Cyberspace is a new spatial realm of activities involving both humans and data, and it has become a cornerstone of the national security of every country. A scientific understanding of cyberspace is essential for analyzing cyberspace incidents, governing cyberspace and ensuring cybersecurity. Accordingly, cyberspace has become a new field of geographic research in the Information Age. Against the backdrop of fierce international competition over cyberspace, there has been an urgent need to strengthen research between the fields of geography and cybersecurity, leading to theoretical and methodological innovations that have created the sub-discipline of cyberspace geography. Cyberspace geography (CG) extends geographical research from real spaces to virtual spaces, and its theoretical basis is the evolution of the traditional geographic human-land relationship theory into a human-land-network relationship theory. CG research includes constructing mapping relationships between cyberspace and real space, redefining the traditional geographic concepts of distance and regions for cyberspace, creating a language, models and methodologies for visually representing cyberspace, drawing maps of cyberspace, and researching the principles governing the evolution of cyberspace structures and behaviors. The technical methods of CG include collecting and integrating data on elements of cyberspace, visually representing cyberspace and conducting cyberspace situational and behavioral intelligence awareness. Intelligence awareness covers cyberspace situational status assessments, network hotspot event dissemination and traceability analysis, and network event situational simulations and risk predictions. CG offers new perspectives on the scientific understanding of cyberspace, the development of disciplines such as geography and cybersecurity, and the creation of national cybersecurity prevention and control mechanisms as well as a community of common future in cyberspace.
As information technology has been applied more broadly and transportation infrastructure has improved, persistent debate has existed as to the question of whether geographic distance influences enterprise financing costs (EFCs). Through mining big data regarding industrial enterprises and commercial bank branches (CBBs) in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, this paper conducts quantitative analysis of correlation between the EFCs and their distance to CBBs as well as the number of CBBs within a 1-5 km radius, and investigates how geographic factors affect EFCs. The results indicate the following: (1) In overall terms, the shorter the distance to CBBs and the greater the number of CBBs within a 1-5 km radius, the lower the EFCs. (2) Distance to CBBs and number of CBBs within a 1-5 km radius significantly influence state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises, with the effect on non-state-owned enterprises being more pronounced. (3) The EFCs in Beijing and Tianjin are not correlated with distance to CBBs, and negatively correlated to the number of CBBs within a 1-5 km radius; the EFCs in Hebei Province are positively correlated with distance to CBBs, and negatively correlated with the number of CBBs within a 1-5 km radius. (4) Distance to CBBs has a more significant impact on enterprises engaged in heavy industry and labor-intensive industries, while there is not much difference between different industries in terms of how the number of CBBs within a 1-5 km radius affects them.
New Urban Districts (NUDs) are the important spatial carriers to promote urban expansion or transformation. Since the 1990s, they have been playing a more and more crucial role in China’s urbanization. For NUDs in the strict sense we found that: 96% to the east of Hu Line; 56% within the municipal districts; 64% within 36 km from their every city center and below the area of 423 km 2. The regional distribution follows significant spatial difference as “Eastern Region (50%) - Central Region (42%) - Western Region (8%)”, and the provinces with the largest number of NUDs are Guangdong, Henan, Zhejiang, Liaoning, and Jiangsu. Furthermore, their interesting constructed process highlights the typical characteristics of spatial production and spatial dialectic. This paper uses the theory of the production of space, and discovers that the growth of NUDs is a rapid ternary dialectical process of spatial production: “representations of space” is guided by the top-down governmental power; “spatial practice” is reflected in the hierarchical and regional difference of spatial elements, such as the type, pattern, distance and area of NUD; “spaces of representation” embodies the tension between governmental power and urban development rights, as well as the countermeasure mechanism. The extensibility of spatiotemporal sequences ensures the unity and continuity of spatial (re)production of NUDs. However, this is also facing a series of challenges like the management coordination of administrative division and the increasing unbalanced or inadequate development. Thus, critically rethinking the evolution of NUD is the key basis for achieving sustainable urban renewal and regional orderly development in the new era.
With rapid development of air transportation, the airspace structure of the future will need to be flexible and dynamic to accommodate the increase in traffic demand. The corridors-in-the-sky has become a new technology to support the full exploitation and utilization of airspace resources. This paper proposes a method of designing corridor, identifying congestion state, and analyzing the influence of air routes’ traffic flow. From this, we have reached a number of conclusions. (1) The congestion periods present the multi-peak “wavy” scattered distributions and the peaks back-end agglomeration characteristics in the whole day. (2) The congestion segments present the structural characteristics of unbalanced coverage and concentrated distribution to the crossing points. The corridors with high congestion level present as an italic “N-shaped” frame, which presents incomplete penetration of short segments. (3) For the temporal and spatial interaction, there are two types of congestion segments, and there are some common congestion periods in different congestion segments of multiple corridors. The high-density air route plays a relatively decisive role in corridor congestion, and the influence of two directions is unbalanced. This research can provide a basis for the dynamic evaluation of China’s airspace resources and corridors construction in the future.
Whether economic agglomeration can promote improvement in environmental quality is of great importance not only to China’s pollution prevention and control plans but also to its future sustainable development. Based on the COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) and NH3-N (Ammonia Nitrogen) emissions Database of 339 Cities at the city level in China, this study explores the impact of economic agglomeration on water pollutant emissions, including the differences in magnitude of the impact in relation to city size using an econometric model. The study also examines the spillover effect of economic agglomeration, by conducting univariate and bivariate spatial autocorrelation analysis. The results show that economic agglomeration can effectively reduce water pollutant emissions, and a 1% increase in economic agglomeration could lead to a decrease in COD emissions by 0.117% and NH3-N emissions by 0.102%. Compared with large and megacities, economic agglomeration has a more prominent effect on the emission reduction of water pollution in small- and medium-sized cities. From the perspective of spatial spillover, the interaction between economic agglomeration and water pollutant emissions shows four basic patterns: high agglomeration-high emissions, high agglomeration-low emissions, low agglomeration-high emissions, and low agglomeration-low emissions. The results suggest that the high agglomeration-high emissions regions are mainly distributed in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Shandong Peninsula, and the Harbin-Changchun urban agglomeration; thus, local governments should consider the spatial spillover effect of economic agglomeration in formulating appropriate water pollutant mitigation policies.
Extraction and analysis of the shoreline and land reclamation patterns are important for studies on topics such as the dynamics of coastal wetland ecological environments, transportation and exchange of material energy in coastal regions, and recruitment of fishery resources. Spatial-temporal variations in the shoreline and land reclamation in the Bohai Sea were analyzed based on 49 Landsat images of 7 periods from 1985 to 2015. The following conclusions were drawn. (1) The extracted shoreline data based on visual interpretation had high precision, and the shoreline extraction errors could be controlled within the theoretical range. (2) Over the past 30 years, the shoreline of the Bohai Sea has exhibited an average rate of change of 188.47 m/a and an average accretion distance of 3.55×10 3 m toward the sea. The fastest rate of shoreline change occurred in Laizhou Bay (134.78 m/a), followed by Bohai Bay (128.20 m/a) and Liaodong Bay (61.69 m/a). (3) The average rate of reclamation was 3.25×10 4 ha/a in the Bohai Sea, where the total area of aquaculture land, unused land, and salt land exceeded 60% of the total reclamation area. (4) The geometric shape of the bay became increasingly complicated from year to year, and the geometric center of gravity of the bay moved rapidly toward the sea. In addition, the area of the bay showed a significant decreasing trend. Therefore, to protect the function and structure of the ecosystem in coastal regions, we must control the scale and rate of land reclamation in the future.
This paper investigated spatial structures of 3418 national protected areas (NPAs) grouped into 13 types using GIS and quantitative analysis, including point patterns, Ripley’s K function, hotspot clustering, quadrat analysis, and Gini coefficient. Spatial accessibility was calculated for all NPAs from matrix raster data using cost weighted distance on the ArcGIS platform. The results are as follows: (1) The NNI of NPAs is 0.515, Gini is 0.073, all of which indicates distribution was shown to be a spatially dependent agglomeration, and more balanced in the provinces. The national key parks and the national water conservancy scenic spots had present the strongest aggregation, with NNI of 0.563 and 0.561 respectively, and K index indicates reducing aggregation when distance exceeds 600 km. (2) The national forest parks account for the largest proportion of 22.87% of all NPAs, and the world biosphere reserves the least of 0.77%. The number of NPAs in Shandong with 240 had been the largest one in all the provinces, while Tianjin had the least number including 9 NPAs. (3) There is only one hot spot in the first-class zone, 5 in the second-class zones, and 51 in the third-class zones, which indicates NPAs are also aggregated at microscopic scales. (4) The hotspot NPA regions were mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, east of 100°E. High density of NPAs were generally in flat, water-rich, broad-leaved forest dominated plains and low mountain areas, with fertile soil, pleasant weather, long cultural history, and high transportation accessibility. (5) Average NPA accessible time is 60.05 min, with 70.76% regions being within 60 min, and the furthest was 777 min. The distribution of accessibility was positively related to the traffic lines. Interdepartmental protectionism has meant the various departments developed different management systems, standards, and technical specifications.
Functional zoning is a key step for the integrated planning and scientific management of a national park. Selecting the Three-River-Source National Park (TNP) as the study area, this paper establishes an evaluation system including 13 evaluation indexes which are classified into four categories, namely: ecosystem services; potential distribution of key species habitats; ecological sensitivity; and ecological resilience through the comprehensive analysis on the regional eco-environmental features in the study area. The results of the comprehensive analysis, combined with the functions and requirements of management of national parks, indicate that TNP is divided into the first-level zone (the core conservation area, the ecological restoration area and the traditional utilization area) with definite targets of space management and the second-level zone with implementation of control measures. This method of functional zoning lays a solid foundation for the scientific planning of TNP; moreover, our study provides new insights into other national parks’ functional zoning.
Climate change is an important factor affecting the sustainable development of tourist destinations. Based on the monthly observation data of the main meteorological stations on the ground in Tibet from 1960 to 2015, this paper constructs a tourism climate index model. This index is used to quantitatively evaluate the tourism climate changes in Tibet, and investigate the impact of climate change on tourism. The results show that from 1960 to 2015, the temperature in Tibet increased by 1.35°C, and the tourism climate index changed significantly, especially in the regions of Changtang, Ngari and Kunlun Mountain. The fluctuation of temperature-humidity index, wind-chill index and index of clothing of these areas was larger than that of other regions. The changes of each index in different months are different, where spring observes larger changes while summer observes smaller changes. The tourism climate index in northwestern Tibet has increased, and the climate comfort period is expanding. In southeastern Tibet, the comfort level has declined and the comfort level in the central part has been slowly increasing. The comfort index in the southeastern part of Tibet has gradually declined, and the comfort index in central Tibet has slowly increased. According to the comprehensive assessment method including temperature and humidity index, wind-chill index, index of clothing and altitude adaptability index, the types of tourism climate index in Tibet can be divided into reduced, low-speed growth, medium-speed growth and rapid growth. Different regions should adopt alternative tourism products, strengthen energy conservation and emission reduction technology applications and green infrastructure construction, and appropriately control the scale of tourism activities so as to adapt to and mitigate the impact of climate change on tourist destinations.
Knowledge of moisture sources is of great significance for understanding climatic change and landscape evolution in desert environments. In this paper, we aim to clarify moisture origins for the Alashan (Alxa) Sand Seas (ALSS) in western Inner Mongolia and their transport pathways during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the mid-Holocene using modern analogues and paleoclimatic simulations. Precipitation data for the period 1959-2015 from meteorological stations in the study area and wind and specific humidity data from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) daily reanalysis were adopted to determine the moisture sources of summer precipitation in the ALSS. In addition paleoclimate simulations under PMIP3/CMIP5 protocols were used to detect the atmospheric circulation and precipitation at 21 ka BP and 6 ka BP over the ALSS. We also reviewed paleoclimate records from the ALSS to acquire a semi-quantitative reconstruction of the moisture history during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Our results suggest that the summer monsoon transported water vapor from the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea to the ALSS during July and August, causing increased precipitation. The dominant moisture source was from the southwest monsoon, while the East Asian summer monsoon also partly contributed to precipitation in the ALSS. The increased humidity during the period 8.2-4.2 ka BP in the ALSS, as derived from both climate simulation outputs and sedimentary records, was caused by monsoons according to the outputs of simulations. At 21 ka BP, the moisture sources of the ALSS were greatly associated with the prevailing westerlies.
Phenological modeling is not only important for the projection of future changes of certain phenophases but also crucial for systematically studying the spatiotemporal patterns of plant phenology. Based on ground phenological observations, we used two existing temperature-based models and 12 modified models with consideration of precipitation or soil moisture to simulate the bud-burst date (BBD) of four common herbaceous plants—Xanthium sibiricum, Plantago asiatica, Iris lactea and Taraxacum mongolicum—in temperate grasslands in Inner Mongolia. The results showed that (1) increase in temperature promoted the BBD of all species. However, effects of precipitation and soil moisture on BBD varied among species. (2) The modified models predicted the BBD of herbaceous plants with R 2 ranging from 0.17 to 0.41 and RMSE ranging from 9.03 to 11.97 days, better than classical thermal models. (3) The spatiotemporal pattern of BBD during 1980-2015 showed that species with later BBD, e.g. X. sibiricum (mean: day of year 135.30) exhibited an evidently larger spatial difference in BBD (standard deviation: 13.88 days) than the other species. Our findings suggest that influences of temperature and water conditions need to be considered simultaneously in predicting the phenological response of herbaceous plants to climate change.
