The rapid development of high-speed rail (HSR) is influencing regional development, regional structure, commuting, and regional integration. East Asia is the region with the world’s first and largest current operating and planned HSR network. In this paper, we examine the evolutionary mechanism and impacts on the transport circle and accessibility of HSR in East Asia. The results indicate that the HSR network first follows a “core-core” model and then forms a corridor in Japan, South Korea, and China Taiwan, but then forms a complete network in China Mainland. The current operating HSR lines are mostly distributed in regions with developed economies and dense populations, and more than half of the population and GDP in China can be served by HSR within 1 hour’s travel time. The planned HSR network will expand to the western region of China and Japan and the southern region of South Korea. The development of the current operating and planned HSR network considerably enlarges the transport circle of core cities, especially cities along trunk HSR lines. This 1 h transport circle of core cities has formed continuous regions in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, Tokyo, Seoul, and along trunk HSR lines. The HSR network will bring about substantial improvement in accessiblity, but also increase the inequality of nodal accessibility in China Mainland. Spatially, the spatial patterns of the weighted shortest travel time of cities in China Mainland, Japan, and South Korea all present the “core-peripheral structure”, taking Zhengzhou, Tokyo, and Seoul, respectively, as core cities, and cities located along the trunk HSR lines gain large improvement in accessibility.
Comparing the city-size distribution at the urban agglomeration (UA) scale is important for understanding the processes of urban development. However, comparative studies of city-size distribution among China’s three largest UAs, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei agglomeration (BTHA), the Yangtze River Delta agglomeration (YRDA), and the Pearl River Delta agglomeration (PRDA), remain inadequate due to the limitation of data availability. Therefore, using urban data derived from time-series nighttime light data, the common characteristics and distinctive features of city-size distribution among the three UAs from 1992 to 2015 were compared by the Pareto regression and the rank clock method. We identified two common features. First, the city-size distribution became more even. The Pareto exponents increased by 0.17, 0.12, and 0.01 in the YRDA, BTHA, and PRDA, respectively. Second, the average ranks of small cities ascended, being 0.55, 0.08 and 0.04 in the three UAs, respectively. However, the average ranks of large and medium cities in the three UAs experienced different trajectories, which are closely related to the similarities and differences in the driving forces for the development of UAs. Place-based measures are encouraged to promote a coordinated development among cities of differing sizes in the three UAs.
In recent years, global reanalysis weather data has been widely used in hydrological modeling around the world, but the results of simulations vary greatly. To consider the applicability of Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) data in the hydrologic simulation of watersheds, the Bahe River Basin was used as a case study. Two types of weather data (conventional weather data and CFSR weather data) were considered to establish a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, which was used to simulate runoff from 2001 to 2012 in the basin at annual and monthly scales. The effect of both datasets on the simulation was assessed using regression analysis, Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE), and Percent Bias (PBIAS). A CFSR weather data correction method was proposed. The main results were as follows. (1) The CFSR climate data was applicable for hydrologic simulation in the Bahe River Basin (R2 of the simulated results above 0.50, NSE above 0.33, and |PBIAS| below 14.8. Although the quality of the CFSR weather data is not perfect, it achieved a satisfactory hydrological simulation after rainfall data correction. (2) The simulated streamflow using the CFSR data was higher than the observed streamflow, which was likely because the estimation of daily rainfall data by CFSR weather data resulted in more rainy days and stronger rainfall intensity than was actually observed. Therefore, the data simulated a higher base flow and flood peak discharge in terms of the water balance, except for some individual years. (3) The relation between the CFSR rainfall data (x) and the observed rainfall data (y) could be represented by a power exponent equation: y=1.4789x0.8875 (R2=0.98,P<0.001). There was a slight variation between the fitted equations for each station. The equation provides a theoretical basis for the correction of CFSR rainfall data.
This paper uses HJ-1 satellite multi-spectral and multi-temporal data to extract forest vegetation information in the Funiu Mountain region. The S-G filtering algorithm was employed to reconstruct the MODIS EVI (Enhanced Vegetation Index) time-series data for the period of 2000-2013, and these data were correlated with air temperature and precipitation data to explore the responses of forest vegetation to hydrothermal conditions. The results showed that: (1) the Funiu Mountain region has relatively high and increasing forest coverage with an average EVI of 0.48 over the study period, and the EVI first shows a decreasing trend with increased elevation below 200 m, then an increasing trend from 200-1700 m, and finally a decreasing trend above 1700 m. However, obvious differences could be identified in the responses of different forest vegetation types to climate change. Broad-leaf deciduous forest, being the dominant forest type in the region, had the most significant EVI increase. (2) Temperature in the region showed an increasing trend over the 14 years of the study with an anomaly increasing rate of 0.27℃/10a; a fluctuating yet increasing trend could be identified for the precipitation anomaly percentage. (3) Among all vegetation types, the evergreen broad-leaf forest has the closest EVI-temperature correlation, whereas the mixed evergreen and deciduous forest has the weakest. Almost all forest types showed a weak negative EVI-precipitation correlation, except the mixed evergreen and deciduous forest with a weak positive correlation. (4) There is a slight delay in forest vegetation responses to air temperature and precipitation, with half a month only for limited areas of the mixed evergreen and deciduous forest.
In this study, historical landscape dynamics were investigated to (i) map the land use/cover types for the years 1972, 1987, 2000 and 2014; (ii) determine the types and processes of landscape dynamics; and (iii) assess the landscape fragmentation and habitat loss over time. Supervised classification of multi-temporal Landsat images was used through a pixel-based approach. Post-classification methods included systematic and random change detection, trajectories analysis and landscape fragmentation assessment. The overall accuracies (and Kappa statistics) were of 68.86% (0.63), 91.32% (0.79), 90.66% (0.88) and 91.88% (0.89) for 1972, 1987, 2000 and 2014, respectively. The spatio-temporal analyses indicated that forests, woodlands and savannahs dominated the landscapes during the four dates, though constant areal decreases were observed. The most important dynamic process was the decline of woodlands with an average annual net loss rate of -2%. Meanwhile, the most important land transformation occurred during the transition 2000-2014, due to anthropogenic pressures. Though the most important loss of vegetation greenness occurred in the unprotected areas, the overall analyses of change indicated a declining trend of land cover quality and an increasing landscape fragmentation. Sustainable conservation strategies should be promoted while focusing restoration attention on degraded lands and fragmented ecosystems in order to support rural livelihood and biodiversity conservation.
Based on data on taxed-cropland area and on the number of households in historical documents, a probabilistic model of cropland distribution and a cropland area allocation model were designed and validated. Cropland areas for the years AD976, 997, 1066, and 1078 were estimated at the level of Lu (an administrative region of the Northern Song Dynasty). The results indicated that (1) the cropland area of the whole study region for AD976, 997, 1066, and 1078 was about 468.27 million mu (a Chinese unit of area, with1 mu=666.7m2), 495.53 million mu, 697.65 million mu, and 731.94 million mu, respectively. The fractional cropland area (FCA) increased from 10.7% to 16.8%, and the per capita cropland area decreased from 15.7 mu to 8.4 mu. (2) With regard to the cropland spatial pattern, the FCA of the southeast, north, and southwest regions of the Northern Song territory increased by 12.0%, 5.2%, and 1.2%, respectively. The FCA of some regions in the Yangtze River Plain increased to greater than 40%, and the FCA of the North China Plain increased to greater than 20%. However, the FCA of the southwest region (except for the Chengdu Plain) in the Northern Song territory was less than 6%. (3) There were 84.2% Lus whose absolute relative error was smaller than 20% in the mid Northern Song Dynasty. The validation results indicate that our models are reasonable and that the results of reconstruction are credible.
Existing studies about the modeling of urban housing price have figured out sets of factors and the main focus is on the relative spatial location. Generally, this line of research is descriptive rather than modeling in nature. The underlying reasons for the distribution of housing price are largely unexplored and more research is needed. The paper therefore attempted to systematically explore the spatial heterogeneities of urban housing price based on the urban activity interaction rule. Using Beijing as a case study, this study first developed a new measurement of accessibility which directly depicts the cost and possibilities to access opportunities of different activities such as employments, educational, shopping and medical services. From the perspective of demands of different households, the paper then modelled the relationships between urban housing price and these accessibilities and found that the distribution pattern of housing price can be relatively well represented by this model that the R2 could achieve 0.7. We investigated the relationship between housing price and the demands of different kinds of households categorized by households of one-generation, two-generation, three-generation and four-and-plus-generation and found that the demands of household of four-and-plus-generations is the most highly correlated with housing prices. The reason might be that this kind of household has more household members and the demands are more diverse and complex, which is more similar to the distributions of all kinds of activity opportunities in the real world. In the end of the paper, some implications for policy-making are proposed based on the results of the analyses.
In today’s world, where re-examination has been given to cultural globalization, the relationship between architectures and specific regions is one of many specific issues. At this time, the study of architecture from the perspective of geography has significant meaning for treasuring regional characteristics and protecting the essence of ethnic culture. The study of geo-architecture includes two aspects: the influence of geographical environment upon architecture and reflexively, architectural responses to geographical environment. In “Geo-Architecture and Landscape in China’s Geographic and Historic Context Series” (4 volumes), published by Springer Nature in 2016, the contents of “geo-architecture” has been interpreted from various angles as form, function, semantics and symbol. This book is the first to be entitled “Geo-Architecture”, which studies the relationship between geography and architecture from the perspective of geographical environment and historical context in China. The book’s research reveals the influences of different geographical scales, such as zone (macro), region (middle) and site (micro) scales, on architecture; it discusses dynamic and systematic thought, including such research elements as “Object-Subject-Time”, and it reflects views on pattern and process of cultural landscape. Research on geo-architecture aims to help construct the security pattern of the cultural landscape for the new requirements of a new era, which is used to optimize spacial structure, stimulate heritage conservation and renewal, respect the geographical environment, pay attention to historical culture and sustain emotional memory.
