Abstract:

In the next few decades，our nation’s population quantity will reach to a new peak,and it will be a critical period during which the relationship between population and nature will be more tense.How to guide the orderly flow of the population,and then form a reasonable population distribution pattern? It is a very significant problem that be confronted by our national government and demographic researchers.In order to solve the macroscopical population distribution problem,and to serve better the overall strategy of the national economy and the sustainable development,the functional zoning of population development which was put forward by the national population and family planning commission begun to be studied.At present,the majority zoning method was based on the administrative division.The research scale involved national level,provincial level and county level,and the metropolitan region level was little involved.Taking Wuhan Metropolitan Region as an example,this paper put forward a new method on functional zoning of population development through establishing the decision tree of population distribution which depended on arable land,water resource and altitude,and this method was firstly based on the overlay analysis of the statistical population data and the geographic data.In the research，the spatialization technology of statistical population data was also used.Furthermore，the zoning result was compared between which was based on administrative division and which was based on grid cell.The results showed that the new method was not only agree with the old one in general,but also more outstanding in the following three aspects.Firstly，in the new method the massive index calculation was abandoned.Secondly，the accuracy of the zoning was strengthened.Thirdly，it was more convenient for the coupling analysis of  the statistical population data and the geographic data.This study may provide some ideas which was more objective and more simple on functional zoning of population development to some specific areas similar to Wuhan Metropolitan Region