Based on daily average temperatures and observation data from 74 meteorological stations in Chinese oases, we calculate five-day (pentad) average temperature ≤0℃ for the start and end pentad as well as pentads of cold period using linear regression analysis, nonparametric Mann-Kendall tests, the Morlet wavelet power spectrum, and correlation analysis. We also analyze spatial and temporal variations and their effects on the start and end pentad as well as pentads of cold period in Chinese oases. Results show that over the last 55 years, the start pentad of cold period has been postponed while the end pentad has been advanced. Overall, the pentads have gradually shortened over time at trend rates that are 0.3 p/10a, -0.27 p/10a, and -0.58 p/10a, respectively. Spatial differences are significant, especially for the Qaidam Basin oasis where the start pentad is the earliest, the end pentad is the latest, and the trend of change is most obvious. Mutation points for the start and end pentad as well as pentads of cold period were observed in 1990, 1998, and 1994, respectively. Of these, the start pentad and pentads of cold period show a periodic cycle, related to atmospheric circulation and El Nino events, while the end pentad exhibits a periodic cycle, related to solar activity. The Tibetan Plateau index (TPI), the Asian polar vortex area index (APVAI), and carbon dioxide emissions (CDE) are the main factors affecting cold period in the study area, whereas the South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) index exerts the greatest effect on the Qaidam Basin oasis. The start and end pentad as well as pentads of cold period increase in concert with latitude, longitude, and altitude; in response to these changes, the start pentad is advanced, the end pentad is postponed, and pentads of cold period are gradually extended. Results show that change in latitude is most significant. Overall, the start and end pentad as well as pentads of cold period show clear responses to regional warming, but there are different effects on each.
Many studies such as climate variability, climate change, trend analysis, hydrological designs, agriculture decision-making etc. require long-term homogeneous datasets. Since homogeneous climate data is not available for climate analysis in Pakistan and India, the present study emphases on an extensive quality control and homogenization of daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation data in the Jhelum River basin, Pakistan and India. A combination of different quality control methods and relative homogeneity tests were applied to achieve the objective of the study. To check the improvement after homogenization, correlation coefficients between the test and reference series calculated before and after the homogenization process were compared with each other. It was found that about 0.59%, 0.78% and 0.023% of the total data values are detected as outliers in maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation data, respectively. About 32% of maximum temperature, 50% of minimum temperature and 7% of precipitation time series were inhomogeneous, in the Jhelum River basin. After the quality control and homogenization, 1% to 11% improvement was observed in the infected climate variables. This study concludes that precipitation daily time series are fairly homogeneous, except two stations (Naran and Gulmarg), and of a good quality. However, maximum and minimum temperature datasets require an extensive quality control and homogeneity check before using them into climate analysis in the Jhelum River basin.
Strategic transformation of regionalization for agricultural comprehensive development (ACD) was presented by the Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China (MOF) in 2014. The regionalization is the premise and basis of the sustainable development and improved competitiveness for agriculture. Based on the environmental resources related to agriculture, such as cropland, climate, water resources, terrain, geomorphology, patterns of the ACD projects, distribution of ecological planning, etc., we devised 13 indices using the geographic comprehensive regionalization method. The indices took into account a combination of dynamic and static, qualitative and quantitative, as well as agricultural and ecological factors. The strategic transformation of regionalization for the ACD in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of China was performed; seven types were included: prioritized regions, prioritized and restricted regions, protected regions, protected and restricted regions, restricted and prioritized regions, restricted and protected regions, and restricted regions. A further 24 subtypes were used based on locations and ecological zones. The regionalization results showed that prioritized regions were mainly in northern Ningxia, the most suitable area for agriculture. The protected and restricted regions were in central and southern Ningxia. In the central part, drought was the limiting factor for agriculture, and water conservation projects there should be supported. The ecological environment is fragile in southern Ningxia, so there is a need for ecologically sound agriculture to be developed in this region. Such regionalization could achieve two goals, namely agricultural conservation and eco-environmental protection. It was performed following the requirement for scientific regionalization to include three types of regions (prioritized regions, protected regions, and restricted regions), and was applied at the township scale in a provincial or autonomous region for the first time. The results provide both guidance for the strategic transformation of the ACD in Ningxia, and a reference for similar work in other provinces.
This study is proposed to reconstruct a high-resolution spatial distribution of historical land use pattern with all land use types to overcome low-accuracy and/or the monotonic land use type in current historical land use reconstruction studies. The year of 1820 is set as the temporal section and the administrative area of Jiangsu Province is the study area. Land use types being reconstructed include farmland, residential land (including both urban land and rural residential land), water body, and other land (including forest land, grassland, and unused land). Data sources mainly refer to historical documents, historical geographic research outcomes, contemporary statistics, and natural environmental data. With great considerations over regional natural resources and social and economic conditions, a few theoretical assumptions have been proposed to facilitate the adjustment on prefecture farmland, urban land, and rural residential land. Upholding the idea that the contemporary land use pattern has been inherently in sequence with the historical land use pattern as well as the land use pattern shall be consistent to its accessibility, this study reconstructs the land use pattern in Jiangsu Province in 1820 with 100 m*100 m grids based on accessibility analysis and comprehensive evaluation. The outcome has been tested as valid by regionalization and correlation analysis. The resulted spatial distribution shows that back in 1820 in Jiangsu Province: (1) farmland, urban land, rural residential land, water body, and other land take about 48.49%, 4.46%, 0.16%, 15.03%, and 31.86% of the total land area respectively; (2) the land use pattern features high proportion of land in farming while low-proportion land in non-farming uses while population, topography, and the density of water body lead to great spatial variations; and (3) the reconstruction methodology has been tested as reasonable based on significant positive correlations between 1820 data and 1985 for both farmland and rural residential land at the prefecture level.
In today’s world, the innovation of science and technology has become the key support for improving comprehensive national strength and changing the mode of social production and lifestyle. The country that possesses world-class scientific and technological innovation cities maximizes the attraction of global innovation factors and wins a strategic initiative in international competition. Based on the urban zip code geodatabase, an evaluation system of urban innovation with the perspective of innovation outputs, and the spatial evolutionary mode, concerning the structure of innovation space of Shanghai and Beijing from 1991 to 2014, was developed. The results of the research indicated that the zip code geodatabase provided a new perspective for studying the evolving spatial structure of urban innovation. The resulting evaluation of the spatial structure of urban innovation using the urban zip code geodatabase established by connecting random edge points, was relatively effective. The study illustrates the value of this methodology. During the study period, the spatial structure of innovation of Shanghai and Beijing demonstrated many common features: with the increase in urban space units participating in innovation year by year, the overall gap of regional innovation outputs has narrowed, and the trend towards spatial agglomeration has strengthened. The evolving spatial structure of innovation of Shanghai and Beijing demonstrated differences between the common features during the 25 years as well: in the trend towards the suburbanization of innovation resources, the spatial structure of innovation of Shanghai evolved from a single-core to a multi-core structure. A radiation effect related to traffic arteries as spatial diffusion corridors was prominent. Accordingly, a spatial correlation effect of its innovation outputs also indicated a hollowness in the city center; the spatial structure of innovation of Beijing had a single-core oriented structure all the way. Together with the tendency for innovation resources to be agglomerated in the city center, the spatial correlation effect of innovation outputs reflected the characteristics of the evolutionary feature where “rural area encircles cities”. The innovation spatial structure of Shanghai and Beijing have intrinsic consistency with the spatial structure of their respective regions (Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan region), which suggested that the principle of proportional and disproportional distribution of a city-scale pattern of technological and innovational activities is closely related to its regional innovation pattern.
Chinese railway has entered the “HSR era”, while the structure of “four vertical and four horizontal” railways for transit passengers is almost completed. Taking the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Rail (hereinafter referred to as HSR) as an example, this paper first explores HSR’s effects on the spatial structure of regional tourist flows using the social network analysis. Next, it notes changes in the accessibility of regional transportation. After analyzing the factors including initial endowment of regional tourism resources, hospitality facilities, the density of the regional tourism transportation network, and locations, the paper discusses the mechanisms through which HSR affects regional tourist flows. The study shows the following: (1) HSR’s effects on the spatial structure of regional tourist flows are manifested through the Matthew effect, the filtering effect, the diffusion effect and the overlying effect, and (2) the Matthew effect of HSR is manifested under an obvious interaction of the location, the initial endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density and “time-space compression”. The filtering effect of HSR is manifested for those tourism nodes without favorable location conditions, endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, or tourist transportation network density and without obvious benefits from “time-space compression”. Those tourism nodes that boast advantages in terms of location condition, endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density and obvious “time-space compression” will become sources for the diffusion effect. HSR will strengthen the aggregation effects of tourist flow in these diffusion sources, which will thereafter diffuse to peripheral tourist areas, manifesting “aggregation-diffusion”. HSR has overlapped tourists’ spatial traveling range over large-scale spaces. However, the overlying effect is only generated in those tourism nodes with a favorable location condition, an endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density, and obvious “time-space compression”.
Construction of road infrastructure is fundamental to city operation and development, as well as an important pathway and focus in physical urban-rural integration. The long-term implementation of a system of ring roads plus radiating roads in Beijing has strongly impacted urban infrastructure construction and space-time accessibility. Particularly, recent rapid growth of private car ownership in Beijing has imposed greater loads on its road system, seriously hampering urban commuting efficiency and negatively impacting quality of life. To address such challenges and enhance the rapid development of transport infrastructure, Beijing has accelerated rail transit construction since 2008 in an effort to improve commuting capacity. This paper aims to measure time accessibility and its spatial characteristics in urban areas of Beijing by applying a comprehensive method that combines vector and raster attribute data generated from road network and subway transport infrastructure. By using a dual index of accessibility and road density, the study further reveals the features of and differences in spatial accessibility and the construction of road systems in urban areas of the northern and southern parts of Beijing. The findings of this study can provide a scientific basis for future urban planning and road system construction both in general and with respect to Beijing, given its aspirations to become a world city.
Struggling for supremacy between great powers and the rise or fall and regime change of great powers are all subject to the Geopolitical Law. Geographers should keep in step with the times, accurately grasp the national interests, and seize the opportunity to contribute to the great rejuvenation of our nation. However, due to lack of criticism on the history and philosophy of geopolitics, we can neither accurately understand the geopolitical theory, nor effectively put the geopolitical theory into practice. This paper introduces the development of critical geopolitics, summarizes the three characteristics of critical geopolitics, and interprets the four classical geopolitical theories accordingly. In order to simplify the interpretation process, this paper firstly presents an analytical framework for interpretation of four classical geopolitical theories; secondly, focuses on interpretation of “The Geographical Pivot of History” put forward by Mackinder according to the analytical framework; finally, critically summarizes the four classical geopolitical theories. Through the critical interpretation, this paper draws a conclusion that there are the scientific, hypothetical and conceptual classical geopolitical theories. The construction of classical geopolitical theories is based on the international geopolitical structure, spatial distribution of national interests and inter-state spatial conflict, in order to show the identity of theoretical constructor, so as to reflect the historicality, sociality, situationality and geographical knowledge - power structure of geopolitical theories.
Based on Journal Citation ReportsTM, Web of Science, Springer data and manuscript statistical data, we analyzed the citation indices of the Journal of Geographical Sciences (JGS) from 2009 to 2015. The main indices include the number and proportion of international manuscripts, published articles, downloads, impact factors, total cites, cited journals, citing journals, and highly cited papers. Up to 2015, the JGS had received manuscripts from authors in 80 countries and published papers from authors in 32 countries. The citation indices of JGS show increasing trends in the last seven years. The impact factor of the JGS increased from 0.518 in 2009 to 1.923 in 2015. Total cites increased from 157 in 2009 to 1276 in 2015. The international full-text downloads of the JGS increased year by year, and the number of downloads in 2015 was about three times that of 2009. The published papers were considered to be influential. The results of this study provide scientific guidance for the development of the Journal of Geographical Sciences and can be used to improve the quality of other Chinese geographical journals.
