The spatial-temporal pattern and influencing factors of negative air ions in urban forests, Shanghai, China

Negative air ions are natural components of the air we breathe Forests are the main continuous natural source of negative air ions （NAI）. The spatio-temporal patterns of negative air ions were explored in Shanghai, based on monthly monitoring in 15 parks from March 2009 to February 2010. In each park, sampling sites were selected in forests and open spaces. The annual variation in negative air ion concentrations （NAIC） showed peak values from June to October and minimum values from December to January. NAIC were highest in summer and autumn, intermediate in spring, and lowest in winter. During spring and summer, NAIC in open spaces were significantly higher in rural areas than those in suburban areas. However, there were no significant differences in NAIC at forest sites among seasons. For open spaces, total suspended particles （TSP） were the dominant determining factor of NAIC in sum- mer, and air temperature and air humidity were the dominant determining factors of NAIC in spring, which were tightly correlated with Shanghai＇s ongoing urbanization and its impacts on the environment. R is suggested that urbanization could induce variation in NAIC along the urban-rural gradient, but that may not change the temporal variation pattern. Fur- thermore, the effects of urbanization on NAIC were limited in non-vegetated or less-vegetated sites, such as open spaces, but not in well-vegetated areas, such as urban forests. Therefore, we suggest that urban greening, especially urban forest, has significant resistance to theeffect of urbanization on NAIC.

Co-occurrence Patterns of Above-ground and Below-ground Mite Communities in Farmland of Sanjiang Plain, Northeast China

One of the fundamental questions in community ecology is whether communities are random or formed by deterministic mechanisms. Although many efforts have been made to verify non-randomness in community structure, little is known with regard to co-occurrence patterns in above-ground and below-ground communities. In this paper, we used a null model to test non-randomness in the structure of the above-ground and below-ground mite communities in farmland of the Sanjiang Plain, Northeast China. Then, we used four tests for non-randomness to recognize species pairs that would be demonstrated as significantly aggregated or segregated co-occurrences of the above-ground and below-ground mite communities. The pattern of the above-ground mite commu- nity was significantly non-random in October, suggesting species segregation and hence interspecific competition. Additionally, species co-occurrence patterns did not differ from randomness in the above-ground mite community in August or in below-ground mite com- munities in August and October. Only one significant species pair was detected in the above-ground mite community in August, while no significant species pairs were recognized in the above-ground mite community in October or in the below-ground mite communities in August and October. The results indicate that non-randomness and significant species pairs may not be the general rule in the above-ground and below-ground mite communities in farmland of the Sanjiang Plain at the fine scale.

Assembly and co-occurrence patterns of rare and abundant bacterial sub-communities in rice rhizosphere soil under short-term nitrogen deep placement

Nitrogen(N)deep placement has been found to reduce N leaching and increase N use efficiency in paddy fields.However,relatively little is known how bacterial consortia,especially abundant and rare taxa,respond to N deep placement,which is critical for understanding the biodiversity and function of agricultural ecosystem.In this study,lllumina sequencing and ecological models were conducted to examine the diversity patterns and underlying assembly mechanisms of abundant and rare taxa in rice rhizosphere soil under different N fertilization regimes at four rice growth stages in paddy fields.The results showed that abundant and rare bacteria had distinct distribution patterns in rhizosphere samples.Abundant bacteria showed ubiquitous distribution;while rare taxa exhibited uneven distribution across all samples.Stochastic processes dominated community assembly of both abundant and rare bacteria,with dispersal limitation playing a more vital role in abundant bacteria,and undominated processes playing a more important role in rare bacteria.The N deep placement was associated with a greater influence of dispersal limitation than the broadcast N fertilizer(BN)and no N fertilizer(NN)treatments in abundant and rare taxa of rhizosphere soil;while greater contributions from homogenizing dispersal were observed for BN and NN in rare taxa.Network analysis indicated that abundant taxa with closer relationships were usually more likely to occupy the central position of the network than rare taxa.Nevertheless,most of the keystone species were rare taxa and might have played essential roles in maintaining the network stability.Overall,these findings highlighted that the ecological mechanisms and co-occurrence patterns of abundant and rare bacteria in rhizosphere soil under N deep placement.

Spatial-temporal pattern and formation mechanism of county urbanization on the Chinese Loess Plateau

Urbanization is a comprehensive and complex socioeconomic phenomenon that plays an influential role in promoting global socioeconomic development.The Loess Plateau region is an important part of the China’s ecological security pattern,and occupies an important position in the implementation of China’s new-type urbanization strategy and the realization of the urban dream.The characteristics of the staged changes and regional differentiation of urbanization in the area from 1990 to 2018 were studied with focus on regions and subregions by selecting 341 county-level administrative units on the Chinese Loess Plateau as the research area,and employing partition analysis and geographic detector methods.This revealed the formation mechanism of the spatial differentiation pattern of urbanization on the Loess Plateau.We found that the urbanization of the Loess Plateau,previously in a slow growth phase,entered the accelerated development phase,presenting a macro pattern of high rates of urbanization in central and eastern areas and low rates in western areas.The formation of the regional differentiation patterns of urbanization on the Loess Plateau were the combined results of natural geographical and socioeconomic factors.Among these factors,the interaction of any two factors had a stronger impact on regional urbanization patterns than a single factor,which was specifically manifested as nonlinear or bi-factor enhancement effects.The findings of this paper may provide a theoretical reference and scientific basis for the scientific promotion of healthy urbanization on the Chinese Loess Plateau and the ecologically fragile areas of developing countries around the world.

Spatial-temporal analysis of wetland landscape pattern under the influence of artificial dykes in the Yellow River delta

The influence of anthropogenic activities,especially artificial dykes,on the coastal wetland landscape is now considered as a serious problem to the coastal ecosystem.It is important and necessary to analyze changes of coastal landscape pattern under the influence of artificial dykes for the protection and management of coastal wetland.Our study aimed to reveal the quantitative characteristics of the coastal wetland landscape and its spatial-temporal dynamics under the influence of artificial dykes in the Yellow River delta(YRD).It was analyzed by the methods of the statistical analysis of landscape structure,five selected landscape indices and the changes of spatial centroids of three typical wetland types,including reed marshes,tidal fiats and aquaculture-salt fields.The results showed that:(1)Reduction of wetland area,especially the degradation of natural wetlands,had been the principal problem since the dykes were constructed in the YRD.The dykes created conditions for the development of artificial wetlands.However,the new born artificial wetlands were still less than the vanished natural wetlands.(2)Compared with the open area,the building of artificial dykes significantly speeded up the changes of landscape patterns and the aggravation of the landscape fragmentation in the closed area.(3)The changes of area-weighted centroids of three typical wetland landscapes were greatly affected by dykes,and the movement of the centroid of the aquaculture-salt field was very sensitive to the dykes constructed in the corresponding period.

The Spatial-Temporal Distribution Patterns of Dyke Swarms in Central Asia and their Tectonic Significance: Case Studies in Eastern Tianshan and Western Junggar

Dykes are a special kind of intrusive rocks which were formed by deep magma intruded into the existing brittle fractures in the crust.Dykes swarms in different tectonic environments are very significant to re-construct the

Spatio-Temporal Variations in Co-Occurrence Patterns of Fish Communities in Haizhou Bay, China: Null Model Analysis

Co-occurrence pattern of fish species plays an important role in understanding the spatio-temporal structure and the stability of fish community.Species coexistence may vary with time and space.The co-occurrence patterns of fish species were examined using the C-score under fixed-fixed null model for fish communities in spring and autumn over different years in the Haizhou Bay,China.The results showed that fish assemblages in the whole bay had non-random patterns in spring and autumn over different years.However,the fish co-occurrence patterns were different for the northern and southern fish assemblages in spring and autumn.The northern fish assemblage showed structured pattern,whereas the southern assemblage were randomly assembled in spring.The co-occurrence patterns of fish communities were relatively stable over different years,and the number of significant species pairs in northern assemblage was more than that in the southern assemblage.Environmental heterogeneity played an important role in determining the distributions of fish species that formed significant species pairs,which might affect the co-occurrence patterns of northern and southern assemblages further in the Haizhou Bay.

Spatial-temporal evolution of vegetation evapotranspiration in Hebei Province,China

Evapotranspiration （ET） is the sum of soil or water body evaporation and plant transpiration from the earth surface and ocean to the atmosphere, and thus plays a significant role in regulating carbon and water resource cycles. The time-series data set from the remote sensing MOLDS product （MOD16） was used to study the spatial-temporal evolution of vegetation evapotranspiration in salinized areas during 2000-2014 by analyzing the variability, spatial patterns and Mann-Kendall （MK） nonparametric trends for the time series. The results indicate that inter-annual and intra-annual variations of ET across various vegetated areas show seasonal changes, with the abnormal months identified. The Cultivated land displays a greater degree of spatial heterogeneity and the spatial pattern of ET in the area covered by broadleaved deciduous forests corresponds to a higher ET rate and increased water consumption. Awidespread decline of ET is observed only in cultivated areas. However, agricultural cultivation doesn＇t worsen water shortage and soil salinization problems in the region, and water shortage problems are worsening for other vegetated areas. This research provides a basis of reference for the reasonable allocation of water resources and restructuring of vegetation patterns in salinized areas.

Spatial-temporal Heterogeneity of Industrial Structure Transformation and Carbon Emission Effects in Xuzhou Metropolitan Area

Employing decoupling index and industrial structure characteristic bias index methods, this study analyzed the spatial-temporal characteristics of industrial structure transformations and their resulting carbon emissions in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area from 2000 to 2014, with a focus on their relationships and driving factors. Our research indicates that carbon emission intensity from industrial structures in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area at first showed an increasing trend, which then decreased. Furthermore, the relationship between emissions and industrial economic growth has been trending toward absolute decoupling. From the perspective of the center-periphery, the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area formed a concentric pattern, where both progress towards low emissions and the level of technological advancement gradually diminished from the center to the periphery. In terms of variation across provinces, the ISCB index in the eastern Henan has decreased the slowest, followed by the southern Shandong and the northern Anhui, with the northern Jiangsu ranking last. During this period, resource-and labor-intensive industries were the primary growth industries in the northern Anhui and the eastern Henan, while labor-intensive industries dominated the southern Shandong and capital-intensive industries dominated the northern Jiangsu. In terms of city types, the spatial pattern for industrial structure indicates that recession resource-based cities had higher carbon emission intensities than mature resource-based cities, followed by non-resource-based cities and regenerative resource-based cities. Generally, the industrial structure in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area has transformed from being resource-intensive to capital-intensive, and has been trending toward technology-intensive as resource availability has been exploited to exhaustion and then been regenerated. Industrial structure has been the leading factor causing heterogeneity of carbon emission intensities between metropolitan cities. Therefore, the key to optimizing the industrial structure and layout of metropolitan areas is to promote industrial structure transformation and improve the system controlling collaborative industrial development between cities.

Spatio-temporal Pattern Characteristics of Relationship Between Urbanization and Economic Development at County Level in China

The relationship between China’s urbanization and economic development(RCUED) is an important concern nationwide. As important actors in regional strategy and policy, county-level regions have played an increasingly significant role in the development of China’s social economy. However, the existing research on the RCUED lacks the fine depiction of the county-level administrative units.Using 2000 and 2010 census data and the statistical analysis method, we uncovered the evolution characteristics of China’s urbanization and economic development and conducted a quantitative identification for the RCUED with improved methods using the quadrant map approach. In addition, we investigated the spatial correlation effect of the RCUED using the spatial autocorrelation analysis method. The results were as follows: 1) In general, a high degree of matching exists between China’s urbanization and economic development at the county level at the significance level of 0.01. The correlation coefficients between China’s urbanization and economic development in2000 and 2010 were 0.608 and 0.603, respectively. 2) A significant regional difference exists in the RCUED at the county level. Based on a comparative analysis of 2276 county units in China in the two years, we found that county units can be categorized as under-urbanized, basic coordination and over-urbanized in various areas. No situation was observed where urbanization seriously lagged behind the economic development level, so the levels of urbanization and economic development appear to be basically coordinated,and the coordination state may be gradually optimized over time. 3) Over time, the spatial dependency of the RCUED has weakened and the spatial heterogeneity has increased. Northeast China has always been an area characterized by over-urbanization. The number of county units classified as under-urbanized has begun to decline in eastern coastal urban agglomeration areas, while counties rich in resources have transformed from having point-shaped over-urbanization to plane-shaped under-urbanization along the northern border,and the number of over-urbanized county units has increased in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. 4)’Lag-lag’ type and ’advance-advance’ type accounted for 68% of all counties in China, and these counties were shown to have obvious spatial differentiation characteristics.

CLEAN:Frequent Pattern-Based Trajectory Compression and Computation on Road Networks

The volume of trajectory data has become tremendously huge in recent years. How to effectively and efficiently maintain and compute such trajectory data has become a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a trajectory spatial and temporal compression framework, namely CLEAN. The key of spatial compression is to mine meaningful trajectory frequent patterns on road network. By treating the mined patterns as dictionary items, the long trajectories have the chance to be encoded by shorter paths, thus leading to smaller space cost. And an error-bounded temporal compression is carefully designed on top of the identified spatial patterns for much low space cost. Meanwhile, the patterns are also utilized to improve the performance of two trajectory applications, range query and clustering, without decompression overhead. Extensive experiments on real trajectory datasets validate that CLEAN significantly outperforms existing state-of-art approaches in terms of spatial-temporal compression and trajectory applications.

Spatial Pattern and Development of Protected Areas in the North-south Transitional Zone of China

The north-south transitional zone in China mainly consists of the Qinling-Daba Mountains. It is the most important West-East geo-ecological space in China, containing protected areas vital for biodiversity conservation and ecological security of China. The protection and rational development of its natural habitat is of great significance to China’s ecological security and integration of protected areas based on mountain forest ecosystems on a global scale. In this study, five important types of protected areas in the transitional zone were selected, and their spatial patterns were analysed. Spatial analysis methods, such as kernel density estimation and accessibility analysis, were employed for both point and areal data, and focused on four aspects: land use scale, shift in the centre of gravity, spatial agglomeration, and accessibility. In addition, policy background and evolution of spatial and temporal characteristics of the protected area system in the transitional zone from 1963 to 2017 were also examined. We analysed the characteristics and geographical significance of the West-east corridor using the spatial pattern of the protected area system from the perspective of ecological and economic spaces. We focused on spatial shape, type intersection, and key areas to analyse the spatial overlap of the protected areas. Protected area establishment was divided into three stages: initial(1956–1980), rapid development(1981–2013), and national park transformation(2014–present). These stages reflected the change in the concept of ‘simple protection—sustainable use—integration and upgrade’ for protected areas of China. The spatial centre of gravity of the protection zone system was located in the west Qinling-Daba Mountains, and its high-density core exhibited a relatively stable N-shaped structure composed of four gathering areas. Affected by factors such as geographic environment and socio-economic development density, the average access time for protected areas was high(1.56 h);wetland parks and scenic areas are located closer to the city centre. As the West-east corridor in the transitional zone extends from west to east, there is a clear spatial dislocation between the development of protected areas and the intensity of human activities. During development, differentiated goal orientation should be adopted based on the idea of zoning and classified governance. With the advancement of the construction of protected areas, the spatial overlap of protected areas in the transition zone has become more prominent. At present, the spatially overlapped protected areas in the transitional zone remain prominent, with inclusion overlap being the most common, and forest parks exhibiting the highest probability of overlap with other protected areas, we should focus on in the integration process of the corridor-type ecological space based on the mountain forest ecosystem.

Fecal microbiota dynamics and its relationship to diarrhea and health in dairy calves

Background:Diarrhea is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in young calves,resulting in considerable economic loss for dairy farms.To determine if some gut microbes might have resistance to dysbiotic process with calf diarrhea by dictating the microbial co-occurrence patterns from birth to post-weaning,we examined the dynamic development of the gut microbiota and diarrhea status using two animal trials,with the first trial having 14 Holstein dairy calves whose fecal samples were collected 18 times over 78 d from birth to 15 d post-weaning and the second trial having 43 Holstein dairy calves whose fecal samples were collected daily from 8 to 18 days of age corresponding to the first diarrhea peak of trial 1.Results:Metataxonomic analysis of the fecal microbiota showed that the development of gut microbiota had three age periods with birth and weaning as the separatrices.Two diarrhea peaks were observed during the transition of the three age periods.Fusobacteriaceae was identified as a diarrhea-associated taxon both in the early stage and during weaning,and Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1 was another increased genus among diarrheic calves in the early stage.In the neonatal calves,Prevotella_2(ASV4 and ASV26),Prevotella_9(ASV43),and Alloprevotella(ASV14)were negatively associated with Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1(ASV48),the keystone taxa of the diarrhea-phase module.During weaning,unclassified Muribaculaceae(ASV28 and ASV44),UBA1819(ASV151),Barnesiella(ASV497),and Ruminococcaceae_UCG-005(ASV254)were identified being associated with non-diarrheic status,and they aggregated in the non-diarrhea module of co-occurrence patterns wherein unclassified Muribaculaceae(ASV28)and Barnesiella(ASV497)had a direct negative relationship with the members of the diarrhea module.Conclusions:Taken together,our results suggest that the dynamic successions of calf gut microbiota and the interactions among some bacteria could influence calf diarrhea,and some species of Prevotella might be the core microbiota in both neonatal and weaning calves,while species of Muribaculaceae might be the core microbiota in weaning calves for preventing calf diarrhea.Some ASVs affiliated with Prevotella_2(ASV4 and ASV26),Prevotella_9(ASV43),Alloprevotella(AVS14),unclassified Muribaculaceae(ASV28 and ASV44),UBA1819(ASV151),Ruminococcaceae_UCG-005(ASV254),and Barnesiella(ASV497)might be proper probiotics for preventing calf diarrhea whereas Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1(ASV48)might be the biomarker for diarrhea risk in specific commercial farms.

Spatial-temporal pattern changes of main agriculture natural disasters in China during 1990-2011

China is a disaster prone country, and a comprehensive understanding of change of disasters is very important for China＇s agricultural development. In this study, statistical tech niques and geographic information system tools are employed to quantify the main agricul ture disasters changes and effects on grain production in China during the period of 1990-2011. The results show that China＇s grain production was severely affected by disas ters including drought, flood, hail, frost and typhoon. The annual area covered by these dis asters reached up to 48.7x106 ha during the study period, which accounted for 44.8% of the total sown area, and about 55.1% of the per unit area grain yield change was caused by disasters. In addition, all of the disasters showed high variability, different changing trends, and spatial distribution. Drought, flood, and hail showed significantly decreasing trends, while frost and typhoon showed increasing trends. Drought and flood showed gradual changes and were distributed across the country, and disasters became more diversified from north to south. Drought was the dominated disaster type in northern China, while flood was the most important disaster type in the southern part. Hail was mainly observed in central and northern China, and frost was mainly distributed in southern China. Typhoon was greatly limited to the southeast coast. Furthermore, the resilience of grain production of each province was quite different, especially in several major grain producing areas, such as Shandong, Liaoning, Jilin and Jiangsu, where grain production was seriously affected by disasters. One reason for the difference of resilience of grain production was that grain production was marginalized in developed provinces when the economy underwent rapid development. For China＇s agricul tural development and grain security, we suggest that governments should place more em phasis on grain production, and invest more money in disaster prevention and mitigation, especially in the major grain producing provinces.

Spatial-temporal patterns of China＇s interprovincial migration, 1985-2010

Migration plays an increasing role in China＇s economy since mobility rose and economic restructuring has proceeded during the last three decades. Given the background of most studies focusing on migration in a particular period, there is a critical need to analyze the spatial-temporal patterns of migration. Using bicomponent trend mapping technique and interprovincial migration data during the periods 1985-1990, 1990-1995, 1995-2000, 2000- 2005, and 2005-2010 we analyze net-, in-, out-migration intensity, and their changes over time in this study. Strong spatial variations in migration intensity were found in China＇s interprovincial migration, and substantial increase in migration intensity was also detected in eastern China during 1985-2010. Eight key destinations are mostly located within the three rapidly growing economic zones of eastern China （Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region）, and they are classified into three types： mature, emerging, and fluctuant origins, while most key origins are relatively undeveloped central and western provinces, which are exactly in accordance with China＇s economic development patterns. The results of bicomponent trend mapping indicate that, in a sense, the migration in the south was more active than the north over the last three decades. The result shows the new changing features of spatial-temporal patterns of China＇s interprovincial migration that Fan and Chen did not find out in their research. A series of social-economic changes including rural transformation, balanced regional development, and labor market changes should be paid more attention to explore China＇s future interprovincial migration.

Dynamics and controls of ecosystem multiserviceability across the Qingzang Plateau

Ecosystem multiserviceability(EMS),a comprehensive and significant ecological indicator,reflects the capacity of ecosystems to offer multiple services concurrently.Intensified climate change and human activity are continu-ously altering ecosystem functions,services,and EMSs.However,numerous studies have only focused on one or a few ecosystem services,rarely taking into account spatial-temporal distribution and drivers of EMS on behalf of different agencies.We calculated EMS including pastoralist(PA),environmental protection agency(EPA),bio-diversity conservation agency(BCA),and climate change mitigation agency(CCMA)using grassland production,habitat quality,water conservation,and carbon sequestration.Then,the effects of geographical features,climate factors,and human activities on spatial-temporal patterns of EMS were explored.The result indicated that EMS showed a decreasing tendency from the southeast to northwest on the Qingzang Plateau(QZP).Meanwhile,there were no obvious fluctuations in four simulated scenarios(PA,EPA,BCA and CCMA)among different vegetation types during 2000 to 2015.Notably,EMS of all simulated scenarios decreased in the alpine steppe ecosystem,but negligible changes were found in other ecosystems from 2015 to 2020.Moreover,the relative importance of precipitation in annual mean value(from 2000 to 2020)of PA,EPA,BCA and CCMA were 0.13,0.11,0.30 and 0.19,respectively.Overall,precipitation played the dominant role on the dynamics of EMS,followed by elevation and human footprint.Our findings highlighted that understanding the patterns and drivers of EMS could provide a reference for the regional management and maintenance of ecosystem stability on QZP.

Hybrid Color Texture Features Classification Through ANN for Melanoma

Melanoma is of the lethal and rare types of skin cancer.It is curable at an initial stage and the patient can survive easily.It is very difficult to screen all skin lesion patients due to costly treatment.Clinicians are requiring a correct method for the right treatment for dermoscopic clinical features such as lesion borders,pigment networks,and the color of melanoma.These challenges are required an automated system to classify the clinical features of melanoma and non-melanoma disease.The trained clinicians can overcome the issues such as low contrast,lesions varying in size,color,and the existence of several objects like hair,reflections,air bubbles,and oils on almost all images.Active contour is one of the suitable methods with some drawbacks for the segmentation of irre-gular shapes.An entropy and morphology-based automated mask selection is pro-posed for the active contour method.The proposed method can improve the overall segmentation along with the boundary of melanoma images.In this study,features have been extracted to perform the classification on different texture scales like Gray level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM)and Local binary pattern(LBP).When four different moments pull out in six different color spaces like HSV,Lin RGB,YIQ,YCbCr,XYZ,and CIE L*a*b then global information from different colors channels have been combined.Therefore,hybrid fused texture features;such as local,color feature as global,shape features,and Artificial neural network(ANN)as classifiers have been proposed for the categorization of the malignant and non-malignant.Experimentations had been carried out on datasets Dermis,DermQuest,and PH2.The results of our advanced method showed super-iority and contrast with the existing state-of-the-art techniques.

AMOUNT OF INFORMATION FOR SPATIAL-TEMPORAL CORRELATION FILTER PATTERN RECOGNITION SYSTEM

In order to relate the design and analysis of an optical pattern recognition system with the structural parameters, only by introducing the prolate spheroidal wave function (PSWF) can the amount of information be computed. Combining the imaging wave function set {ψi(x)} and distorted wave function set {b_i(p)} and two integral equations they satisfy derives the expression of the amount of information. The design method of matched filter connected with its amount of information is studied, and their amounts of information belonging to different pattern recognition systems are illustrated. It can be seen that the difference of the amounts of information for various systems is obvious.

A spatial-temporal analysis of urban recreational business districts： A case study in Beijing, China

This study has revealed spatial-temporal changes in Recreational Business Dis- tricts （RBDs） in Beijing and examined the relationship between the location of urban RBDs and traffic conditions, resident and tourist density, scenic spots, and land prices. A more reasonable classification of urban RBDs （LSC, CPS, and ULA） is also proposed. Quantitative methods such as Gini Coefficient, Spatial Interpolation, Kernel Density Estimation, and Geographical Detector were employed to collect and analyze the data from three types of urban RBDs in Beijing in 1990, 2000, and 2014, respectively, and the spatial-temporal pat- terns as well as the distribution characteristics of urban RBDs were analyzed using ArcGIS software. It was concluded that （1） both the number and scale of urban RBDs in Beijing have been expanding and the trend for all types of urban RBDs in Beijing to be spatially agglom- erated is continuing; （2） the spatial-temporal evolution pattern of urban RBDs in Beijing is ＂single-core agglomeration-dual-core agglomeration-multi-core diffusion＂; and （3） urban RBDs were always located in areas with low traffic density, tourist attractions, high resident and tourist population density, and relatively high land valuations; these factors also affect the scale size of RBDs.

LAND USE/COVER CHANGE AND DRIVING FORCES IN SOUTHERN LIAONING PROVINCE SINCE 1950S

Land use/cover change (LUCC) is a key aspect of global environment change, and in a sense indicates the influence of human activities on natural environment. Regional case study is the core of LUCC research. Taking the southern Liaoning Province, a coastal area facing the Bohai Sea and the Huanghai Sea, as an example, supported by ARCVIEW and ARC/INFO, this paper reconstructed LUCC patterns in three periods of 1954, 1976 and 2000, and analyzed their spatial-temporal changes from 1954 to 2000. On the base of these, it also studied the LUCC’s driving mechanism. The results show that the land transformation mainly occurs among cultivated land, forestland and urban and industrial land. Industrialization and urbanization in rural area are the major driving forces for cultivated land change, and the extension of the built-up area in cities is mainly the result of economic development and tertiary industry development, etc., which is at expense of cultivated land.