Dynamic of forest landscape in Heilongjiang Province for one century

With the help of GIS tool of ARC/INFO, ARCVIEW and FRAGSTATS, the map of forest resource distribution of Heilongjiang Province was analyzed in 1896, 1949 and 1981. Using total area, mean patch size, patch density, coefficient of patch size variation, mean patch fractal dimension and mean shape index, we studied the change of forest landscape pattern and the change of each patch types in this region. As a result, the total area of forest landscape and mean patch size decreased sharply, the quantity and density of patches increased, the juxtaposition of patches weakened, the shape of patch tended to become regular, and the border of patch simplified. All these showed that the forest landscape of this area tended to fragment gradually, and the fragment of Korean pine forest is the severest. The diversity of whole forest landscape and the evenness of landscape types distribution reduced gradually. Human impact, instead of climate change and forest community succession, is the most important reason for such dramatic changes.

Who Populates the Visual Landscape of the ELT Coursebooks？： A Photo Analytical Exploration

The aim of this study is to portray and explore the variety of social actors depicted visually along the pages of the intermediate level ELT coursebooks that are published locally （by British and American publishers） and marketed globally （mostly to the EFL contexts）. For this, a thorough photo-ethnographic exploration of the visuals supported by the inventory of ＂social actor interaction network＂ is employed. In the field of Coursebook Analysis, visuals have attracted limited attention despite marking asocio-semiotically rich discursive field. In fact, the semiotic labor division between the ＂word＂ and the ＂image＂ in representing and reconstructing （simulating） the world, points to a gain on the part of the image as the brain is evolutionarily more experienced in processing visual information than processing verbal information. Therefore, images can appeal more directly to the sensory experience domains of the viewers via visual contact, evoking deeper consciousness. Acting as the prominent mediators of signification practice, visuals catalogue the representations and simulations of social-life viewed l^om a particular subject position associated with a particular set of norms, beliefs, and values. Hence, they position the viewers across dynamic loci of subjectivities in terms of social distance, relations, and interaction. As both reflections and reproductions of reality, images in the coursebooks have the potent to influence learners＇ perspectives of the world presenting them with readymade cognitive schemes. In order to reveal a comprehensive picture of the visually depicted social actors and the identity options made available through them, in this study the author focused on the peopled photos of the 6 popularly traded ELT coursebooks. The author investigated them regarding the relations of social distance, involvement, power and interaction formed between the depicted social actors and their viewers as well as the emergent practices of exclusion, role allocation, genericization, specification, assimilation, individualization, and categorization. The results show that the representational repertoires of the coursebooks contain disproportionately distributed visual depictions of social actors in terms of cultural orientation and gender. The ＂culturally different＂ are repeatedly pictured in assimilative ways as an aggregate of enumerable people, while the social actors of the reference group are usually pictured individually and with their own intended meaning.