrogen were output from the farmland via harvested crops and it accounts for 52.36% of the total nitrogen output from farmland in this region. On average, the amount of nitrogen output from unit farmland is equal to 176.65kg/ha. This study has shed light on farmland nitrogen budget and its spatial variation in the study area, may provide scientific evidences for rationalizing the use of chemical fertilizer and managing agricultural operation on the regional scale and is also valuable for improving the economic and ecological efficiency of fertilizer use at the regional scale.

According to the glacial landforms and deposits with the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating results, two glacial stages of the last glacial cycle (LGC) and Late Glacial were identified. The Late Glacial stage (Meteorological Station glacier advance) took place about 11 ka (11.3±1.2 ka), and the last glacial maximum (LGM), named Black Wind Mouth glacier advance, occurred at 20 ka (20.0±2.1 ka). Based on the Ohmura’s formula in which there is a relationship between summer (JJA) atmospheric temperature (T) and the annual precipitation (P) at ELA, the present theoretical equilibrium line altitude (ELAt) in Changbai Mountains was 3380±100 m. Six methods of accumulation–area ratio (AAR), maximum elevation of lateral moraines (MELM), toe–to headwall altitude ratios (THAR), the terminal to summit altitudinal (TSAM), the altitude of cirque floor (CF), and the terminal to average elevation of the catchment area (Hofer) were used for calculation of the former ELAs in different stages. These methods provided the ELA for a range of 2250–2383 m with an average value of 2320±20 m during the LGM, which is 200 m higher than the value of previous investigation. The snowlines during the Late Glacial are 2490 m on northern slope, and 2440 m on western slope. The results show that the snowline on northern slope is 50 m higher than that on western slope during the Late Glacial, and the average snowline is 2465m. The ELA △ values were more than 1000 m during the LGM, and about 920 m lower than now during the Late Glacial stage respectively. Compared with Taiwanese and Japanese mountains in East Asia during the LGM, the effect of the uplift on ELA in Changbai Mountains during the glaciations (i.e. 20 m uplift in the LGM and 11 m in the Late Glacial) is not obvious.

The immense and towering Tibetan Plateau acts as a heating source and, thus, deeply shapes the climate of the Eurasian continent and even the whole world. However, due to the scarcity of meteorological observation stations and very limited climatic data, little is quantitatively known about the heating effect and temperature pattern of the Tibetan Plateau. This paper collected time series of MODIS land surface temperature (LST) data, together with meteorological data of 137 stations and ASTER GDEM data for 2001-2007, to estimate and map the spatial distribution of monthly mean air temperatures in the Tibetan Plateau and its neighboring areas. Time series analysis and both ordinary linear regression (OLS) and geographical weighted regression (GWR) of monthly mean air temperature (Ta) with monthly mean land surface temperature (Ts) were conducted. Regression analysis shows that recorded Ta is rather closely related to Ts, and that the GWR estimation with MODIS Ts and altitude as independent variables, has a much better result with adjusted R² > 0.91 and RMSE = 1.13-1.53℃ than OLS estimation. For more than 80% of the stations, the Ta thus retrieved from Ts has residuals lower than 2℃. Analysis of the spatio-temporal pattern of retrieved Ta data showed that the mean temperature in July (the warmest month) at altitudes of 4500 m can reach 10℃. This may help explain why the highest timberline in the Northern Hemisphere is on the Tibetan Plateau.

The accumulation and ablation of a glacier directly reflect its mass income and wastage, and ice temperature indicates glacier's climatic and dynamic conditions. Glaciological studies at Baishui Glacier No.1 in Mt. Yulong are important for estimating recent changes of the cryosphere in Hengduan Mountains. Increased glacier ablation and higher ice temperatures can cause the incidents of icefall. Therefore, it is important to conduct the study of glacier mass balance and ice temperature, but there are few studies in relation to glacier's mass balance and active-layer temperature in China's monsoonal temperate glacier region. Based on the field observations of mass balance and glacier temperature at Baishui Glacier No.1, its accumulation, ablation, net balance and near-surface ice temperature structure were analyzed and studied in this paper. Results showed that the accumulation period was ranged from October to the following mid-May, and the ablation period occurred from mid-May to October, suggesting that the ablation period of temperate glacier began about 15 days earlier than that of continental glaciers, while the accumulation period began about 15 days later. The glacier ablation rate was 6.47 cm d^-1 at an elevation of 4600 m between June 23 and August 30, and it was 7.4 cm d^-1 at 4800 m between June 26 and July 11 in 1982, moreover, they respectively increased to 9.2 cm d^-1 and 10.8 cm d^-1 in the corresponding period and altitude in 2009, indicating that glacier ablation has greatly intensified in the past years. The temperature of the main glacier body was close to melting point in summer, and it dropped from the glacier surface and reached a minimum value at a depth of 4-6 m in the ablation zone. The temperature then rose to around melting point with the depth increment. In winter, the ice temperature rose gradually with the increasing depth, and close to melting point at the depth of 10 m. Compared with the data from 1982, the glacier temperature has risen in the ablation zone in recent decades.