On the basis of growth polar theory, an evaluation system was built for understanding mechanisms and spatial discrepancies of economic polarization in central China during the period from 2001 to 2005 by means of generalized principal component analysis. It was shown that the factor of economic development production, factor of economic investment and factor of urbanization are key momentums which lead the polarization of economy in the central region of China, but their contribution to the polarization ranged from a high level to a low level. Further analysis on the variation of evaluation system revealed that the contribution rates of different indicators varied, and there were 10 indicators which were keycontrolled variables. The analysis of projective combination of the two components revealed a weak effect of economic investment on economic production; so the efficiency of economic production should be heightened. Synthetic analysis on alterations revealed that polarization in the central region was not significant, but its degree became gradually intensified. Therefore, to improve polarization system, some provinces such as Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi with a higher polarization degree in the region should be given much more support.

In the process of globalization, the urban agglomeration is a special kind of city space organization, and the research on urban agglomeration in the urbanization process is a trend of agglomeration development and also an academic area for studying regional economy development. Based on the analysis of urban agglomeration concept and the development phase, the authors proposed the motive mechanism for regional urban agglomeration in Nanchang, and the range of the regional urban agglomeration was examined. Finally, based on the SWOT analysis, some strategic countermeasures for the regional urban agglomeration in Nanchang City are put forward .

Northwest Sichuan is an area with minorities, mostly Zhang and Qang folks, being the ecological resource center in Sichuan Province. Its geography or landform is complex, with several national nature reserve areas; the population density is high, and the civilization of minority is dense. However, the economic development is far below the general level. Due to the constraints of initial ideas for the settingup of nature reserves, there is a lack of scientific system background for these reserves as external economical activities and residential people's activities have caused some damage to the reserves. In order to achieve the sustainable development in the surrounding societies and the protection of natural reserve, the management systems should be adjusted and authorities of these natural reserves should have managing functions similar to the government. The people living in these reserves should be emigrated to new towns built specially for them. Thus, a rational and scientific community can be built for the local people and for the protection of natural reserves.

Planning environmental impact assessment (PEIA) is not only an important part of the planning work, but also an indispensable component of PEIA system. Considering some gaps in theory and methodology of PEIA, and on the basis of the necessity and feasibility of ecological suitability analysis of land used in the environmental impact assessment in urban planning, this paper discussed the method, procedure and content of the ecological suitability analysis of land and the assessment from an ecological point of view, by following the theory of ecological position and taking some new areas in Shanghai as examples. This research will be complementary to the content and completeness of technology and methodology for environmental impact assessment in urban planning.

As an important base for regional economical development, a development zone means a great deal in driving the development of regional industry and improving the urbanization level. However, because of malfunction orientation, sameconfiguration of industry, and lowefficiency to some extent in the use of land, the effect of scale and convergence in development zones is not obviously embodied. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the land use intensity in different development zones in Jiangsu Province by fixed quantificaiton method in order to make the standard of land intensity and put forward countermeasures to improve the level of land use intensity in development zones. Method of statistical analysis and Delphi were employed in this article. The result of the paper suggests that the level of land use intensity in development zones in Jiangsu Province is rather high, while at the same time the level of land use intensity is different in different development zones and even in the same development zone. Also, the level of economic development, the industry policies and the structure of land use are the three main factors affecting the level of land use intensity in development zones in Jiangsu province. So, a conclusion is gained that it is necessary to adjust the policies of industry and land use structure, and to make corresponding policies for the full use of land in development zones based on the present economic situation and the development direction and in accordance with the relative and the utter land use intensity and the resource consumption situation.

The six ancient water towns have attracted more and more visitors from inland and overseas based on the particular scenery features and the cultural details since they were discovered, conserved and exploited for tourism in the 1980s. The tourism has brought remarkable economic, social and cultural benefits to the water towns and formed individually the special development models. But at the same time, urbanization, industrialization, commercialization and modernization have influenced the ancient towns and become key problems for the conservation, such as over commercialization, rapid modernization etc. Based on comparative study of the tourism development models, this paper analyses the characteristics and the main problems in different development models, and the conservation strategy and exploitation mechanism are proposed for these ancient towns. As a conclusion, five countermeasures are provided for the conservation and sustainable development of ancient towns in the Southern Yangtze River Area.

Miyun reservoir is the only source of surface water for the life water supply in the city of Beijing, and Chaobaihe basin is the district of runoff formation for the reservoir. The change in the annual runoff in Chaobaihe river basin influences directly the water resource security in Beijing. According to the theory of decomposing and synthesis in the analysis of time series, the determinant and stochastic components of annual runoff series in the resource region of Chaobaihe river were decomposed, and the fit calculation of determinant components and the frequency calculation of stochastic components were conducted separately. The determinant forecasting value and stochastic design value were synthesized, and the past and present as well as future frequency distributions were obtained for the resource region of Chaobaihe river. The security problems for water resources in Beijing were analyzed from the change of annual runoff frequency distribution in the river. The overall trend in the change of the annual runoff decreases year by year, and Miyun reservoir inflow also reduces in normal and dry years; therefore, Miyun reservoir may not be able to ensure the water resources for the sustainable development in Beijing in the 21 century.

Land conversion from rural to urban has become a common phenomenon in the process of urbanization. Decisionmaking of land conversion is a governmental behavior, so, this paper studied mainly the land conversion in consideration of decisionmaker's behavior. In the current situation, local governors considered more about the importance of higher economic growth in a region, and village authorities executed the decision of local government, while the peasants' decision was ignored. To control land conversion from rural to urban, some countermeasures such as establishing the scientific viewpoint of development are suggested in this paper in order to control the loss of farmland.

To solve the problem of the longterm insufficient investment in comprehensive agricultural exploitation, this paper analyzed the institutional factor influencing the investment. There is a need to increase the agricultural investment in China so as to meet the sustainable agricultural development, and to improve the agricultural productivity and its international competence. By using rational expectation theory, this paper points out that insufficient investment is mainly due to investors' insufficient expectation, which in turn is mainly due to low profit and high risk, imperfect agricultural public institutions, graded finance institution, incomplete proper rights of cultured land, and insufficient rural social security institutions and banking institutions. There is also a need to improve the mechanisms for achieving a perfect public institution system for agricultural finance, and to secure proper rights of cultured land and rural society.

The water quality in the Yangtze River has become worse from time to time, and thus to control the water quality and to protect the river have been a major issue for sustainable development in the region. In this paper, a model for the prediction of water quality in the river has been established, and this will provide reference values for any control measures to be taken for the protection of the water quality. First, by using the water quality data in 17 observation stations obtained within recent two years in the Yangtze River, a simple evaluation of the water quality in the river was conducted, and it is shown that the recent measures taken for the control of the water quality in the Yangtze River had some positive effect for improving the water quality. Second, the water quality data obtained from 1995 to 2004 in the Yangtze River were used, and the Markov transferred matrix is structured, with the Markov model established. The accuracy and the validity of the model were confirmed by the observed data. The water quality in the Yangtze River in the next ten years is then forecasted by the Markov model. That is, the standards I, II, III, IV water will reduce year by year, and the V, the poor standard V water will increase gradualy. To 2014, the kind I water in the Yangtze River only has 0.405 9 percent, the poor kind V water will be 26.2714 percent, the undrinkable water (namely IV,V and the poor V water) will reach 47.468 percent. Therefore, we must find a much more effective way to control deterioration of the water quality in the Yangtze River. Finally, through the computation, the smallest percentages of sewage water to be processed each year were obtained. The poor kind V water might be prohibited, and the kinds IV and the poor V water might be controlled in 20%, thus guaranteeing that we have enough drinkingwater source.

 The topological relationship for grids or subwatersheds in distributed hydrological model is an important aspect in accurately reflecting flood routing sequence. A traversal algorithm based on multisubtrees is suggested for topological relationship, which simplifies grids or subwatersheds of the digital drainage network as a treestructured nodded graph and uses recursive postorder traversal algorithm to establish topological relationship of grids or subwatersheds. The method provides a solid foundation for further development of distributed hydrological model and is valuable in practical operation.

A geostatistic method in combination with GIS was applied to characterize and map the spatialtemporal variability of soil pH in the typical area of Taihu Lake Region. The soil of the studied area appeared to be acid with about 85% of the total area showing a trend of decline in soil pH and its average decline extent being about 0.56 pH units. Since the Second Soil Survey, the soil pH spatial autocorrelation has become stronger and its autocorrelated distance has turned shorter, indicating that the soil pH distribution pattern has become complex. Based on the background information, it could be deduced that these changes had resulted from continual application of chemical fertilizers and large amount of acidic waste materials discharged from factories over last 20 years.

Based on the analysis of development in Jiangsu part of the Yangtze River Basin, the necessity for establishing environmental risk monitoring and warning system was presented in this paper in view of the regional environmental quality and socioeconomic development. This paper also summarized the progress of environmental risk decisionmaking support system (ERDSS) in China and other countries, and the objective, functions, framework, key technologies, as well as the application of geographic information technology in ERDSS were analyzed. The monitoring and warming system can be improved in the following five aspects: (1) probabilitybased risk source tracking system, (2) emergency system, (3) synergetic effect of multiple risk events, (4) water quality prediction model for toxic substances, and (5) priority system for toxic substances. This system will provide a practical environmental management tool for social and economic development in Jiangsu along the Yangtze River.

The calculated area for cropland by Wackernagel's method does not consider the influence of cropping index. For this reason, the production in certain country or region is achieved by annual multiple cropping, and in some areas there is an abandon of cropland. The result of calculated land by this method in ecological footprint is the area of planting of crop but not of the cropland. From this view, Wackernagel's method enlarges or dwindles the ecological footprint what human need in fact. So, footprint of cropland is not in accordance with biocapacity of cropland, for the area of cropland in biocapacity is not planting. There is a logic error of ecological remainder / deficit for the identical problem of footprint and biocapacity. The paper improved the method of ecological footprint by regulated cropland area with cropping index. The result is the area of cropland that human needed, but not of cropping. Ecological supply/demand and development ability in Funing County of Jiangsu Province from 1995 to 2003 were analyzed with the improved method of ecological footprint. It is suggested that ecological remainder/ 10 000 yuan GDP as the indicator of regional sustainable development ability. From 1995 to 2003, ecological footprint in Funing County decreased from 1.1207 hm2 per capita to 2.434 0 hm2 per capita, ecological capacity per capita changed very little, ecological deficit increased from 0.8153 hm2 per capita to 2.017 2 hm2 per capita, development ability increased from 1.330 6 to 3.140 7, ecological deficit per 10 000 yuan GDP decreased from 1.226 5 hm2 to 0.495 7 hm2. The correlation index calculated by the improved ecological footprint method between development ability and GDP per capita is larger than that by the Wackernagel's method, indicating that the development ability based on the improved ecological footprint method may represent the social economic situation better than that based on Wackernagel's method.

Due to the population pressure and the nonrational economic activities, the fragile karst ecological environment has become worsened, and the land rocky desertification has become one of the most serious ecological environment problems in the karst area, intimidating the survival and development of local residents. By means of onthespot and ample survey in Laojie village of Bijie City in Guizhou Province, it is revealed that the terrain slope and the thickness of surface soil layer and the rock exposed degree are leading factors of land landscape succession in this area, with their contributing rate being up to 81.224%. On this basis, using the landform surface and the soil types as leading symbols, combining distribution characters in shrubberygrass and the bare stone landscape, and taking GPS as the location method with GIS for the aid platform, a complete survey and charting of land types were achieved for Laojie village, and the rocky desertification land in the village was appraised. The research provides foundation for ecological planning and restoration of rocky desertification land in karst area.

Geological environment construction is an emphasis of ecological construction in China. In this paper, Xinghua sulphuriron mining in Xingwen County of Sichuan Province is selected as the study site. Many natural background parameters has been analyzed, including relief, geological, climate, hydrology, human activity, etc. Thus, the status and problems of geological disaster were discovered. The main problems of geological environment include the followings: (1) the water environment has been destroyed; (2) a large quantity of plowland has been destroyed or occupied by mining activities; (3) many geological hazards have been induced; and (4) atmosphere has been polluted. On the base of known technology and policy, the contents of geological environment construction have been made certain, and three projects have been established. After comparing with these projects, the authors present recommendatory projects including 7 parts of branch works. Due to this project, expectant benefits are analyzed, including economic benefit, social benefit and environment benefit. In order to ensure that the project can be successfully put in practice, some advices have been proposed.

Facing the situation of increasingly worse water pollution, the Law on Prevention and Treatment of Water Pollution of China reveals a lot of functional failures. As a result, the amendment of the law and relevant legislation attracts a great deal of attention of national legislative bodies, administrative departments and academic circles of environmental law. To provide legislative references, this article focused on the innovation of ideas, mechanisms and institutions of water pollution legislation, and then summarized the opinions and proposals of both Chinese environmental law scholars and governmental officials. First of all, it is proposed that some new legislative ideas should be introduced into water pollution legislation. Then, ideas of establishing diverse mechanisms of water pollution regulation and control are proposed. Finally, some creative institutions for water pollution control should also be introduced, including the planning of water pollution control, the total amount control and water pollution discharge permit, protection of raw resources of drinking water, agriculture pollution control and nonpointsource pollution control, ecological reparation of basin development and protection.

A general survey on urban development trend shows that globalization promotes the development of global cities, regionalization nurtures megacity, and localization ensures the characteristics of individual urban agglomerations. The common characteristics of urban development are globalization, the development of global cities and the increasing demand for facetoface communication. The urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta plays a very important part in China, and is the primary global region and globalcityforming area in the country's process of involving in the globalization. Thus, the spatial distribution of cities in the Yangtze River Delta should follow the globalization trend: improving the development of global cities, constructing megacity regions, establishing network cities, and planning corridor cities.

 Globalization is an essential factor influencing the development of cities and regions. The Yangtze River Delta is of enormous significance in China for it is one of those significant regions that melted in the world economy in the early stage as well as an important area that owns intensive economic and social resources. In the context of the acceleration of globalization, the region should enhance regional cooperation so as to improve its status in the international competition system. As the sustaining system of globalization and regional integration, more and more megaprojects have appeared in the Yangtze River Delta and have been one of the most important parts in construction of cities and regions. Based on introduction of megaprojects, the arrangement and construction of megaprojects in the Yangtze River Delta—such as urban development, city feature shaping, and the integrated transportation system including airports, harbors, rapid rail and expressways—are summarized and analyzed, and some tentative plans are put forward as well. In addition, the impact of megaprojects on the globalization process of the Yangtze River Delta is discussed.

As an emergent urban phenomenon in the beginning of the 21st century, polycentric megacity regions have arisen through the extended decentralization from big central cities to new or adjacent smaller ones. This paper introduces the formation background, concept and relative research development of the megacity region and points out that the megacity region is composed of a series of 20 to 50 cities and towns, which are physically separated but functionally networked, clustered around one or more larger central cities, and demonstrating enormous ecological strength through a new functional labor division. Then, taking the methods of POLYNET program and relative researches into account, the paper confines the boundary of the megacity region in the Yangtze River Delta by constructing functional urban region(FUR) and analyzes functional connections between the 16 main FURs on the basis of the data of employment structure in service industries. It is concluded that the megacity region in the Yangtze River Delta is composed of 55 contiguous FURs, which have more than 80 million overall population and occupying 78 thousand square kilometers; there will be a development trend to bring Wenzhou and Taizhou into the Yangtze River Delta megacity region, although they are on the edge of the region at present.

In the context of globalization, as a new kind of urban spatial and functional form, global city regions are submerged into the global economic network through global and subglobal cities, and are showing increasingly important functions in the global city system. Through the analysis of the globalization process of the Yangtze River Delta and incorporation of cities and towns in this area, the authors point out that this region is the most probable region to become the global city region in China. Then, from the angle of reorganizing and upgrading the spatial and functional structure of the global city region, it is proposed that Shanghai should enhance its function as a global city; Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Ningbo should function as subglobal cities; the interrelations among cities should be strengthened; and the regional supporting network of traffic, communication and market etc should be constructed. Thus, the polycentric, network integrative global city region can be established. In addition, the paper suggests several strategic districts to promote the construction of the global city region in the Yangtze River Delta.

Globalization is bringing about the restructuring of cities and regions worldwide. With the shift of global economic growth center to the Asian Pacific Rim, the emergence of new global cities will be one of the most important characteristics of city development in this area. China has become one of the most potential regions in the East Asia with the most vigorous economy, and Shanghai is greatly possible to become an important global city. On the generalization of the characteristics of global cities, by analyzing specific information—including global capital flow, international trade, multinational corporation headquarters, finance industry, advanced producer services, and international communication etc, it is showed that shanghai is an emerging global city, and the difference between Shanghai and other global cities is also pointed out. In addition, the paper puts forward some strategies for construction of Shanghai involving industrial restructuring, social structure transformation and spatial expansion. In the end, it is concluded that the object of construction of Shanghai is to establish a global manufacturing management center, global communication center, and global financial and trade center.

The global economy is nurturing an innovative type of polycentric urban configuration—network city, which is composed of two or more physically separated but functionally complementary cities linked by efficient transportation corridors and communication infrastructure. As an important urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta, SuzhouWuxiChangzhou urban agglomeration has the requirement and possibility to construct a networkcity. To begin with, the paper summarizes the theories and principles of networkcity. Then, the strategic significance of the construction of SuzhouWuxiChangzhou urban agglomeration is expounded, and the layout of the urban agglomeration is discussed from 4 aspects including urban function integration, construction of supporting system, organization of functional space, and coordination principles. In the end, it is pointed out that construction of SuzhouWuxiChangzhou networkcity is of great significance to improve the international competitiveness and achieve sustainable development of economy, society and environment of SuzhouWuxiChangzhou urban agglomeration.

In the context of globalization, corridorcity has appeared as a new pattern of city corridor and serves as a new strategy for the spatial development of urban agglomerations. In the bicentric urban system, close links have been forged between places that are of complementary functions, and the mutual linkages tend to be horizontal rather than hierarchical. The resulting urban configurations take the form of“corridor cities”. Corridorcity theory emphasizes intercourse efficiency and functional integration of urban agglomerations as well as linear urban configurations. At first, the paper summarizes the conceptions and development phase of corridorcity and analyzes the precondition and possibility of the construction of NingboTaizhouWenzhou corridorcity. Then, the building of urban functions of core cities (Ningbo, Zhoushan, Wenzhou, and Taizhou), the construction of transportation corridors and the characteristic development pattern of less development areas are discussed. In the end, relevant strategies and measures are put forward for the function integration of NingboTaizhouWenzhou corridor city.