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    Theoretical Study
  • Theoretical Study
    Junze ZHANG, Shuai WANG, Wenwu ZHAO, Yanxu LIU, Bojie FU
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    Planetary boundaries is a conceptual framework proposed by Johan Rockstr?m in recent years, which is aimed to build a safe operating space for safeguarding humans' survival and development. Since this framework was put forward, it has attracted widespread attention. The skeptics criticized the scientific significance and evaluation methods of the conceptual framework. However, the proponents have gradually improved its evaluation methods and research contents, and explored the downscaling results. In order to promote the understanding and application of this concept and framework, after reviewing the relevant literature we first introduced the conceptual connotation of planetary boundaries and its evaluation results, and then compared them with concepts such as environmental carrying capacity that have been well known to Chinese scholars. We also summarized the controversial views of the conceptual framework, and reviewed its recent development status. Finally, combined with China's current development situation, we analyzed the implications of the conceptual framework of planetary boundaries for China's sustainable development research, and put forward the prospect of future research, including: 1) improving the assessment system of planetary boundaries through making further exploration on the interrelationship between different Earth system processes; 2) defining the links between planetary boundaries, ecosystem services, and human well-being; 3) strengthening research on transformative environmental governance in conjunction with the assessment of planetary boundaries.

  • Reviews
  • Reviews
    Wei HU, Zhiding HU, Yuejing GE
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    China's rise is faced with the most complex geo-setting in human history. Establishing and improving the geo-setting analysis framework and researching and forcasting the changing situation of China's geo-setting are the needs of both the disciplinary development in human geography and national development. Currently, the research on China's geo-setting is progressing. The main researching contents are seperate studies on geo-setting definition, geo-setting analysis, driving mechanism of change in geo-setting, geo-relationships, and research methods of geo-setting. However, there is a lack of systematic research on geo-setting elements, and a complete set of recognized geo-setting change driving mechanisms has not been proposed yet, nor has a completed geo-setting analysis framework been established. Based on the past research and looking into the future, this article holds that geo-setting is an important research issue of human geography. Geographic elements influence geopolitics and geoeconomics through geo-setting. Geo-entities, geographical environment, geo-relationships, and geo-structures constitute the geo-setting system. Geo-distance and geo-flows are the core variables of a geo-setting. Therefore, future geo-setting research needs to pay more attention to the geo-relationships under the influence of geo-structures, strengthen the discussion of multidimensional, multiscale, and long-period geo-setting change driving mechanisms and interactions of geo-setting elements, expand geo-setting research methods and techniques, and deepen the geo-setting research of the Belt and Road region.

  • Reviews
    Binhong YE, Yang CHENG, Li WANG, Linsheng YANG
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    In recent years, with the impact of climate change, the Arctic has aroused extensive concerns worldwide. In this article, we systematically reviewed the publications on geo-relations in the Arctic from 2000 to 2017 in both the English and the Chinese literature. We identified 289 articles in English and 596 articles in Chinese by searching in Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), respectively. In terms of the number of publications, 10 or fewer papers were published in both English and Chinese each year from 2000 to 2008, but there was a significant growth in numbers after 2009. The Keyword Co-occurrence function of the CiteSpace software was used to visualize the keywords of the searched publications for analyzing the research trend. In terms of contents, the publications in English focused on sovereignty, mainly involving continental shelf, the Svalbard archipelago, and the legal status of the continental shelf. Some studies focused on the economy and feasibility of transportation routes in the Arctic, considering navigational conditions and costs. In addition, the natural resources in the Arctic region, such as oil, gas, and fishery, were major topics in the English publications. By the influence of critical and humanistic geopolitics, the survival, interests, and rights of indigenous population were also discussed. In the Chinese literature, many scholars focused on the geo-relations among Russian Federation, the United States, and Canada. China's participation in Arctic affairs and Arctic governance were often discussed, such as identity construction and cooperation approaches. Being different from the English publications, the impact of Arctic Passages on the international economic order has been paid more attention to in the Chinese literature. Furthermore, many scholars discussed the influence, particularly on the economic field, of developing the Arctic region from a national perspective. In general, publications in English have mainly focused on sovereignty and politics, channel utility, resource management, and indigenous people's rights and interests in the Arctic, while the Chinese publications have paid more attention to geopolitics, transportation, resource utilization, and regional governance in the region. Although some studies were conducted by using quantitative methods, the majority of publications were rather descriptive. The research methods and research questions need to be developed in this research field. The Arctic is a region with strategic significance. In the future, in combination with the development of research methods and international regional development theory, sustainable development in the Arctic and China's participation need to be further studied, and a theory of geo-relations needs to be constructed and applied in the study of the Arctic.

  • Reviews
    Dongsheng ZHAN, Wenzhong ZHANG, Li Chen, Xiaofen YU, Yunxiao DANG
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    Public service facilities are the essential part of both harmonious livable city construction and people's desire for a better life in China. Our findings show the research topics regarding public service facilities allocation varies at home and abroad. English literature focuses mainly on the location choice, accessibility, spatial equity and social economic effects of public service facilities allocation, while domestic studies pay enormous attention to the optimized layout, accessibility, spatial patterns, social differentiation, residents' needs and satisfaction, as well as influencing factors of public service facilities allocation. Combining the prior domestic and foreign research, future studies in China should be more concerned with spatial distribution regularities, social equity, performance evaluation and spatial optimization of public service facilities allocation. By reviewing the related research progress at home and abroad, this study can contribute to promoting both theory ascension and scientific practice of urban public service facilities allocation in China.

  • Reviews
    Hongxia ZHANG, Qin SU, Yingsha ZHANG
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    In recent years, social network analysis (SNA) has been widely adopted in tourism research to become one of the most popular tourism research paradigms in China and internationally. This study analyzed 67 articles on SNA published in the top 10 authoritative international journals of tourism research from 2009 to 2018. Concepts of interest included SNA research perspectives and methods, research contents, and application of relevant theories. On the basis of a comprehensive, systematic analysis, the results of this study were compared with those of a literature review from 10 years ago. Findings provided an overview of international research progress in SNA in tourism within the past decade and revealed several trends. First, research perspectives have improved during the past 10 years, as evidenced by a remarkable increase in research results from an egocentric network perspective and its integration with the whole-network perspective. Second, research methods have diversified; sources of relational data have become richer, various statistical analysis techniques (e.g., correlation analysis) have been applied, and research using these quantitative techniques has entered the mainstream. Some researchers have also begun to use qualitative research methods, such as grounded theory. Third, research objects have expanded from destination cooperative networks and policy networks to residents' relational networks, hyperlink networks, electronic word-of-mouth networks, and tourism image networks. Fourth, the research focus has shifted from describing and analyzing network structures to examining influencing factors and effects along with the formation, development, and change of networks. Finally, application of relevant SNA theories has expanded; studies using the theory of social capital appear relatively rich, and the strong explanatory power of this theory on tourism-related issues has been revealed. These results reflect a shift in tourism SNA research from measuring variables to interpreting and explaining them. In this paper, we summarized the challenges associated with applying SNA in tourism research internationally and provided recommendations for future SNA research in China. This study contextualized the latest research trends in applying SNA to tourism studies and laid a foundation for subsequent work.

  • Reviews
    Limin LIU, Linsheng ZHONG, Hu YU
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    Glacier tourism is an important part of modern tourism and has a great impact on the ecological environment. Glaciers are distributed in remote areas. Poor accessibility and high requirement for professional knowledge in tourism activities have restricted in-depth research of glacier tourism. Thus, there is a lack of systematic theoretical research in this field. This article reviews the related literature of glacier tourism in China and internationally in regard to the concept and connotation, resource development and management, social and economic effects, and the impact of and response to climate change, examines the differences between China and other countries in research time, contents, and methods, and points out the difficulties and areas for potential breakthroughs. It is proposed that the study of glacial tourism should be based on the perspectives of resources science and geography, and with a focus on the evolution of human-environment relationship in the destination regions. In the future, a research framework including resource endowments and value assessment, selection of suitable development areas, development patterns, destination management, and community building should be constructed to guide the sustainable development of glacial tourism in China.

  • Articles
  • Articles
    Li LIU, Ning LI, Zhengtao ZHANG, Jieling FENG, Xi CHEN, Kou BAI, Chengfang HUANG
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    As the intensity and frequency of natural hazard-induced disasters and human and asset exposure increase, the losses caused by these disasters have become increasingly serious. It is particularly important to estimate the capital stock, which is an indicator of economic exposure, in the assessment of disaster losses. At present, time series data of capital stock by economic sectors at the provincial scale in China are largely unavailable. Thus, this study used the perpetual inventory method to establish a capital stock database of 17 sectors for individual provinces in China from 2003 to 2015. The conclusions are as follows: Interannual changes of the total capital stock and direct losses of disasters nationwide both showed an increasing trend. At the provincial scale, the correlation analysis shows that there was a significant positive correlation between them (r= 0.3) at the 99% confidence level. The capital stock of 17 sectors for individual provinces also showed an increasing trend, but the growth rate was different. Among the provinces with the fastest growth rates in the 17 sectors, the growth rate of resident services, repair and other services in Heilongjiang Province was the fastest, which increased 454.3 times. This is followed by leasing and business services in Qinghai Province (398.3 times), finance in Jiangsu Province (295.1 times), and scientific research, technical services and geological exploration in Anhui Province (125.1 times). The top four sectors with the highest capital stock in the 17 sectors in 2015 were real estate; industry; transport, storage and post; and water conservancy, environment and public facilities management, and together their proportion was above 60%. The provinces with the most capital stock in these four sectors were Jiangsu and Guangdong. The study results are helpful for further understanding exposure of capital stock in individual provinces and various sectors from a temporal and spatial perspective, and providing important references for disaster prevention and mitigation work of provincial disaster risk managers.

  • Articles
    Cheng WANG, Haoying LI, Yanzhou HE, Xiaosu MA, Mingming ZHOU
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    As a complex system, the sustainable development ability of rural human settlements is the result of the exchange of materials, information, and energy among its subsystems. This study established an evaluation index system of sustainable development ability of rural human settlements based on the three subsystems of economic development, living-production, and ecological environment, and used panel data from 37 districts and counties in Chongqing Municipality from 1997 to 2015 as the data sources. By using development level that measures the sustainable development situation of rural human settlements, development efficiency that reflects the pace of sustainable development, and coordination index that reflects the coordination degree among subsystems, this study analyzed the sustainable development ability of the rural human settlements and examined its spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics, in order to provide some strategies for the practice of the three-year action plan of rural human settlements improvement in Chongqing Municipality. The results show that, from 1997 to 2015, the overall sustainable development ability of rural human settlements of Chongqing was reasonably high. Among the three subsystems, development level gradually improved, development efficiency fluctuated significantly, coordination degree enhanced stably, and the development level showed great differences among the subsystems. The sustainable development ability of rural human settlements presents a spatial pattern of "low in the east, high in the west" and center-periphery differentiation, as well as wide variations among the districts and counties as a whole. The development level of the economic development subsystem showed a spatial pattern of multilevel core-surrounding zonal differentiated growth. The development level of the living-production subsystem showed a spatial pattern of diffusion growth from the west to the east. The development level of the ecological environment subsystem declined first and then increased and showed a spatially unevenly growth. On these bases, this study put forward some strategies for improvement from the aspects of planning and guidance by the government, urban and rural coordination, and the “point-pole-core” development model.

  • Articles
    Shaoxing LI, Xianzhi WANG, Xiaole JI, Ye ZHANG
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    Based on the 2000 and 2010 censuses, this study examined the change of the spatial pattern of population aging of Shandong Province and its influencing factors by spatial statistical analysis and spatial econometric model at the township scale. It concluded that population aging is developing rapidly in the province, but the differences between the towns are very significant. Two types of territories with clear spatial agglomeration trends are recognized. One type is concentrated near cities and their surrounding areas, characterized by lower proportion, higher density, higher absolute growth rate, and lower relative growth rate of elderly population. The other type is towns located in the Jiaodong Peninsula area, the Yellow River Delta area, Yimeng Mountain area, and the West Shandong area, and mainly featured by higher proportion, lower density, lower absolute growth rate, and higher relative growth rate of elderly population. In contrast with the previous studies, we obtained several new findings on the driving forces of population aging in Shandong Province, reflecting the particular mechanism of change at the township scale. According to the regression results of the spatial econometric model, the population aging foundation does not have evident influence on the range of change, although it affects the static pattern in the next period, which means that the process of change is more complex and uncertain to predict than its spatial distribution. In addition, economic growth has a significantly negative effect on the spatial evolution of population aging, but the relationship between economic development level and the static aging level is unnoticeable.

  • Articles
    Xing HUANG, Yuting LIU
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    As a process of social and spatial change, gentrification results from class upgrading and transformation. New-build gentrification, characterized by demolition and subsequent residential development involving direct or indirect residential displacement and landscape change, has become the main type of gentrification in contemporary urban China. Academic literature on Chinese city cases has studied this issue from the perspective of supply, which stresses the leading role of state power, while the demand side has seldom been researched in China. Therefore, this study examined the process of new-build gentrification in urban China from the perspective of the demand side. Empirical material was based on in-depth interviews and questionnaires sent to the inhabitants of the ZS neighborhood (a new-build gentrification area) in Xuanwumen, Beijing. In particular, the main questions in this study underline the housing choice of gentrifiers and the social and spatial effects on displaced local residents. According to the empirical research, the new-build gentrifiers highlight the importance of factors relating to proximity and accessibility to services and convenience of life, irrespective of their household type. Nuclear family gentrifiers stress the factor of children's education as well. However, gentrification has the opposite effect on the displaced residents. Through the investigation on the displaced residents who previously lived in the location of the case study site and now are relocated in the planned resettlement housing located in urban periphery, it is found that although their housing condition has been improved, gentrification brought serious negative effects to these local residents in terms of quality of life and emotional aspects.

  • Articles
    Yang LIU, Jianshu LV, Jun BI
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    Water purification services of the terrestrial ecosystem can filter out pollutants in surface runoff, which helps to reduce emissions into the water body. Therefore, improving these services is an effective way to control non-point source pollution in watersheds, and accurately quantifying the spatiotemporal characteristics and driving factors of change of the services is the precondition for such improvement. Purification services for nitrogen and phosphorus are two typical water purification services, which can be quantified by nitrogen and phosphorus exports as the reverse proxy indicators. Taking a representative area of the Taihu Lake Basin in 2000-2010 as a case, we used the nutrient purification model in the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) tool to quantify nitrogen and phosphorus indicators of terrestrial ecosystem. The spatial pattern and temporal variation of purification services for nitrogen and phosphorus were characterized by the spatial analysis method in ArcGIS. In order to quantify the driving factors of change of the services, we developed a panel data model based on 31 selected factors and GIS spatial statistics methods. The results show that there were obvious spatial heterogeneities between nitrogen and phosphorus indicators and change over time. Both nitrogen and phosphorus purification services showed a spatial characteristic of widely weak decrease from 2000 to 2010, with the areal ratios of 59.19% and 58.27%, respectively. With regard to the temporal variation of service amount, nitrogen purification service of the study area first reduced then increased slightly during 2000-2005 and 2005-2010, and the increase in Suzhou urban district, Wuxi urban district, and Kunshan City were obvious. Phosphorus purification service was always in decline during 2000-2005 and 2005-2010, and the urban districts of Wuxi and Suzhou experienced the largest reduction. Water purification services are influenced by multiple driving factors in the physical, social, and economic domains. Climatic factors and water network density had significant positive influences on these two services, while the negative driving factors differed. Arable land proportion, village density, and agricultural population density had major negative effects on nitrogen purification service; while urban land density mainly impacted negatively on phosphorus purification service. Therefore, appropriate measures should be implemented to improve these two water purification services according to the driving factor analysis. Climate change adaptation policy can contribute to synergistically manage nitrogen and phosphorus purification services. Meanwhile, different control measures should be taken because of the varied driving factors between nitrogen and phosphorus purification services. Improving production and living conditions in rural areas and guiding individual behaviors of farmers can help to reduce the impact of agricultural activities on nitrogen purification service. Adjusting production and daily living activities in urban areas can reduce phosphorus emissions and enhance the phosphorus purification service of the terrestrial ecosystem. This study can provide support for non-point source pollution control and water management in watersheds.

  • Articles
    Kangmin WEN, Guoyu REN, Jiao LI, Yuyu REN, Xiubao SUN, Yaqing ZHOU, Aiying ZHANG
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    This study developed a method for correcting urbanization bias of station monthly mean surface air temperature data. By using this method and the data of 143 reference stations obtained from a previous research, we corrected urbanization bias of annual and monthly mean temperature data from 1961 to 2015 for 685 national reference climate and basic weather stations (national stations). We explained the rationality and evaluated the effect of the adjustment in the monitoring and analysis of surface air temperature change in the mainland of China. This study adopted a method of iterative correction that corrects longitudinally from east to west, and a revised target station can also serve as a reference station. First, the reference stations of a target station was set as within the range of 300 km, and the correlation coefficients of the detrended annual mean temperature between the target and candidate reference stations were taken as the criteria for selecting the reference stations. Second, by using the correlation coefficients of the reference stations as weights, the weighted average of the annual and monthly mean temperature of all the reference stations around a target station was calculated, obtaining annual and monthly mean temperature reference series for each of the target stations. Third, urbanization biases of the target stations were adjusted by using the linear temperature trend differences of the target station and the reference series as the total correction amounts. The areas with large adjustments are located in North China, part of Central China, northern Northeast China, part of Southwest China, and western China, ranging from 0.1 to 0.3 ℃/10 a, and negative urbanization bias exists in some areas of northwestern China, western and southern Tibet, southern Northeast China, coastal South China, and a few stations in East and Central China. For the whole of China's mainland, the relative urbanization bias is 19.6%. As representative metropolis observational sites in North China, Central China, Northwest and South China, respectively, Beijing, Wuhan, Yinchuan, and Shenzhen stations are found to have larger relative adjustments of 67.0%, 75.4%, 32.7%, and 50.3% respectively in the past 55 years. The adjustments are in line with the results of previous studies on assessment of impacts of urbanization for the stations. The results show that the adjustment is reasonable. The corrected temperature data largely have eliminated the uncertainties caused by urbanization biases.

  • Articles
    Jinting ZHANG, Yudan ZHAO, Yangge TIAN, Qingqing HE, Yanhua ZHUANG, Yunxi PENG, Song HONG
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    As the spatial and temporal distributions of regional air pollutant emissions and air quality do not completely match, SO2, NOX, PM2.5, CO, and VOCs were selected as indicators of air pollutants, and aerosol optical depth (AOD) was selected to characterize the ambient air quality of particulate matters in this study to examine their spatial coupling. Taking Wuhan City as an example, the coupling model and spatial dislocation index model were used to study the spatial non-coupling pattern of the two indices. The main conclusions are as follows: 1) Air pollutant emissions and particulate matter-related air quality in Wuhan City present different spatial distribution characteristics. The emissions of atmospheric pollutants showed a decreasing trend from the central area of the city to the surrounding areas. The emissions of SO2, PM2.5, and VOCs presented an obvious central aggregation phenomenon, while NOX and CO aggregation was not significant, but was significantly related to the distribution of roads. The distribution of AOD showed clear spatial heterogeneity, and generally decreased from northwest to southeast. 2) The spatial coupling pattern of air pollutant emissions and particulate matter-related air quality in Wuhan City indicates that the closer to the urban center, the more significant the spatial co-occurrence, and the weaker the spatial dislocation was. The farther away from the main urban area, the more significant the spatial non-coupling or dislocation was. The spatial dislocation index value of SO2 emission and AOD in the surrounding urban areas of Wuhan City was greater than 0.7 and the coupling index value was less than 0.3, showing a strong non-coupling feature. The spatial dislocation index of NOX, VOCs, and PM2.5 emissions and AOD in the central urban area of Wuhan City was less than 0.5 and the coupling index was greater than 0.5, showing a significant coupling phenomenon. 3) The suggestions for urban air pollution control based on the spatiotemporal non-coupling analysis are: for the central urban areas where the spatial dislocation between pollutant discharge and AOD is not significant, local emission reduction is the main method for pollution control. Comprehensive measures should be formulated on the basis of pollution souce identification for the surrounding areas with significant spatial dislocation of pollutant discharge and AOD.