Coastal wetland of China is consisted of lowland, tidal flat and associated biological community. Its total area covers 1/5 of China's wetlands and runs across 39 latitudes in the northern hemisphere. The nature of coastal wetland is characterized by monsoon wave action, tidal dynamics and large river influence. According to their genetic features,coastal wetlands can be divided into three types: reed and grass wetlands of estuary, grass and salt marsh of plain coast, and mangrove swamps located in the sheltered bay head of South China. All of the three types have the zonation features of being divided by superior tidal zone, inter tidal zone and sub tidal zone. Coastal wetlands are precious space resources, but owing to effects from forest denudation, foreign species invasion, coastal erosion, frequent flood disaster and red tides intrusion, the environmental quality of coastal wetland has deteriorated gradually. To deal with the contradiction between wetland's ecological protection and basic living requirement of local residents, a systematic study on environmental nature of regional wetlands is needed, by comparison and summarization of successful and unsuccessful practices, to find out the critical value for best protection of wetland's nature and suitable way of wetland utilization.

The wetland, between water and land, is a special ecosystem with function of important ecological service. In the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, there distributes a large area of wetland, including mainly lacustrine and riverine wetland, with inhabitation of dense population, and the enormous changes have occurred in the wetland in the past one hundred years. Taking the typical wetland of Tai Lake plain in the lower reaches of Yangtze River as an example, this paper for the first time reported the accurate area of the water body wetland and spatial distribution in the past 100 years, based on historical data, modern accurate topographic map and remote sensing materials. Factors influencing the changes were analyzed in this paper. The present research is considered to have values in understanding changes of the wetland environment in the lower reaches of Yangtze River.

Wetland is a unique ecosystem that has multifunction in the world, and is one of the most important living environments for human beings. Wetland protection in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River should be considered from the viewpoint of basin management, that is to transform from protection of a single wetland in the past to protection of wetlands in basin area as a whole. Some particular measures to be taken are as the followings: (1) to establish a uniform harmony mechanism in the river basin in order to have a general plan for wetland protection and utilization; (2) to combine the existing protection districts according to lake drainage area and species distribution, and to construct new wetland protection region in order to solve problems in management districts; (3) to develop wetland restoration and reconstruction; (4) to carry out reforesting in formerly cultivated land and to construct shelter forest of the Yangtze River in order to control soil erosion and to preserve the water resource; (5) to protect and utilize reasonably the wetland resources in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River; (6) to strengthen the research of wetland science.

Three lakes, i.e. Honghu, Chaohu and Taihu Lakes in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River were selected for understanding the change of sedimentation rates. Environmental 210Pb (natural) and 137Cs (anthropogenic) dating techniques were used. The relationship between exponential 210Pb and depth is nonlinear in Honghu Lake core. Based on 137Cs dating markers, the sediment rate from 1963 to 1986 was the greatest, and it decreased from 1986 to 2002, which was attributed to human activities such as the reclaiming. The chronologies calculated by 210Pb CIC method were consistent with 137Cs dating markers in Chaohu Lake core. It is concluded that since 1970's the flux of deposit increased with the decrease of depth for Chaohu Lake due to the increase of soil erosion. In Taihu Lake core, the average sedimentation rate was 0.34 cm/a calculated by 137Cs markers, while the value 0.41 cm/a was obtained based on 210Pb CIC method. The 210Pb chronologies were corrected using the 1963 137Cs marker in Tauihu Lake core. The results show that sedimentation flux rates are very high, reaching to 0.6 g·cm-2·a-1 near 1990's in Taihu Lake. The combination of these radionuclide dating methods is useful to understand the sedimentation process of the lakes where sedimentation rates have changed.

This article used the actual database to count the change in shape of lake basins and in the flood of Poyang Lake in 50 years. It is indicated that because of reclamation, the lake area experienced a reduction of 1 300 km2 during the period from 1954 to 1992, and the volume had a reduction of 81×108 m3, with the regulating coefficient dropped from 17.3% to 13.7% and regulating flood ability reduced by 20.8%. When comparison was made between 1990s and 1950s, the average value of annual maximum high water raised 1.80 m. It was also calculated that the maximum high water level by means of restoring lake area from cultivation would be reduced by 0.72 and 0.68 m, respectively in two serious flooded years, i.e. 1954 and 1998. The restoration may also have some influence on the frequency of flood levels in Poyang Lake, a 0.63 m and a 0.68 m reduction in maximum high water level may be expected in one chance flood within 50 years and one chance flood within 100 years, respectively. It is also indicated that restoring lake from cultivation at high water level, the socalled semirestoration can reduce the flood level, and is closely related with waterlogging degree before restoration. Major questions in relation to lake restoration by stopping cultivation are: waterlogging capacity in dike areas when restoration was taken at high water level, and schistosomiasis problem in turning over dykes for flood area, the socalled complete restoration. The countermeasure to solve these two problmes are: “limiting the high and reinforcement, evacuating for gathering” in semirestoration dikes and “opening to discharge the flood, pay attention to the cure of schistosomiasis” in the doubledrawsback dike.

Dongting Lake Area, located in the middle reaches of Yangtze River, lies between 27°55′~30°23′N and 110°50′～113°45′E, and consists of 17 counties with an area of 28 737 km2. Because of nonrational anthropogenic exploitation and utilization, the landscape pattern has changed remarkably in this area. Based on the TM image in 1980, 1990 and 2000, fractal dimension values of each landscape of the mosaic structure were analyzed for Dongting Lake Area under the support of RS and GIS technology and landscape ecology methods. It is indicated that the landscape pattern changed remarkably among cultivated land, water area and construction land. The fractal dimension of each landscape element among the five types was different from that of the other one. Each landscape factor can be ranked according to the fractal dimension of the mosaic structure: cultivated land < unutilized land < construction land < water area < forest < lawn. The fractal dimension of construction land approached to 1.5, which was the most unstable landscape element. On the contrary, the dimension of the lawn and forest changed gently, and it was the most stable landscape element. The simulative result by fractal model showed that the mosaic structure of natural landscape was influenced by physiognomy: the fractal dimension of cultivated land, construction land and water area increased along with the rise of altitude and vice versa is the dimension of lawn and forest. It is shown that physiognomy, hypsography, position and humankind affect the fractal dimension of landscape.

Based on numerical imitative methods, a dynamic numerical model was set up between Dongting Lake and Yangtze River, and imitative calculation for wetland recovery and flood effect were conducted for the area around Dongting Lake. The calculation was based on the flood data obtained between 15th June and 31th August in 1998, and the water level and runoff data from five hydrological observation stations in Yichuang, Zhijiang, Shashi, Jianli and Luoshan for the Yangtze River, and other six stations in Nanzui, Xiaohezui, Yuanjiang, Lujiao, Yueyang and Chenglingji around Dongting Lake, among which there were only water level data for Yuanjiang, Lujiao and Yueyang. Through the calculation, the effect of cultivation and silts on flooding was estimated. It was revealed that for the period from 1952 to 1998, the effect on the rise of water level was 2 to 10 times higher as by the cause of silts than by cultivation.

Fiveyear investigation revealed that the avifauna differed obviously between residence dike and the dike of reimbursement cropland for lakes. There were 22 species common in the former and 66 species in the latter, and the difference in the community components was obvious, with the Moumtforyd coefficient being 0.371 62. The community structure varied obviously with seasons in both the cultivated land and the reimbursement cropland for lakes. From October to the following March, a winter community was observed, and from April to September the summer community. After the reimbursement, changes of the avian community can be characterized into three phases: the first is the mixed period for the avian community which lasted for about one year, the second is the emerging period for the new community which lasted for 2~4 years, and the third is the steady period of the wild avian community which has lasted for 4~5 years after the reimbursement.

In this paper, the typical kind of soil in the Three Gorges Reservoir region was taken from Kaixian County to make two types of soil samples (original soil sample and floodeddried soil sample), to examine the relationship between alternative floodingdrying condition and the isothermal adsorption of the P from the soil samples, and to compare the P release patterns of the floodeddried soil samples with original soil samples. The maximum P adsorption capacity (Xm) from Langmuir isotherm equation was first studied in this paper, and then the two types of soil samples were treated by KH2PO4 of 0% Xm, 30% Xm, 50% Xm, and 80% Xm. All the treated soil samples were deposited for 15 days before the subsequent flooding experiments. The adsorption capacity of the soil can be enhanced by flooding and subsequent airdrying condition. The adsorption capacity of the P increased from 256 mg/kg (original soil samples) to 625 mg/kg (flooded and dried soil samples), and the EPC0 was from 0.46 mg/L to 1.47 mg/L respectively after flooding condition. The ratio of desorption of the soil samples decreased from 73.3%~80.3% to 67.3%~69.6% after flooding. It is predicted that phosphorus adsorbed by the soils in drawdown area of Three Gorges area may then be released under the conditions similar to the flooding conditions employed in the present study. The release amount of P will vary synchronously with the P amount absorbed by soils before flooding. The alternative floodingdrying condition will cause the soil release more phosphorus.

The ecosystem delineation on ecosystem services is an important baseline framework for resource and environmental management pursued by China in recently years. In this paper, the authors first discussed the nature of delineation, and then pointed out that the delineation is an ecosystembased geographical identification, with a focus especially on ecosystem viability influenced by human activities and integrated human values. Through the delineation, we need not only to answer where an ecosystem is and what it provides, but also answer how people value its provision and how human values affect the sustainability of an ecosystem. The ecosystem delineation on ecosystem services, based on the nested hierarchy organization of the ecosystem and its multiscale characters, aims at multiscale ecosystem management. As a case study, watershedbased delineation of ecosystems on priority ecosystem services in the upper Yangtze River is developed and presented. It is concluded that the main task comprises of delineating ecosystem units and services, assessing ecosystem integrity, and naming the dominated ecosystem function. Finally, the ecosystem management recommendations in the upper Yangtze River are given under the new framework.

The source region of the Yangtze River, located in the middle region of the Tibetan Plateau, is characteristic of highaltitude and cold environment, and is a sensitive area to global change. As a major part of the National Three River Sources Nature Reserve, it is one of the principle areas of alpine wetlands as well. While in recent decades, in the influence of improper human activities and global climate changes, climate in this region has become warmer and drier in an obvious way. Accordingly, the glaciers and lakes have been retreating. Grassland has been degrading because of overgrazing. As a result, land desertification and soil erosion are increasingly expanding. These will be a threat to the Yangtze River Valley, and to the ecological security of the whole Yangtze River Basin. The alpine meadow is one of major highaltitude cold ecosystems in this region. In the influence of global change, undoubtedly, the alpine meadow dominated by cold resistant Kobresia plant will have to face ecological menace. Therefore, to discuss the impact of global change on the alpine meadow is of high value for understanding global change and reducing its negative influence. The alpine meadow in the source region of the Yangtze River is taken as a study case in this paper. Firstly, the ecological and environmental characters in the source region were clarified. Then the authors employed CENTURY model, a popular biogeochemistry model to simulate alpine meadow ecosystem, in terms of its longterm dynamics in productivity and carbon balance. Grazing, a main human activity in the plateau, was taken into account to simulate probable impacts on the ecosystem as well. In accordance with climate change scenarios from RCMs, possible impacts of climate change on ecosystem were analyzed. Finally, proper adaptation countermeasures were proposed in order to reduce the negative impact of climate change.

Beigushan wetland is a newly formed tidal freshwater wetland which is not far to the Changjiang Estuary. The plant community in the wetland was in its prophase status of the primary successions. According to the survey on the Beigushan wetland, growing characteristics of the wetland plants were described. In combination with hydrological characters, the paper discussed the evolution rule for the dominance in this community in relation to the temporal, spatial and landscape changes and also to the trend of the wetland evolution. The problems existed in the wetland communities were also discussed, the conclusions may provide important information for the ecological restoration, and the protection of biodiversity and then wetland.

The present situation and some ecological and environmental problems in the Yangtze Basin were analyzed in this paper. With the rapid development of the society and economy in China, a series of ecological and environmental problems in the Yangtze River have emerged. Water pollution has not been controlled effectively. There exists a great challenge due to the large scale hydropower development and water resource exploitation. Comprehensive management of relative factors which affect the basin's ecological system, including water, soil, biological and other resources, should be enhanced. How to deal with the relation between protection and exploitation of the Yangtze River will be an essential topic in the next few decades.

Problems with extreme floods have been aggravated in Germany mainly due to loss of flood retaining areas caused by river regulation measures in former centuries, and by intensified use of the former natural flood plains. The situation may have been worsened in the last decades by climate change. The recent August 2002 economic flood damage in the Elbe river basin added up to 9.2×109 (100×109 ￥). Numerous levee breaches happened. Also other German bigger rivers like the Danube and the Rhine river caused considerable damage to buildings and infrastructure in the previous decades, and many lives have been lost. The contribution centers flood detention measures in the Elbe valley in Eastern Germany and in the Upper Rhine valley in Southwest Germany, adjoining to France. Detention basins in the Upper Rhine region are mostly located along the levees or alongside a reach upstream a river barrage. They can be operated in principle either with or without movable control devices. The Integrated Rhine Program (IRP) of the Federal State of Baden-Wuerttemberg aims as well at flood protection for the riparian users and the downstream riparian residents up to a 200 years flood, as at floodplain forest revitalization behind the dikes. Flood risk mapping by use of GIS and simulation of flooding processes in the valley of the Neckar river, an affluent to the River Rhine, will be presented. It is part of the Integrating Conception for the Neckar river basin, called IKONE. Damages to buildings have been estimated for different floods with certain annual probabilities of exceedance. Apart from flood protection by means of dikes and flood detention basins, also flood safety has to be paid attention. Flood safety means preventing excessive damage due to the exceedance of the design flood event, e.g. the 200 years flood. Dangerous surges can occur following dike breaches, caused by uncontrolled levee overflow. The term 'residual risk' is rather belittling. Constructing spillways as countermeasure against uncontrolled overflow of dams and barrages is common practice. This is obligatory in the design of even small flood detention basins, for river barrages and their upstream reach, and certainly for large dams and multipurpose reservoirs. It will be pointed out, that this design case has to be taken into account likewise in case of diked river stretches. Depending on the circumstances onsite, overflow sections or movable gates can serve as emergency outlets to prevent huge losses.

The River Rhine situated in the middle of central Europe is a striking example for the diverging concerns of natural wetland schemes and human uses. The River Rhine basin covers an area of 190 000 km2 and is settled by 50 million people, living in nine different countries. Only in the 19th century the natural moving water courses of the River Rhine were fixed in a singular riverbed allowing the human utilization of the flood prone areas by agriculture, settlement and infrastructure. Extreme floods in the last decade of the 20th century revealed the risks and led to a paradigm shift in the evaluation of the strategies of flood prone uses. Extreme floods are a regular part of natural river schemes and only the design of flood prone uses decides the amount of damage. This new awareness of risk led to the International Flood Action Plan of the River Rhine in 1998 defining 5 guidingprinciples:(1)water is part of the whole,(2)store water,(3)let the river expand,(4)be aware of the danger,and (5)integrated and concerted action.These guidingprinciples were focused on 4 action targets, which have to be accomplished by the stakeholders in politics, administration and the community of users by 2020: (1)reduce damage risks—reduction of damage risks up to 10% by 2005 and up to 25% by 2020,(2)reduce flood levels—reduction of extreme flood levels up to 30 cm by 2005 and up to 70 cm by 2020,(3)increase awareness of floodings—draft of risk maps for 50% of the floodplains by 2000 and 100% by 2005,and (4)improve the system of flood forecasting—prolong the forecasting period by 50% in 2000 and 100% in 2005. For the implementation of these actions targets a catalog of measures which has been derived with an investment volume of 12 billions until 2020, the realization is according to the plan. The Oder flooding in 1997 and the Elbe flooding in 2002 with an amount of damage in billions of Euro underlined emphatically the necessity of precautionary measures in water management and their integration in the politics of spatial planning, economics, agriculture and nature conservation.

The waterfront resources along the Yangtze River are precious natural resources. It is important for the sustainable utilization of the waterfront resources to arrange the functions reasonably, such as port, manufacture, city life and ecological protection function, according to the natural condition, predefined principles and the suitability of each part of the waterfront. The function division of the waterfront resources should be based on the following principles: ensuring sustainable development, deciding the use according to the depth of the water, combining the intensive arrangement and inland development reasonably, harmonizing the use modes between the upper and lower reaches, the left and right banks, and making the intensity and schedule of the exploitation adapting to the development stage of the city and industry. To make the function division of the waterfront, the first step is to divide the evaluation unit, the second is to evaluate the waterfront resources conditions, the third is to analyze the status and demand of the waterfront utilization, and the last step is to study the suitability of each part of the waterfront resources and finish the function division. The paper introduced the resource evaluation process based on RS and GIS, and expatiated the suitability analysis method by constructing the uniontable. By these methods, the paper works out the function division of the waterfront resources of the Yangtze River within Nantong City.

Using multilinear regression analysis, the authors examined the relationship quantitatively between the change of water environmental and economy development during the period from 1990 to 2000 in Taihu Basin was examined, and based on the information the authors predicted the water pollution status in the lake for the next 30 years. Combined with other studies, the authors considered that the source of contamination in Taihu Basin would possibly change in the future. The proportion of sewage from agriculture and industry would increase continually, being the primary pollution source. Therefore, in order to ameliorate the water environment of Taihu Lake, the management to nonpoint pollution from agriculture must be intensified, except for the enforcement of some minimum requirement about pointpollution discharge from industry.

This present study is to answer the question “How have WWF's freshwater conservation activities improved people's livelihoods? ” It is one for four WWF global case studies. The systematic questionnaire surveys were used during the period from 2000 to 2005. A total of 1 474 farmer samples were obtained, in which 964 farmer samples were in Xipanshanzhou Polder, Dongting Lake. Six conclusions have been drawn from the study: (1) WWF Yangtze Programme in Xipanshanzhou Polders has resulted in four outcomes, including more income, increased wellbeings, reduced vulnerability, more sustainable use of the natural resource base. (2) The project benefited women, elder farmers, and lowincome groups. (3) Project households earned much more income and owned more properties than nonproject households. (4) The livelihood continued to be better than when the project started in 2000. (5) The reasons for the successful projects are motivation in local community, favourable national policy, partnership building, institutional arrangement, and adaptive management and innovative approaches. (6) The return of fish and bird species and restored wetland ecosystem functions proved that the conservation objectives of the project were successfully achieved.

In this paper, the hydrology of Sun Jia Catchment, a small catchment with mixed agriculture in Subtropical Southeast, China, is studied. The objective of the research is to characterize the catchment flows in an agricultural catchment with an irrigation system in Subtropical China and to estimate catchment irrigation flow using hydrograph analysis methods. In the research, the weighting model and multiple regression model were established to estimate catchment irrigation outflow according to hydrographs of the inflows and outflows of the catchment. In the end, it is concluded that the estimated irrigation outflows amounted to 3 695 mm, 2 613 mm and 2 757 mm during 2001, 2002 and 2003, respectively, which covered 70%, 60% and 64% of the total catchment outflows in the corresponding years.

“Integrated concept of landuse for the flooding area of the Hrdter Rheinaue, Gemany” was a part of IRMA, ECINTERRD Ⅱc Project. The aim of the project was to solve the problem of highwater prevention through a kind of complicated measures—spatial planning, water resources management and disaster prevention. The authority of the project implementation belongs to the ministry for the environment of the state of Rhineland Palatinate. The primary goal was to improve the present floodprevention planning and to prevent increasing flooding risks. With consideration of the concrete implementation, the project extruded its characteristics. Different from former plannings, the project used land planning and a series of countermeasures to solve various problems and the main measures were to harmonize conflicts through various landuse strategies.

The contribution redefines the concept of “terraforming” and the basically technical term “water works” from a sociological interpretation of metabolism: since human reproduction emancipated from mere participation from nature, it became, at least, a systematic transformation of nature. Irrigation and drainage became the twin brothers of agriculture and mining, the most important modifiers of both metabolism and nature itself. From the early “hydraulic” toward modern “industrial” societies, the systemic conditions of reproduction evolved hand in hand with accompanying social dynamics. The regulation of large rivers was and still is impossible without complementary social integration; industry as regulation of work flows was and still is impossible without division of labor and, thus, of social stratification. Both the systemic conditions of reproduction and the social dynamics of stratification will be analyzed along two lines of “water works”: (1)strip mining of brown coal and (2) dam building. Apart from intended effects (like economic growth, energy and water supply), both activities transformed large areas of Germany and initiated longlasting sideeffects of what may be called “terraforming”. Strip mining stands for negative terraforming in terms of turning earth into unlivable conditions, whereas most reservoirs represent a positive terraforming in terms of turning earth into more livable conditions. Both activities started with unwanted social effects: large scale resettlements, loss of homeland and habitats, loss of area under cultivation and of jobs. Many projects were questioned and refused, rarely accepted although made strongly attractive by government and companies. Today, most reservoirs are perceived positively, almost as natural in terms of leisure and relaxation, whereas the exploited mining fields were seen as ecological damage and waste lands needing billions for revitalization and rehabilitation. Further working of strips is strictly opposed and hardly to get through (like Garzweiler II), which highlights the importance of “risk taking” and “risk acceptance” as political powers and social capital. As “interest” and “involvement” are the positive dynamics of both, political powers on the collective level and social capital on the individual level, become visible. People who accept risks and are interested in innovation, tend to underscore the “chances” of change, whereas their opponents underscore the dangers of change. Thus, without a certain amount of risk taking and risk acceptance society will stagnate. Change then appears as threat and risky in itself. Above a certain level, however, society will turn into carelessness and daredevilry, which may become a risk on the level of international politics and create a climate of irresponsibility on the level of social relationship.

In floodplains of large rivers, more than eighty percent of the potentially inundated areas are developed for agricultural use and settlement purposes by diking and cultivation measures. The fertile soils of the polders represent ten percent of the agricultural lands in Germany. At its time, this agrarian potential justified the high societal input for diking, flood diversion, and drainage. The 80 000 hm2 large Oderbruch polder is deemed an example of prospering agrarian regions since 300 years ago and today it is part of the national cultural heritage. Numerous levee breaches and flood damages brought about increased efforts on levee construction and drainage. With growing technical facilities, drainage and the utilization of remaining wetland sites became the favoured target towards the development of highly productive manmade landscapes. The cost for flood control and drainage were stateborne for a long period. The political changes and the transition to market economy raised problems and conflicts for the polder utilization in addition to the new structural conditions: (1)who will bear the cost for drainage and pumping stations?(2)how can the urgently required strengthening of levees be realized? and (3)how can the critical ecological situation be improved? The traditional use of polder is to be doubted strictly. Being brought to discussion since 1991, the concept of Oderuch 2010 with its main aspects as:(1)wetland belts of 500 m in width in the vicinity of levees,(2)reconnection of former branches of the Oder river and ecological corridors along main waters,(3)raise of too deep ground water level and partial abandonment of drainage systems, and (4)strengthening of levees for improved flood safety provoked controversies. After the extreme summer flood of 1997 with its almostcatastrophe and the manifold levee breaches in the Ziltendorfer Niederung and in Poland, a fast strengthening of levees was to be done above all. At the same time, there were and, once more enhanced by the Elbe flood of 2002, still are polemics about the future of the Oder region, e. g. construction of levees and utilization of polders stand against setback of levees as well as creation of retention areas and seminatural floodplains. Meanwhile, the levees along the Oder river are reconstructed. Hydraulic proofs confirmed the levee alignment. The reconnection of former Oder branches is presently realized. As a populated polder, the Oderbruch is not at disposal for being flooded. A possible storage of flood water for the benefit of the city of Frankfurt and the Oderbruch is investigated for polders located further upstream. In this article, different concepts for development strategies will be discussed which may contribute to a harmonized combination of individual interests in continuing previous polder use and of the targets towards an improvement of the overall ecological situation and towards the priorities related to flood prevention for selected floodplain areas. This discussion will be based on the assumption that, according to altered socially acceptable funding activities for sustainable development of floodplains, basically new utilisation strategies for polder are to be followed during the period of 2010 to 2030.

Modelling landscapes with GIS provides a powerful tool to analyze and model terrestrial ecosystems for land use planning. In order to gain realistic results, input data has to represent the natural environment as realistically as possible. While some of the fundamental data layers such as topography and soils are more or less static, climatic data is variable both in space and time. In addition, climatic data is measured at discrete locations and depends to a considerable extent on the topography around the sampling site. Most interpolation methods that are used to generate gridded climate data surfaces, however, fail to represent the influence of topography on climate altogether or use overly simplistic models. This paper describes a new method called REGEOTOP that includes the influence of topography on climate in an interpolation procedure. First, relief forms are extracted from a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with the help of principal component analysis. In general, more than 90% of the DEM variance can be explained by 13~18 principal components. Position (latitude, longitude and altitude) and relief forms around meteorological stations are then related to observed climate values such as monthly precipitation or evaporation observed at these stations by multivariate regression. Inserting position and relief forms for each grid cell of the DEM into the regression equation allow to calculate a predicted climate surface. In the last step, residuals between observed and predicted values of the meteorological stations are interpolated by geostatistical interpolation (“kriging”) and added to the predicted climate surfaces to account for the remaining variance. Examples for high resolution data sets describing monthly temperature, precipitation and evapotranspiration (1951~1990) and their application to modelling landscape properties in Central China are given. These data surfaces can be used as precision input data to analyze and model landscape properties for planning purposes with GIS. Calculating basic ecological properties of wetlands such as soil moisture and plant available water supplies allows to assess the suitability for reconversion of farmland to wetland areas.

The developed areas in the Southeast Coast of China are the pioneers of reform and openingup and modernization of the country. Due to the rapid development in the past 10 to 20 years, industrial structure has been more reasonable, the local economy has been strengthened greatly, and the integrated situation of urbanrural and megalopolis has been formed fundamentally. The progress of economic globalization and integration will still take on responsibilities on enhancing international competitiveness and leading inward economic development. At the same time, however, problems—such as low capacity of industrial innovation, lack of energy sources, serious landloss, limited development spaces, and ecological and environmental deprivation—have become obstacles to the sustainable development of these areas. The authors analyzed the present development situation and existing problems, and then put forwards some measures for sustainable development of these areas in the view of balancing economic, environmental and social development.

The Yangtze River Delta is an important economic region in China, and is a typical area which is involved in international competition. It is also the primary area of population aggregation. With implementation of a national policy on scientific development, the population distribution and industrial layout, the influence of industrial cluster and population aggregation will become more and more obvious in this delta region. On the basis of ecological and economic analysis, this paper analyzed mainly the population carrying capacity and population aggregation in this region, and the future scale and distribution of population in this region were proposed. At the same time, the paper also proposed to construct six metropolises and six international gates in this region, to form a network distribution of urban areas which may support much more population inflows and future industrial development.

The ecosystem of the Yangtze estuarycoastal zone is considered as consisted of four subsystems: society, economic development, natural environment and natural hazard. An integrated indicator system based on these four subsystems has been set up in the present study. Based on Entropy theory, the Information Entropy model (IEM) was established to calculate the weight of every index. The authors established Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) evaluation model to evaluate the ecological environmental quality of Shanghai coastal zone. At last, the coastal zones of Baoshan, Pudong, Nanhui, Fengxian, Jinshan and Chongming (in the Yangtze Estuary) were selected to compare the spatiotemporal change and to classify the characteristics of ecological environmental quality from 1999 to 2003. The ecological environmental quality in Baoshan coastal zone was worse than other coastal zones during this period, but from 2001 to 2003, the ecological environmental quality was in the medium range. The ecological environment quality in Pudong, Fengxian, Nanhui and Jinshan coastal zones were among the medium level from 1999 to 2003 year. The quality in Chongming Island was in a better situation in 1999 and 2000, but from 2001 to 2003 year it became in the medium.

This research attempted to study systematically and practically the issues of regional ecological adaptability of water in some major crops in upper reaches of Hanjiang river by applying field water balance model, and using GIS technical and risk index of water deficit. The quantitative demand of water and the balance of field water was calculated for 25 counties in Hanjiang river basin. The index of water deficit risk was adopted to analyze spatialtemporal distribution. In general, the precipitation cannot meet the water demand of major crops, and water deficit is the main character of field water balance in Hanjiang river basin. The water deficit for rice is 187.51 mm and the risk index of water deficit reached to 23.26%; thus, the ecological adaptability of water for rice was not well. Orders of ecological adaptability of all the crops were hemp > potato > bean > summer maize > suga > cotton > winter wheat > coil > rice, with hemp and potato showing a well degree of adaptability. It is found that the adaptability for crops at different growing periods may vary significantly for different crops, and in initial growing stage, water deficit for most crops in this area is very obvious, and spring drought can be a severe problem for the crops in this area.

In order to ameliorate the water quality of Taihu Lake, a eutrophic shallow lake, a special program was launched. One of the key tasks is to restore the submerged vegetation in the lake. Some of the submerged macrophyte species reestablished in the region of Lake Taihu have decomposed and died off, and dissolved oxygen in bottom water was low(1~2 mg/L) at the same time. An outdoor experiment was conducted in artificial ecosystem to illuminate the relationship between the growth of Vallisneria spiralis and the low dissolved oxygen of water. The treatment included two dissolved oxygen concentrations (low oxygen and high contrast oxygen) and two kinds of sediments. It is revealed that using bank sediment or sediment from central lake, low dissolved oxygen had no prominent effect on the growth of V. spiralis, but on the number and weight of tuber of the submersed plant. In low dissolved oxygen water, the root of V. spiralis growing in bank sediment became thin and their activity became weak. But, the root of the plant growing in centrallake sediment was not susceptive. It was proposed that other factors such as light play the key role on the growth of submerged plants in the lake and the effect of dissolved oxygen on aquatic macrophytes be a long time one.

The characteristics of lake shoreline is one of important features of lake morphology. Based on the fractal theory, the morphology change of the lake shorelines in Daihai Lake was studied, and the shoreline development index and shoreline fractal dimension were calculated. The relationship between the two parameters were discussed and used to indicate the dynamic changes in the morphology of lake shorelines. It is concluded that one single parameter cannot adequately reflect the change in the morphology, and therefore further study is needed.