Potential evapotranspiration (E₀), as an estimate of the evaporative demand of the atmosphere, has been widely studied in the fields of irrigation management, crop water demand and predictions in ungauged basins (PUBs). Analysis of the sensitivity of E₀ to meteorological factors is a basic research on the impact of climate change on water resources, and also is important to the optimal allocation of agricultural water resources. This paper dealt with sensitivity of E₀ over China, which was divided into ten drainage systems, including Songhua River basin, Liaohe River basin, Haihe River basin, Yellow River basin, Yangtze River basin, Pearl River basin, Huaihe River drainage system, Southeast river drainage system, Northwest river drainage system and Southwest river drainage system. In addition, the calculation method of global radiation in Penman-Monteith formula was improved by optimization, and the sensitivities of Penman-Monteith potential evapotranspiration to the daily maximum temperature (S_Tmax), daily minimum temperature (S_Tmin), wind speed (S_U2), global radiation (S_Rs) and vapor pressure (S_VP) were calculated and analyzed based on the long-term meteorological data from 653 meteorological stations in China during the period 1960-2007. Results show that: (1) the correlation coefficient between E₀ and pan evaporation increased from 0.61 to 0.75. E₀ had the decline trends in eight of ten drainage systems in China, which indicates that “pan evaporation paradox” commonly exists in China from 1960 to 2007. (2) Spatially, Tmax was the most sensitive factor in Haihe River basin, Yellow River basin, Huaihe River drainage system, Yangtze River basin, Pearl River basin and Southeast river drainage system, and VP was the most sensitive factor in Songhua River Basin, Liaohe River basin, Northwest river drainage system while Rs was the most sensitive factor in Southwest river drainage system. For the nation-wide average, the most sensitive factor was VP, followed by Tmax, Rs, U2 and Tmin. In addition, the changes in sensitivity coefficients had a certain correlation with elevation. (3) Temporally, the maximum values of S_Tmax and S_Rs occurred in July, while the maximum values of S_Tmin, S_VP and S_U2 occurred in January. Moreover, trend analysis indicates that S_Tmax had decline trends, while S_Tmin, S_U2, S_Rs and S_VP had increasing

Based on the glacier area variation records in the typical regions of China monitored by remote sensing, as well as the meteorological data of air temperature and precipitation from 139 stations and the 0℃ isotherm height from 28 stations, the glacier area shrinkage in China and its climatic background in the past half century was discussed. The initial glacier area calculated in this study was 23,982 km² in the 1960s/1970s, but the present area was only 21,893 km² in the 2000s. The area-weighted shrinking rate of glacier was 10.1%, and the interpolated annual percentage of area changes (APAC) of glacier was 0.3% a^-1 since 1960. The high APAC was found at the Ili River Basin and the Junggar Interior Basin around the Tianshan Mountains, the Ob River Basin around the Altay Mountains, the Hexi Interior Basin around the Qilian Mountains, etc. The retreat of glacier was affected by the climatic background, and the influence on glacier of the slight-increased precipitation was counteracted by the significant warming in summer.

We investigated the responses of cropland phenophases to changes of agricultural thermal conditions in Northeast China using the SPOT-VGT Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) ten-day-composed time-series data, observed crop phenophases and the climate data collected from 1990 to 2010. First, the phenological parameters, such as the dates of onset-of-growth, peak-of-growth and end-of-growth as well as the length of the growing season, were extracted from the smoothed NVDI time-series dataset and showed an obvious correlation with the observed crop phenophases, including the stages of seedling, heading, maturity and the length of the growth period. Secondly, the spatio-temporal trends of the major thermal conditions (the first date of ≥10℃, the first frost date, the length of the temperature-allowing growth period and the accumulated temperature (AT) of ≥10℃) in Northeast China were illustrated and analyzed over the past 20 years. Thirdly, we focused on the responses of cropland phenophases to the thermal conditions changes. The results showed that the onset-of-growth date had an obvious positive correlation with the first date of ≥10℃ (P < 0.01), especially in the northern part of the Songnen Plain, the eastern part of the Sanjiang Plain and the middle and eastern parts of Jilin Province. For the extracted length of growing season and the observed growth period, notable correlations were found in almost same regions (P < 0.05). However, there was no obvious correlation between the end-of-growth date and the first frost date in the study area. Opposite correlations were observed between the length of the growing season and the AT of ≥10℃. In the northern part of the Songnen Plain, the eastern part of the Sanjiang Plain and the middle part of Jilin and Liaoning Provinces, the positive correlation coefficients were higher than the critical value of 0.05, whereas the negative correlation coefficients reached a level of 0.55 (P < 0.05) in the middle and southern parts of Heilongjiang Province and some parts of the Sanjiang Plain. This finding indicated that the crop growth periods were shortened because of the elevated temperature; in contrast, the extended growth period usually meant a crop transformation from early- or middle-maturing varieties into middle or late ones.

Index systems on river health assessment are difficult for using in practice, due to the more complex and professional indicators adopted. In the paper, some key indicators which can be applied for river health assessment in general were selected, based on the analysis of 45 assessment index systems with 902 variables within around 150 published papers and documents in 1972-2010. According to the fields covered by the variables, they were divided into four groups: habitat condition, water environment, biotic status and water utilization. The adopted number and the accepted degrees in the above systems of each indicator were calculated after the variables were combined into the indicators, some of the widely accepted indicators which can reflect different aspects of river condition were selected as key indicators in candidate. Under the correlation analysis amongst the key indicators in candidate, 8 indicators were finally suggested as the key indicators for assessing river health, which were: coverage rate of riparian vegetation, reserved rate of wetland, river continuity, the changing rate of water flow, the ratio of reaching water quality standard, fish index of biotic integrity, the ratio of water utilization and land use.

Quantifying correlation between the spatial patterns of natural wetland plants and environmental gradient gives better understanding of wetland habitats, which is the fundamental for the strategy making on the protection and restoration of natural wetlands. In this study, the spatial patterns of wetland plants and the environmental gradient of wetland habitats were assessed in the Honghe National Nature Reserve (HNNR) in Northeast China, a wetland of international importance on the Ramsar list. Biophysical parameters' values of wetland plants were obtained by field sampling methods, and wetland mapping at the community scale was completed using remote sensing techniques. Digital delineation of the surface water system, hydrological zoning and wetness index were produced by spatial analysis methods in Geographic Information System. An ecological ordination method and two clustering methods were used to quantify the relationship between the spatial distribution patterns of wetland plants and the corresponding environmental gradients. Such quantitative analyses also present the specific diversity of different types of wetland plants based on the environmental attributes of their habitats. With the support from modern geo-information techniques, the experimental results indicate how four ecotypes of wetland plants spatially transit from forest swamp, shrub wetland and meadow into marsh wetland with increasing wetness index and water table. And they also show how wetland spatial distribution patterns are controlled by an environmental gradient of wetness. Another key finding of this research work is that our results present the exact fundamental differences between marsh and non-marsh plants of 11 wetland plant communities within the core study area. Hence, this case study gives a good sample for better understanding of the complex correlation between the spatial patterns of wetland plants and their environmental attributes using advanced digital analysis methods. It is also useful to show how to integrate geoinformatic techniques with statistical analysis methods based on the field data base.

Based on the meteorological data of 20 stations in the Hengduan Mountains region during 1961-2009, the annual and seasonal variation of potential evapotranspiration was analyzed in combination with the Penman-Monteith model. With the method of Spline interpolation under ArcGIS, the spatial distribution of potential evapotranspiration was presented to research the regional difference, and the correlation analysis was used to discuss the dominant factor affecting the potential evapotranspiration. The results indicated that the annual potential evapotranspiration showed a decreasing tendency since the 1960s, especially from the 1980s to 1990s, while it showed an increasing tendency since 2000. Regional potential evapotranspiration showed a rate of -0.17 mm a^-1. Potential evapotranspiration in north, middle and south of the Hengduan Mountains exhibited decreasing trends over the studied period, and its regional trend was on the decline from southwest to northeast.

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 paper presents the prediction of total energy production and consumption in all provinces and autonomous regions as well as determination of the variation of gravity center of the energy production, consumption and total discharge of industrial waste water, gas and residue of China via the energy and environmental quality data from 1978 to 2009 in China by use of GM(1,1) model and gravity center model, based on which the paper also analyzes the dynamic variation in regional difference in energy production, consumption and environmental quality and their relationship. The results are shown as follows. 1) The gravity center of energy production is gradually moving southwestward and the entire movement track approximates to linear variation, indicating that the difference of energy production between the east and west, south and north is narrowing to a certain extent, with the difference between the east and the west narrowing faster than that between the south and the north. 2) The gravity center of energy consumption is moving southwestward with perceptible fluctuation, of which the gravity center position from 2000 to 2005 was relatively stable, with slight annual position variation, indicating that the growth rates of all provinces and autonomous regions are basically the same. 3) The gravity center of the total discharge of industrial waste water, gas and residue is characterized by fluctuation in longitude and latitude to a certain degree. But, it shows a southwestward trend on the whole. 4) There are common ground and discrepancy in the variation track of the gravity center of the energy production & consumption of China, and the comparative analysis of the gravity center of them and that of total discharge of industrial waste water, gas and residue shows that the environmental quality level is closely associated with the energy production and consumption (especially the energy consumption), indicating that the environment cost in economy of energy is higher in China.

Study on regional carbon emission is one of the hot topics under the background of global climate change and low-carbon economic development, and also help to establish different low-carbon strategies for different regions. On the basis of energy consumption and land use data of different regions in China from 1999 to 2008, this paper established carbon emission and carbon footprint models based on total energy consumption, and calculated the amount of carbon emissions and carbon footprint in different regions of China from 1999 to 2008. The author also analyzed carbon emission density and per unit area carbon footprint for each region. Finally, advices for decreasing carbon footprint were put forward. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Carbon emissions from total energy consumption increased 129% from 1999 to 2008 in China, but its spatial distribution pattern among different regions just slightly changed, the sorting of carbon emission amount was: Eastern China > Northern China > Central and Southern China > Southwest China > Northwest China. (2) The sorting of carbon emission density was: Eastern China > Northeast China > Central and Southern China > Northern China > Southwest China > Northwest China from 1999 to 2003, but from 2004 Central and Southern China began to have higher carbon emission density than Northeast China, the order of other regions did not change. (3) Carbon footprint increased significantly since the rapid increasing of carbon emissions and less increasing area of productive land in different regions of China from 1999 to 2008. Northern China had the largest carbon footprint, and Northwest China, Eastern China, Northern China, Central and Southern China followed in turn, while Southwest China presented the lowest area of carbon footprint and the highest percentage of carbon absorption. (4) Mainly influenced by regional land area, Northern China presented the highest per unit area carbon footprint and followed by Eastern China, and Northeast China; Central and Southern China, and Northwest China had a similar medium per unit area carbon footprint; Southwest China always had the lowest per unit area carbon footprint. (5) China faced great ecological pressure brought by carbon emission. Some measures should be taken both from reducing carbon emission and increasing carbon absorption.

Electric power consumption (EPC) is one of the basic indices for evaluating electric power use. Obtaining timely and accurate data on the spatiotemporal dynamics of EPC is crucial for understanding and practical deployment of electric power resources. In this study, an EPC model was developed using stable nighttime lights time-series data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS). The model was used to reconstruct the spatial patterns of EPC in Chinese Mainland at the county level from 1995 to 2008. In addition, the spatiotemporal dynamics of EPC were analyzed, and the following conclusions were drawn. (1) The EPC model reliably represented the spatiotemporal dynamics of EPC in Chinese Mainland with approximately 70% accuracy. (2) The EPC in most regions of Chinese Mainland was at low to moderate levels, with marked temporal and spatial variations; of high-level EPC, 58.26% was concentrated in eastern China. Six urban agglomerations (Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region, Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou region, Pearl River Delta, Shandong Peninsula, middle-south of Liaoning Province, and Sichuan Basin) accounted for 10.69% of the total area of Chinese Mainland but consumed 39.23% of the electricity. (3) The EPC of most regions in Chinese Mainland increased from 1995 to 2008, and 64% of the mainland area showed a significant increase in EPC. Moderate increases in EPC were found in 61.62% of eastern China and 80.65% of central China from 1995 to 2008, whereas 75.69% of western China showed no significant increase in EPC. Meanwhile, 77.27%, 89.35%, and 66.72% of the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou region, Pearl River Delta, and Shandong Peninsula, respectively, showed high-speed increases in EPC. Moderate increases in EPC occurred in 71.12% and 72.13% of the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region and middle-south of Liaoning Province, respectively, while no significant increase occurred in 56.34% of the Sichuan Basin.

Urban clusters are the expected products of high levels of industry and urbanization in a country, as well as being the basic units of participation in global competition. With respect to China, urban clusters are regarded as the dominant formation for boosting the Chinese urbanization process. However, to date, there is no coincident, efficient, and credible methodological system and set of techniques to identify Chinese urban clusters. This research investigates the potential of a computerized identification method supported by geographic information techniques to provide a better understanding of the distribution of Chinese urban clusters. The identification method is executed based on a geographic information database, a digital elevation model, and socio-economic data with the aid of ArcInfo Macro Language programming. In the method, preliminary boundaries are identified according to transportation accessibility, and final identifications are achieved from limiting city numbers, population, and GDP in a region with the aid of the rasterized socio-economic dataset. The results show that the method identifies nine Chinese urban clusters, i.e., Pearl River Delta, Lower Yangtze River Valley, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, Northeast China Plain, Middle Yangtze River Valley, Central China Plains, Western Taiwan Strait, Guanzhong and Chengdu-Chongqing urban clusters. This research represents the first study involving the computerized identification of Chinese urban clusters. Moreover, compared to other related studies, the study's approach, which combines transportation accessibility and socio-economic characteristics, is shown to be a distinct, effective and reliable way of identifying urban clusters.

Climatic conditions are difficult to obtain in high mountain regions due to few meteorological stations and, if any, their poorly representative location designed for convenient operation. Fortunately, it has been shown that remote sensing data could be used to estimate near-surface air temperature (Ta) and other climatic conditions. This paper makes use of recorded meteorological data and MODIS data on land surface temperature (Ts) to estimate monthly mean air temperatures in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau and its neighboring areas. A total of 72 weather stations and 84 MODIS images for seven years (2001 to 2007) are used for analysis. Regression analysis and spatio-temporal analysis of monthly mean Ts vs. monthly mean Ta are carried out, showing that recorded Ta is closely related to MODIS Ts in the study region. The regression analysis of monthly mean Ts vs. Ta for every month of all stations shows that monthly mean Ts can be rather accurately used to estimate monthly mean Ta (R² ranging from 0.62 to 0.90 and standard error between 2.25℃ and 3.23℃). Thirdly, the retrieved monthly mean Ta for the whole study area varies between 1.62℃ (in January, the coldest month) and 17.29 ℃ (in July, the warmest month), and for the warm season (May-September), it is from 13.1℃ to 17.29℃. Finally, the elevation of isotherms is higher in the central mountain ranges than in the outer margins; the 0℃ isotherm occurs at elevation of about 4500±500 m in October, dropping to 3500±500 m in January, and ascending back to 4500±500 m in May next year. This clearly shows that MODIS Ts data combining with observed data could be used to rather accurately estimate air temperature in mountain regions.

This paper attempts to explore the temporal and spatial nature of the marginal revenue of land, total factor productivity (TFP) change and its three components: technical change (TC), technical efficiency change (TEC) and scale efficiency change (SEC) as seen in Chinese agricultural production from 1995 to 1999. Based on county-level data, the study utilized both stochastic frontier and mapping analyses methods. The results show that growth in the marginal revenue of land was diverse across various regions, where most gain occurred in eastern coastal zone, while loss was in Northwest and North China. China has experienced moderate decreases in annual TFP change (-0.26%) with considerable regional variations. Specifically, the administrative intervention in grain production and the deterioration of the agricultural technology diffusion system led to a moderate drop in annual TFP change. County-level mapping analyses took into account interregional variances in TFP and its components. Regarding components of TFP, TEC differences explain the majority of regional dispersions in TFP. As developed areas in China, the Huang-Huai-Hai region and the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan economic zone face the challenges of land conversion and grain security amidst the process of urbanization.

In response to the strong drive for social and economic development, local governments have implemented urban master plans, providing measures and timeframes to address the continuous demand for land and to alleviate urban problems. In this paper, a multi-objective model was constructed to discuss the problem, including economic benefits and ecological effectiveness, in terms of land use optimization. A genetic algorithm was then adopted to solve the model, and a performance evaluation and sensitivity analysis were conducted using Pareto optimality. Results showed that a set of tradeoffs could be acquired by the allocation of land use. In addition, the Pareto solutions proved the model to be efficient; for example, a limit of 13,500 ha of urban area conformed to plan recommendations. The reduction in crop land, orchard land, grassland, and unused land provided further efficiencies. These results implied that further potential regional land resources remain and that the urban master plan is able to support sustainable local development in the years to come, as well as verified that it is feasible to use land use allocation multi-objective modeling and genetic algorithms.

Based on the daily precipitation data of 27 meteorological stations from 1960 to 2009 in the Huaihe River Basin, spatio-temporal trend and statistical distribution of extreme precipitation events in this area are analyzed. Annual maximum series (AM) and peak over threshold series (POT) are selected to simulate the probability distribution of extreme precipitation. The results show that positive trend of annual maximum precipitation is detected at most of used stations, only a small number of stations are found to depict a negative trend during the past five decades, and none of the positive or negative trend is significant. The maximum precipitation event almost occurred in the flooding period during the 1960s and 1970s. By the L-moments method, the parameters of three extreme distributions, i.e., Generalized extreme value distribution (GEV), Generalized Pareto distribution (GP) and Gamma distribution are estimated. From the results of goodness of fit test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test, AM series can be better fitted by GEV model and POT series can be better fitted by GP model. By the comparison of the precipitation amounts under different return levels, it can be found that the values obtained from POT series are a little larger than the values from AM series, and they can better simulate the observed values in the Huaihe River Basin.

Sensitivity analysis of hydrological model is the key for model uncertainty quantification. However, how to effectively validate model and identify the dominant parameters for distributed hydrological models is a bottle-neck to achieve parameters optimization. For this reason, a new approach was proposed in this paper, in which the support vector machine was used to construct the response surface at first. Then it integrates the SVM-based response surface with the Sobol’ method, i.e. the RSMSobol’ method, to quantify the parameter sensitivities. In this work, the distributed time-variant gain model (DTVGM) was applied to the Huaihe River Basin, which was used as a case to verify its validity and feasibility. We selected three objective functions (i.e. water balance coefficient WB, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient NS, and correlation coefficient RC) to assess the model performance as the output responses for sensitivity analysis. The results show that the parameters g₁ and g₂ are most important for all the objective functions, and they are almost the same to that of the classical approach. Furthermore, the RSMSobol method can not only achieve the quantification of the sensitivity, and also reduce the computational cost, with good accuracy compared to the classical approach. And this approach will be effective and reliable in the global sensitivity analysis for a complex modelling system.

Using the daily temperature data of 95 meteorological stations from Sichuan- Chongqing Region and its surrounding areas, this paper adopted these methods (e.g., linear regression, trend coefficient, geographical statistics, gray relational analysis and spatial analysis functions of GIS) to analyze the relations of temperature variability with topography, latitude and longitude. Moreover, the rank of gray correlation between temperature variability and elevation, longitude, latitude, topographic position and surface roughness also was measured. These results indicated: (1) The elevation affected temperature variability most obviously, followed by latitude, and longitude. The slope of the linear regression between temperature change rate and elevation, latitude and longitude was 0.4142, 0.0293 and -0.3270, respectively. (2) The rank of gray correlation between temperature change rate and geographic factors was elevation > latitude > surface roughness > topographic position > longitude. The gray correlation degree between temperature change rate and elevation was 0.865, followed by latitude with 0.796, and longitude with 0.671. (3) The rate of temperature change enhanced with the increase of elevation. Especially, the warming trend was significant in the plateau and mountain areas of western Sichuan, and mountain and valley areas of southwestern Sichuan (with the warming rate of 0.74℃/10a during the 1990s). However, there was a weak warming trend in Sichuan Basin and its surrounding low mountain and hilly areas. (4) The effects of latitude on temperature change rate presented the specific regulation, which the warming rate of low-latitude areas was more significant than that of high-latitude areas. However, they were consistent with the regulation that the increasing of low temperature controlled most of the warming trend, due to the effects of terrain and elevation on annual mean temperature. (5) Basically, temperature variability along longitude direction resulted from the regular change of elevation along longitude. It was suggested that, in Sichuan-Chongqing Region, special features of temperature variability largely depended on the terrain complexity (e.g., undulations, mutations and roughness). The elevation level controlled only high or low annual mean temperature and the range of temperature change rate in the macro sense.

Based on China homogenized land surface air temperature and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/Department of Energy (NCEP/DOE) Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP)-Ⅱ Reanalysis data (R-2), the main contributors to surface air temperature increase in Southeast China were investigated by comparing trends of urban and rural temperature series, as well as observed and R-2 data, covering two periods of 1954-2005 and 1979-2005. Results from urban-rural comparison indicate that urban heat island (UHI) effects on regional annual and autumn minimum temperature increases account for 10.5% and 12.0% since 1954, but with smaller warming attribution of 6.2% and 10.6% since 1979. The results by comparing observations with R-2 surface temperature data suggest that land use change accounts for 32.9% and 28.8% in regional annual and autumn minimum temperature increases since 1979. Accordingly, the influence of land use change on regional temperature increase in Southeast China is much more noticeable during the last 30 years. However, it indicates that UHI effect, overwhelmed by the warming change of background climate, does not play a significant role in regional warming over Southeast China during the last 50 years.

By decomposing and reconstructing the runoff information from 1965 to 2007 of the hydrologic stations of Tuotuo River and Zhimenda in the source region of the Yangtze River, and Jimai and Tangnaihai in the source region of the Yellow River with db3 wavelet, runoff of different hydrologic stations tends to be declining in the seasons of spring flood, summer flood and dry ones except for that in Tuotuo River. The declining flood/dry seasons series was summer > spring > dry; while runoff of Tuotuo River was always increasing in different stages from 1965 to 2007 with a higher increase rate in summer flood seasons than that in spring ones. Complex Morlet wavelet was selected to detect runoff periodicity of the four hydrologic stations mentioned above. Over all seasons the periodicity was 11-12 years in the source region of the Yellow River. For the source region of the Yangtze River the periodicity was 4-6 years in the spring flood seasons and 13-14 years in the summer flood seasons. The differences of variations of flow periodicity between the upper catchment areas of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River and between seasons were considered in relation to glacial melt and annual snowfall and rainfall as providers of water for runoff.

Drought is one of the most destructive disasters in the Lancang River Basin, which is an ungauged basin with strong heterogeneity on terrain and climate. Our validation suggested the version-6 monthly TRMM multi-satellite precipitation analysis (TMPA; 3B43 V.6) product during the period 1998 to 2009 is an alternative precipitation data source with good accuracy. By using the standard precipitation index (SPI), at the grid point (0.25°×0.25°) and sub-basin spatial scales, this work assessed the effectiveness of TMPA in drought monitoring during the period 1998 to 2009 at the 1-month scale and 3-months scale; validated the monitoring accuracy of TMPA for two severe droughts happened in 2006 and 2009, respectively. Some conclusions are drawn as follows. (1) At the grid point spatial scale, in comparison with the monitoring results between rain gauges (SPI1_g) and TMPA grid (SPI1_s), both agreed well at the 1-month scale for most of the grid points and those grid points with the lowest critical success index (CSI) are distributed in the middle stream of the Lancang River Basin. (2) The same as SPI1_s, the consistency between SPI3_s and SPI3_g is good for most of the grid points at the 3-months scale, those grid points with the lowest were concentrated in the middle stream and downstream of the Lancang River Basin. (3) At the 1-month scale and 3-months scale, CSI ranged from 50% to 76% for most of the grid points, which demonstrated high accuracy of TMPA in drought monitoring. (4) At the 3-months scale, based on TMPA basin-wide precipitation estimates, though we tended to overestimate (underestimate) the peaks of dry or wet events, SPI3_s detected successfully the occurrence of them over the five sub-basins at the most time and captured the occurrence and development of the two severe droughts happened in 2006 and 2009. This analysis shows that TMPA has the potential for drought monitoring in data-sparse regions.

Ecological compensation is a hot subject in academic studies, and the determination of the spatial allocation of compensation payments is a key point in the research of ecological compensation. There are two kinds of thoughts in the determination of regional spatial allocation at present: “evaluation of ecological construction cost” and “evaluation of ecosystem services value”. This paper analyzes the relationships between social ecological compensation and regional socio-economic development, and establishes two econometric models with the data of 2007 from various provinces in China. Through these models, the impacts of geographical endowments on the regional socio-economic development in various provinces are analyzed from the social justice viewpoint and the concept of “equivalent value of geographical endowments” (EGE for short) is proposed. This paper analyzes the application prospect of EGE in the policy making of regional ecological compensation. The results showed that: (1) the implementation of social ecological compensation is not only an effective guarantee for each region to obtain the equal rights of survival, development and decent environment, but also an essential assurance to the coordinated, balanced and sustainable development among various regions; (2) the regional difference in geographical endowments is an important factor affecting the regional spatial variation of socio-economic development. Therefore, geographical endowments are important bases for the determination of the spatial allocation of compensation payments in social ecological compensation; (3) based on the EGE, the government can determine the spatial allocation of social ecological compensation scientifically, and avoid the “sweeping approach” phenomenon in the policy making process of ecological compensation.

The decision tree and the threshold methods have been adopted to delineate boundaries and features of water bodies from LANDSAT images. After a spatial overlay analysis and using a remote sensing technique and the wetland inventory data in Beijing, the water bodies were visually classified into different types of urban wetlands, and data on the urban wetlands of Beijing in 1986, 1991, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2007 were obtained. Thirteen driving factors that affect wetland change were selected, and gray correlation analysis was employed to calculate the correlation between each driving factor and the total area of urban wetlands. Then, six major driving factors were selected based on the correlation coefficient, and the contribution rates of these six driving factors to the area change of various urban wetlands were calculated based on canonical correlation analysis. After that, this research analyzed the relationship and mechanism between the main driving factors and various types of wetlands. Five conclusions can be drawn. (1) The total area of surface water bodies in Beijing increased from 1986 to 1996, and gradually decreased from 1996 to 2007. (2) The areas of the river wetlands, water storage areas and pool and culture areas gradually decreased, and its variation tendency is consistent with that of the total area of wetlands. The area of the mining water areas and wastewater treatment plants slightly increased. (3) The six factors of driving forces are the annual rainfall, the evaporation, the quantity of inflow water, the volume of groundwater available, the urbanization rate and the daily average discharge of wastewater are the main factors affecting changes in the wetland areas, and they correlate well with the total area of wetlands. (4) The hydrologic indicators of water resources such as the quantity of inflow water and the volume of groundwater are the most important and direct driving forces that affect the change of the wetland area. These factors have a combined contribution rate of 43.94%. (5) Climate factors such as rainfall and evaporation are external factors that affect the changes in wetland area, and they have a contribution rate of 36.54%. (6) Human activities such as the urbanization rate and the daily average quantity of wastewater are major artificial driving factors. They have an influence rate of 19.52%.

Cultivation is one of the most important human activities affecting the grassland ecosystem besides grazing, but its impacts on soil total organic carbon (C), especially on the liable organic C fractions have not been fully understood yet. In this paper, the role of cropping in soil organic C pool of different fractions was investigated in a meadow steppe region in Inner Mongolia of China, and the relationships between different C fractions were also discussed. The results indicated that the concentrations of different C fractions at steppe and cultivated land all decreased progressively with soil depth. After the conversion from steppe to spring wheat field for 36 years, total organic carbon (TOC) concentration at the 0 to 100 cm soil depth has decreased by 12.3% to 28.2%, and TOC of the surface soil horizon, especially those of 0-30 cm decreased more significantly (p<0.01). The dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and microbial biomass carbon (MBC) at the depth of 0-40 cm were found to have decreased by 66.7% to 77.1% and 36.5% to 42.4%, respectively. In the S.baicalensis steppe, the ratios of soil DOC to TOC varied between 0.52% and 0.60%, and those in the spring wheat field were only in the range of 0.18%-0.20%. The microbial quotients (qMBs) in the spring wheat field, varying from 1.11% to 1.40%, were also lower than those in the S. baicalensis steppe, which were in the range of 1.50%-1.63%. The change of DOC was much more sensitive to cultivation disturbance. Soil TOC, DOC, and MBC were significantly positive correlated with each other in the S. baicalensis steppe, but in the spring wheat field, the correlativity between DOC and TOC and that between DOC and MBC did not reach the significance level of 0.05.

Karamay City is a typical mining city, relying on oilfield exploration and development. After 60 years of construction and development, Karamay has become the first large oilfield and an important base of the national petroleum and petrochemical industry in China. Based on spatial analysis, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) grid computing and overlay techniques, whilst considering the effect of oilfield development and aimed at the ecological problems of Karamay City in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, we conducted research on the spatial characteristics of the comprehensive ecological sensitivity of Karamay. The ecological problems of natural environment evolution include soil erosion, land desertification, soil salinization, and biodiversity reduction. The most significant disturbance factor from the activities of humans in this area is oilfield exploitation. This study carries out an analysis of single factor ecological problem sensitivity and integrated ecological sensitivity. The results of the research are as follows: (1) Soil erosion is relatively sensitive, especially in Karamay district, Dushanzi district, north of Urho district and west of Baijiantan district, which is mainly a result of the vertical dropping slopes, serious rainfall erosion and the distribution of scattered woodland. (2) The main types of land desertification are represented by high and moderate grade sensitivities, and high and extremely high sensitive areas are distributed in the intersection of Karamay and Baijiantan districts. This is due to evaporation exceeding rainfall in these areas, and the soil mainly consists of sand and is seldom covered by vegetation. (3) The soil salinizatiion sensitivity grades are mainly moderate, high and extremely high. The highly sensitive areas are mainly distributed in southeast of Baijiantan district, north and east of Karamay district and east of Urho district. The primary causes are evaporation exceeding rainfall and extreme human activities. (4) The main types of biodiversity sensitivity are light and moderate grade. Highly sensitive areas are located in the east and south of Karamay district, north of the Baiyang River basin and parts of the wetland areas. (5) Oil fields development areas are highly ecologically sensitive, which are located in the northern oilfields of Urho district, western oilfields of Baijiantan district, northwestern oilfields of Karamay district and central oilfields of Dushanzi district. (6) The main types of integrated ecological sensitivity are high and moderate. The high and extremely highly sensitive areas are located in the central and northern parts of Karamay district, and southwest of Baijiantan district. The evaluation results will provide guidance for the future planning and development, the protection of the ecological environment and the realization of harmonious social, economic, and ecological development in Karamay City.

Relationship between vegetation and environmental factors has always been a major topic in ecology, but it has also been an important way to reveal vegetation’s dynamic response to and feedback effects on climate change. For the special geographical location and climatic characteristics of the Qaidam Basin, with the support of traditional and remote sensing data, in this paper a vegetation coverage model was established. The quantitative prediction of vegetation coverage by five environmental factors was initially realized through multiple stepwise regression (MSR) models. However, there is significant multicollinearity among these five environmental factors, which reduces the performance of the MSR model. Then through the introduction of the Moran Index, an indicator that reflects the spatial autocorrelation of vegetation distribution, only two variables of average annual rainfall and local Moran Index were used in the final establishment of the vegetation coverage model. The results show that there is significant spatial autocorrelation in the distribution of vegetation. The role of spatial autocorrelation in the establishment of vegetation coverage model has not only improved the model fitting R² from 0.608 to 0.656, but also removed the multicollinearity among independents.

To understand historical human-induced land cover change and its climatic effects, it is necessary to create historical land use datasets with explicit spatial information. Using the taxes-cropland area and number of families compiled from historical documents, we estimated the real cropland area and populations within each Lu (a province-level political region in the Northern Song Dynasty) in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty (AD1004-1085). The estimations were accomplished through analyzing the contemporary policies of tax, population and agricultural development. Then, we converted the political region-based cropland area to geographically explicit grid cell-based fractional cropland at the cell size of 60 km by 60 km. The conversion was based on calculating cultivation suitability of each grid cell using the topographic slope, altitude and population density as the independent variables. As a result, the total area of cropland within the Northern Song territory in the 1070s was estimated to be about 720 million mu (Chinese area unit, 1 mu = 666.7 m²), of which 40.1% and 59.9% occurred in the north and south respectively. The population was estimated to be about 87.2 million, of which 38.7% and 61.3% were in the north and south respectively, and per capita cropland area was about 8.2 mu. The national mean reclamation ratio (i.e. ratio of cropland area to total land area; RRA hereafter for short) was bout 16.6%. The plain areas, such as the North China Plain, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, Guanzhong Plain, plains surrounding the Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake and Sichuan Basin, had a higher RRA, being mostly over 40%; while the hilly and mountainous areas, such as south of Nanling Mountains, the southwest regions (excluding the Chengdu Plain), Loess Plateau and southeast coastal regions, had a lower RRA, being less than 20%. Moreover, RRA varied with topographic slope and altitude. In the areas of low altitude (≤250 m), middle altitude (250-100 m) and high altitude (1000-3500 m), there were 443 million, 215 million and 64 million mu of cropland respectively and their regional mean RRAs were 27.5%, 12.6% and 7.2% respectively. In the areas of flat slope, gentle slope, medium slope and steep slope, there were 116 million, 456 million, 144 million and 2 million mu of cropland respectively and their regional mean RRAs were 34.6%, 20.7%, 8.5% and 2.3% respectively.

The agricultural reclamations in the Xiliao River Valley since the Holocene have led to a huge landscape change from grassland to farmland. In this paper we reconsider the man-land relationship in the Xiliao River Valley by analyzing three major agricultural reclamations in prehistory, the Liao-Jin Dynasty and the period since the Qing Dynasty. We argue that when the demographic pressure appears in this area, especially during the last reclamation, the intraregional migration (second migration) is the major response to relieve such pressure, which also distinguishes two different settlement locations: “the initial area” and “the secondary area”. Due to the environmental differences between these two areas, the cultivation on the latter one has caused more serious disturbance to the local environment. Thus the secondary area has become the key region which needs environmental management seriously.

As products of urbanization, cities are focal points for social and economic interaction. Though China is an ancient civilization, only recently has the urban population surpassed that in rural areas. During the last three decades, unprecedented urbanization has reshaped China’s geographical, social, economic and cultural landscapes. Among the social-economic transformations having occurred in China in recent history, urbanization is probably the most impressive and dynamic process; it has changed daily life of Chinese population and profoundly impacted the regional and global economy.

The IGU Regional Conference (UGI 2011) was held on November 14-18, 2011 in Santiago, Chile. It was organized by the Military Geographic Institute (IGM). Nearly 1000 geographers across the world participated in this event. The Geographical Society of China (GSC) sent a delegation consisting of more than 40 members to attend the conference.

Terrestrial ecosystem and climate system are closely related to each other. Faced with the unavoidable global climate change, it is important to investigate terrestrial ecosystem responding to climate change. In inland river basin of arid and semi-arid regions in China, sensitivity difference of vegetation responding to climate change from 1998 to 2007 was analyzed in this paper. (1) Differences in the global spatio-temporal distribution of vegetation and climate are obvious. The vegetation change shows a slight degradation in this whole region. Degradation is more obvious in densely vegetated areas. Temperature shows a general downward trend with a linear trend coefficient of -1.1467. Conversely, precipitation shows an increasing trend with a linear trend coefficient of 0.3896. (2) About the central tendency response, there are similar features in spatial distribution of both NDVI responding to precipitation (NDVI-P) and NDVI responding to AI (NDVI-AI), which are contrary to that of NDVI responding to air temperature (NDVI-T). Typical sensitivity region of NDVI-P and NDVI-AI mainly covers the northern temperate arid steppe and the northern temperate desert steppe. NDVI-T typical sensitivity region mainly covers the northern temperate desert steppe. (3) Regarding the fluctuation amplitude response, NDVI-T is dominated by the lower sensitivity, typical regions of the warm temperate shrubby, selui-shrubby, bare extreme dry desert, and northern temperate meadow steppe in the east and temperate semi-shrubby, dwarf arboreous desert in the north are high response. (4) Fluctuation amplitude responses between NDVI-P and NDVI-AI present a similar spatial distribution. The typical sensitivity region mainly covers the northern temperate desert steppe. There are various linear change trend responses of NDVI-T, NDVI-P and NDVI-AI. As to the NDVI-T and NDVI-AI, which are influenced by the boundary effect of semi-arid and semi-humid climate zones, there is less correlation of their linear change tendency along the border. There is stronger correlation in other regions, especially in the NDVI-T in the northern temperate desert steppe and NDVI-AI in the warm temperate shrubby, selui-shrubby, bare, extreme and dry desert.

Land surface emissivity is one of the important parameters in temperature inversion from thermal infrared remote sensing. Using MOD11C3 of Terra-MODIS L3 level products, spatio-temporal data sets of land surface emissivity in China for 10 years from 2001 to 2010 are obtained. The results show that the land surface emissivity in the northwest desert region is the lowest in China, with little seasonal variations. In contrast, there are significant seasonal variations in land surface emissivity in northeast China and northern Xinjiang, the Qinghai- Tibet Plateau, the Yangtze River Valley and the eastern and southern China. In winter, the land surface emissivity in the northeast China and northern Xinjiang is relatively high. The land surface emissivity of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region is maintained at low value from November to March, while it becomes higher in other months. The land surface emissivity of the Yangtze River Valley, eastern and southern China, and Sichuan Basin varies from July to October, and peaks in August. Land surface emissivity values could be divided into five levels: low emissivity (0.6163-0.9638), moderate-low emissivity (0.9639-0.9709), moderate emissivity (0.9710-0.9724), moderate-high emissivity (0.9725-0.9738), and high emissivity (0.9739-0.9999). The percentages of areas with low emissivity, moderate-low emissivity and moderate emissivity are, respectively, about 20%, 10% and 20%. The moderate-high emissivity region makes up 40%-50% of China's land surface area. The inter-annual variation of moderate-high emissivity region is also very clear, with two peaks (in spring and autumn) and two troughs (in summer and winter). The inter-annual variation of the high emissivity region is very significant, with a peak in winter (10%), while only 1% or 2% in other seasons. There is a clear association between the spatio-temporal distribution of China's land surface emissivity and temperature: the higher the emissivity, the lower the temperature, and vice versa. Emissivity is an inherent property of any object, but the precise value of its emissivity depends very much on its surrounding environmental factors.

A total of 12 indices of temperature extremes and 11 indices of precipitation extremes at 111 stations in southwestern China at altitudes of 285-4700 m were examined for the period 1961-2008. Significant correlations of temperature extremes and elevation included the trends of diurnal temperature range, frost days, ice days, cold night frequency and cold day frequency. Regional trends of growing season length, warm night frequency, coldest night and warmest night displayed a statistically significant positive correlation with altitude. These characteristics indicated the obvious warming with altitude. For precipitation extreme indices, only the trends of consecutive dry days, consecutive wet days, wet day precipitation and the number of heavy precipitation days had significant correlations with increasing altitude owing to the complex influence of atmospheric circulation. It also indicated the increased precipitation mainly at higher altitude areas, whereas the increase of extreme precipitation events mainly at lowers altitude. In addition, the clearly local influences are also crucial on climate extremes. The analysis revealed an enhanced sensitivity of climate extremes to elevation in southwestern China in the context of recent warming.

This study examines the hydrological and meteorological data of the source region of the Yellow River from 1956 to 2010 and future climate scenarios from regional climate model (PRECIS) during 2010-2020. Through analyzing the flow variations and revealing the climate causes, it predicts the variation trend for future flows. It is found that the annual mean flow showed a decreasing trend in recent 50 years in the source region of the Yellow River with quasi-periods of 5a, 8a, 15a, 22a and 42a; the weakened South China Sea summer monsoon induced precipitation decrease, as well as evaporation increase and frozen soil degeneration in the scenario of global warming are the climate factors, which have caused flow decrease. Based on the regional climate model PRECIS prediction, the flows in the source region of the Yellow River are likely to decrease generally in the next 20 years.

Based on the data of eight meteorological stations from the 1950s to 2007, current cropping patterns, field water moisture management, we use the Mann-Kendall and the Rescaled Range Analysis methods to research the changes of humidity and crop irrigation water requirements in the Lancang River Basin. The results show that the annual and dry season average temperatures significantly increased, and the dry season rainfall increased while wet season rainfall decreased. Evaportranspiration (ET₀) increased during both dry and wet seasons at all stations except Dali, Jianchuan and Gengma, and the aridity-humidity index decreased at most of the stations. The turning points of weather factors, ET₀, the aridity- humidity index, paddy irrigation requirements and total agricultural water requirements occurred from the 1960s to the 1990s. The spatial changing tendency of paddy irrigation quota increased with the increase of altitude and latitude, and the correlation coefficients are 0.513 and 0.610, respectively. The maximum value is observed in Weixi, while the minimum in Mengla.

In this study, a monthly dataset of temperature time series (1961-2010) from 12 meteorological stations across the Three-River Headwater Region of Qinghai Province (THRHR) was used to analyze the climate change. The temperature variation and abrupt change analysis were examined by using moving average, linear regression, Spline interpolation, Mann-Kendall test and so on. Some important conclusions were obtained from this research, which mainly contained four aspects as follows. (1) There were several cold and warm fluctuations for the annual and seasonal average temperature in the THRHR and its three sub-headwater regions, but the temperature in these regions all had an obviously rising trend at the statistical significance level, especially after 2001. The spring, summer, autumn and annual average temperature increased evidently after the 1990s, and the winter average temperature exhibited an obvious upward trend after entering the 21st century. Except the standard value of spring temperature, the annual and seasonal temperature standard value in the THRHR and its three sub-headwater regions increased gradually, and the upward trend for the standard value of winter average temperature indicated significantly. (2) The tendency rate of annual average temperature in the THRHR was 0.36℃10a^-1, while the tendency rates in the Yellow River Headwater Region (YERHR), Lancangjiang River Headwater Region (LARHR) and Yangtze River Headwater Region (YARHR) were 0.37℃10a^-1, 0.37℃10a^-1 and 0.34℃10a^-1 respectively. The temperature increased significantly in the south of Yushu County and the north of Nangqian County. The rising trends of temperature in winter and autumn were higher than the upward trends in spring and summer. (3) The abrupt changes of annual, summer, autumn and winter average temperature were found in the THRHR, LARHR and YARHR, and were detected for the summer and autumn average temperature in the YERHR. The abrupt changes of annual and summer average temperatures were mainly in the late 1990s, while the abrupt changes of autumn and winter average temperatures appeared primarily in the early 1990s and the early 21st century respectively. (4) With the global warming, the diversities of altitude and underlying surface in different parts of the Tibetan Plateau were possibly the main reasons for the high increasing rate of temperature in the THRHR.

Palaeo-hydrological field investigation was carried out in the middle reaches of the Jinghe River. A set of palaeoflood slackwater deposit beds was identified in the Holocene loess-soil sequence in the riverbanks. The sediment samples were collected from the profile, and the particle-size distribution, magnetic susceptibility, loss-on-ignition were analyzed in laboratory. The analytical results showed that the palaeoflood slackwater deposits have recorded extraordinary flood events in the Jinghe River valley. According to stratigraphic correlation and OSL dating, the palaeoflood events were dated to 4100-4000 a BP. The palaeoflood peak discharges were estimated to be 19,410-22,280 m³/s by using the hydrological model and checked by different approaches. These results have the flood data sequence of the Jinghe River extended to 10,000-year time-scale. It provided significant data for hydraulic engineering and for mitigation of flood hazards in the Jinghe River drainage basin.

Based on the analysis of ion chemical composition of lake water and shallow groundwater in the Badain Jaran Desert, this paper discussed the characteristics of ion chemical composition, spatial variation of lake water, and possible supply sources of lake water and groundwater in the desert areas. The results show that the pH, salinity, TDS and electrical conductivity of the lake water are greater than those of groundwater. The ion contents of water samples are dominated by Na⁺ and Cl^-. Most of the higher salinity lakes are Na (K)-Cl-(SO₄) type, and a few of low salinity lakes belong to the Na-(Mg)-(Ca)-Cl-(SO₄)-(HCO₃) type. Most of the groundwater is Na-(Ca)-(Mg)-Cl-(SO₄)-(HCO₃) type, attributed to subsaline lake, and only a few present the Na-Cl-SO₄ type, flowing under saline lake. The pH, salinity, TDS and electrical conductivity in the southeastern lakes are relatively low, and there are slightly alkaline lakes. The pH, salinity, TDS and electrical conductivity in the northern lakes are much greater than those of the southeastern lakes, and the northern lakes are moderately alkaline and saline ones. In the southeastern part of the Badain Jaran Desert, the ion chemical characteristics of the lake water from south to north show a changing trend of subsaline →saline→hypersaline. The changing trend of chemical compositions of ions in recent 9 years indicates that most of the ion contents have a shade of reduction in Boritaolegai, Badain, Nuoertu and Huhejilin lakes, which state clearly that the amount of fresh water supply is increasing in the 9-year period. The ion chemical composition of the lake water reveals that the flow direction of lake water is from southeast to northwest in the Badain Jaran Desert. The ion chemical composition, moisture content of sand layer water level height and hierarchical cluster analysis of the lake water and groundwater demonstrate that the lake water is mainly supplied by local rainfall and infiltration of precipitation in Yabulai Mountains and Heishantou Mountain, and the supply from the Qilian Mountains is almost impossible.

Physical geography and human geography are the principal branches of the geographical sciences. Physical process simulation and human process simulation in geography are both quantitative methods used to recover past events and even to forecast events based on precisely determined parameters. There are four differences between physical process simulation and human process simulation in geography, which we summarize with two specific cases, one of which is about a typhoon's development and its precipitation, and the other of which is regarding the evolution of three industrial structures in China. The differences focus on four aspects: the main factors of the research framework; the knowledge background of the systematic analysis framework; the simulation data sources and quantitative method; and the core of the study object and the method of forecast application. As the human- land relationship is the key ideology of the man-land system, the relationship between the physical and human factors is becoming increasingly close at present. Physical process simulation and human process simulation in geography will exhibit crossing and blending in the future to reflect the various geographical phenomena better.

Employing DEA model and Malmquist productivity index, this paper probes into the urban efficiencies of 24 typical resources-based cities in China and their changes from 2000 to 2008. The research finds that the overall efficiencies of the resources-based cities are just at a general level, and only a few of them reach the optimal level. The scale efficiency is the major determining factor of the achievement of overall efficiency, the effect of which, nevertheless, is reducing. From the perspective of classification characteristics, the resources- based cities in northeastern region have been in the front rank in terms of overall efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. There is a certain positive correlation between urban population scale and urban efficiency. The analysis of urban efficiency changes shows that the changes in overall efficiency of resources-based cities from 2000 to 2008 had a weak improving tendency. Both the technical change index and productivity change index decreased, indicating that the urban efficiency did not improve during this period, and the tendency of technical recession and productivity decline was obvious. In terms of the classification of urban efficiency changes, the urban overall efficiency improved in each of the four regions from 2000 to 2008, among which western region witnessed the greatest increase. Cities with different resource types have improved their urban overall efficiencies except steel-based cities. The urban overall efficiency increased in resources-based cities of different scales, with greater improvement in small and medium-sized cities than in big cities.

Urban agglomeration on Yangtze River Delta (UA-YRD) had some advantages in the aspects of water, land, ecological environment, location and transportation. Relying on the resource-environment bases and other advantages, UA-YRD has achieved great development. Based on index system and model of comprehensive evaluation, the paper calculates the development level of UA-YRD since 1978. The result shows that from 1978 to 2007, the development level increased year by year at an annual rate of 0.0333, and the process of development could be divided into three stages, i.e. low-speed development stage (1978-1991), rapid development stage (1991-2000), and high-speed development stage (2000-2007). The speeds are 0.0083, 0.0356 and 0.0766, respectively. During the 30-year development, foreign economic activity has the greatest effect on development, followed by transportation, industrial economic activity and telecommunication (in order). Additionally, different driving forces have different effects in different stages. The paper suggests that more attention should be paid to the high-speed development stage and the important driving forces to drive its development. At the same time, the limitation of resource and environment should not be neglected and a long effective mechanism needs to be established to sustain harmonious development among the UA development, resource utilization and environmental protection. Some comparative studies should be carried out urgently to support and promote sustainable development of UA effectively, especially towards evolution, driving forces and braking forces.