Chaotic characters of the Yellow River Basin based on the sediment time series： An attempt to integrated research in geography

The sediment content of the Yellow River is resulted from the interactions of natural, economic, and social factors, so it includes some evolutive information of the Yellow River Basin system. Sediment contents from 1952 to 2007 on Toudaoguai, Tongguan, Huayuankou and Lijin sections along the river are chosen as the study time series, and correlation dimensions （D2）, Kolmogorov entropies （K2）, and Hurst indexes （H） of the time series were calculated. Correlation dimensions on Toudaoguai, Tongguan, Huayuankou, and Lijin sections are 3.24, 5.69, 6.57 and 7.34 respectively, and the Kolmogorov entropies are 0.13, 0.37, 0.40 and 0.38 respectively, which indicates that the systems controlled by different sections along the Yellow River are chaotic systems and the chaotic degrees increase gradually from the upper to lower section. The average predictable period of the sediment contents is 8 years on Toudaoguai section and 3 years on the other sections with the reciprocals of the Kolmogorov entropies. The more obvious the chaotic degree is, the shorter the average predictable period is. Hurst indexes on the sections are above 0.5, with the maximum of 0.86 on Tongguan section and the minimum of 0.68 on Toudaoguai section, which indicates that the time series have persistent trends in the average predictable period. Eight state variables and two control parameters are necessary to construct the dynamic model of the Yellow River Basin system.

Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography established three new research departments

Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography（XJEG）,Chinese Academy of Science（CAS）,established three new research departments in 2011.They are Department of Geology Mineralization and Mineral Resources,Department of Environmental Pollution and Process Control, and Department of Central Asian Cooperation and Coordinated Development, respectively. Now, there are a total of eight research departments in XJEG, CAS.

New Perspectives on Restructuring of Old Industrial Areas in China: A Critical Review and Research Agenda

The restructuring of old industrial areas has been receiving much attention in regional development studies both in industrialized and emerging economies. Although ample Chinese-speaking studies have been published on the topic, most of them suffer from paying too little attention to dynamic multi-scalar interactions between firms, institutions, policies and places, as well as a too strong focus on individual cases. They also mostly disregard internationally recognized concepts and theories in the field. Based on these internationally recognized modern concepts, this paper therefore puts forward some potential avenues for future research on the evolution of old industrial areas in China, which should overcome existing deficits in the Chinese-speaking literature. It suggests that some evolutionary economic geography concepts such as path dependence, lock-in, path creation, relatedness, as well as multi-scalar institutional and leadership approaches have useful potentials to better understand the evolutionary processes and mechanisms of old industrial areas in China.

Recent research progress and prospects in tourism geography of China

Based on a large number of domestic literature reviews with related research abroad, academic standards and issues awareness have been intensified in domestic tourism geography, disciplinary consciousness and innovation enhancement. Hence, some valuable achievements have been made in the areas of tourism resources, tourism regional system, the spatial structure of tourism, tourism flow, ecotourism, tourism industry, tourism planning and tourism impacts, which strengthened the traditional advantages of research, expanded new areas of research and made research trends diverse. Meanwhile, with innovation of research methods, tourism geography in China is getting more and more internationally-oriented and reflecting Chinese characteristics. Research trends of China＇s tourism geography are prospected： 1） Catering to national strategic needs, persisting problem-oriented, strengthening the metatheoretical research, and building Chinese ＂localization＂ of theory of tourism geography and method system. 2） Introducing and assimilating foreign theories and research methods, while focusing on explaining new tourism phenomena and problems in the domestic socio-economic background. 3） Concerning about the new regional spatial processes of demographic process, social process, and spatial process in new tourism trend. 4） Exploring interactive process and mechanism of man-land relationship and new models to develop territorial space under the tourism impacts. 5） Exploring important research issues of tourism geography in global, national, regional and local scales, from the point of view of spatial differentiation, scale transformation, interaction of man and nature, creating tourism geography interpretation system based on ＂process-structure-mechanism＂ of China. 6） Building theoretical system actively, while strengthening application-oriented research, and focusing on tourism poverty alleviation, tourism and heritage protection, national parks＇ construction and other hot issues. Faced with econometrics research boom, we should return to rational thinking, using big data scientifically, while paying attention to the important role of qualitative evaluation in future research.

Progress of research on transportation geography in China

As an important branch of human geography, transportation geography has experienced three periods of evolution: foundation, systematization, and rapid development of the discipline. It has gradually become a relatively mature discipline. During the period 1930– 1980, the development of transportation geography consisted mainly of the publication of theoretical texts. During 1980–2000, it gradually became a systematic discipline. Since the start of the 21 st century, transportation geography has focused mainly on exploring the impacts of transportation on socio-economic development. Currently, studies on transportation geography have led to significant developments in a number of areas, including transportation theory, facility distribution and planning, transportation flows and network analysis, evaluation of transport modes, transportation planning, and simulation and assessment of urban transportation. Such studies have also enriched human geography research, provided a wider geographical overview and elucidated the development mechanism of transportation, as well as helped to understand the impacts of transport development on socio-economic systems. Some findings obtained by geographers have been widely used in transportation geography and related fields, including the four basic laws of transportation generation, the hub–spoke mode of transport organization, the subordinating and guiding functions of transportation on socio-economic development, regional transport dominance measures, accessibility measures, and spatial organization of port systems.

Twenty-five years of progress in geopolitics research： Efforts from China＇s geographers

The world is currently undergoing profound changes, with a shift in global power centers and reordering of international power spaces, assigning new theoretical tasks as well as providing new opportunities for geopolitics research in China. Despite the peripheral nature of geopolitics research within their discipline, geographers have played a fundamental role in its origins and revival, from classical geopolitics（i.e., the German school of geopolitics and the Anglo-American school of geo-strategy）, to internal geopolitics（i.e., electoral geography and administrative geography）, to the new geopolitics（i.e., formal geopolitics）, and to recent critical geopolitics（i.e., popular geopolitics）. Although only few of these researchers were from China, great strides have been made in geopolitics and political geography research in China, with useful results being obtained. After demonstrating the importance of geopolitics research for the rising China, this review provides an overview of geopolitics papers led by China＇s geographers in the past few decades, describing their achievements, the problems they have faced, and the directions they have taken. Twenty-five years of geopolitics have produced a range of accomplishments, with a growth in the quality and size of research groups and institutions, an expanding literature, and some geo-strategic breakthroughs. Obviously, geographers have successfully reclaimed geopolitics, but some crucial topics are still absent or weak in the geopolitical research agenda, and need to be pursued vigorously. Most of the attention, from a positivistic perspective, has been paid to reflecting Western geopolitical thoughts, describing patterns of international power relations, and offering foreign policy advice（in a problem-focused orientation）, rather than determining mechanisms and performing theoretical analyses（in a theoretical orientation）, resulting in a lack of independent value judgments and of a theoretical basis for the subject. Moreover, in comparison with other disciplines, in terms of its academic community, research output, and status as a discipline, geopolitics research is very different from how it was three or four decades ago, when it was mainly the property of geographers, rather than political scientists and diplomats. For now, whether to support national geo-strategies or to enhance the diversity of the discipline, the involvement of geographers in geopolitics needs to become both more intensive and more extensive. The top priority is to strengthen theoretical, methodological, and problem- oriented research, including studies of geopolitical philosophy and methodology, the theoretical framework of the subject, global geopolitical evolution and shifts in power space, the roles of major powers and their geo-strategies, as well as China＇s surrounding geopolitical environment.