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As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, every aspect of daily life is being altered in response to the virus. The pandemic has altered secondary education. Classes online, teachers struggling to learn Zoom and make lessons meaningful and relevant to students. Students struggling to make sense of this moment, struggling with mental health issues due to the loss of routine and in many cases contact with adult role models. Unfortunately, in times of crisis such as these some of the most disenfranchized people in society are completely overlooked and forgotten, such as refugees. However, if more teachers were to leverage the social studies potential of current events such as the Coronavirus, greater empathy would be felt for marginalized people more starkly impacted by the pandemic, leading ultimately to a heightened sense of civic engagement among the next generation. The purpose of this paper is to assist teachers in guiding their students through analyzing current events, such as COVID-19's impact on refugees, toward developing civic mindedness. In addition to this, the paper will discuss some of the broader societal impacts the virus is having within the United States, as well as ways in which this event may be viewed as a historical subject in the future. The paper will begin by building the content knowledge of high school social studies teachers through addressing the following question: "What is the difference between a refugee entering the United States now versus one year ago before the COVID-19 pandemic?" Following this, the authors will present an inquiry-based learning segment designed to teach the History correlated to the COVID-19 pandemic to a classroom of secondary education students. The inquiry template follows the standard C3 format utilized by the State of Connecticut.

This study examined how the family capital of upper secondary school students impacted on their geospatial thinking skills and explored the mediating effect of their academic achievement in geography. A total of 1,018 upper secondary school students participated. The results of our mediation analysis conducted using the PROCESS modeling tool revealed that family capital has a direct predictive effect on students' geospatial thinking and an indirect predictive effect via their academic achievement in geography. Therefore, this paper aims to redistribute family capital, so as to effectively apply it to the cultivation of students' geographic academic achievement and geographic spatial thinking ability.

Reflecting on different theoretical premises within geographies of care, this paper develops their connections and responds to the normativity and universalism in care literature through conceptualising live‐in elder care (LEC). Considering the relationality of differential contributions to care, we propose a conceptualisation of multiple interrelated approaches by: (1) extending the critical frameworks of care to understand the broader frames of institution, market, and morality in mediating interpersonal connectedness of elder care; (2) thinking care relationally, we challenge the dominant conceptualisation of care and power as unidirectional flows and elder care relationships as a receiver–giver dyad; (3) emplacing care, we focus on the actual conditions of care through which ethics are assembled in their geo‐historical context; (4) treating care as grounded, we centre voices from both older people and LEC workers and how ethics of care are comprehended in the everyday rather than prescribed for commodified care. Our thematic analysis starts with a commodification process where LEC is negotiated in tensions; yet moving beyond arguments around systems of dominance and ideal ethics of care, findings show LEC also creates a space of care where LEC workers and older people constantly negotiate norms, boundaries, and care as a relational process. Conceptually, this paper recognises the role of power in shaping the market and intimate relationships of elder care by elaborating on the inequities of age, gender, and place (not just gender). Moving beyond critiques, this paper emphasises the entangled and relational nature of care as grounded in a series of everyday concerns and resistance, where ethics of difference are negotiated and a cultural‐historical configuration of care still perpetuates in its locale. Finally, this paper speaks to the active yet overlooked role of age and ageing in constructing an ethics of care. This paper recognises the role of power in shaping the market and intimate relationships of elder care by elaborating on the inequities of age, gender, and place (not just gender). Moving beyond critiques, this paper emphasises the relational nature of care as grounded and emplaced in a series of everyday concerns and resistance, where ethics of difference are negotiated and a cultural‐historical configuration of care still perpetuates in its locale. Finally, this paper speaks to the active yet overlooked role of age and ageing in constructing an ethics of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst China's aid and development model has been traditionally understood as divergent from the dominant post‐1945 liberal development model, scholars are also increasingly exploring convergence between features of the two development models. Recently, scholars from a range of disciplines including development studies, development geography and international (business, environment and legal) studies have explored a process whereby China's Belt and Road Initiative and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals converge ('BRI‐SDG integration'). This paper brings these multidisciplinary strands of scholarship together and places them in dialogue with social sciences convergence theory to understand how BRI‐SDG integration aligns with or challenges previous conceptualisations of Chinese‐dominant development convergence. The paper first demonstrates that BRI‐SDG integration proposes a novel and deliberate convergence process ‐ which the paper names 'complementary convergence'. However, BRI‐SDG integration also underscores the need for more multidirectional frameworks that reject Eurocentricity for evaluating the contemporary Chinese‐dominant relationship, and an enhanced focus on how China is influencing dominant development institutions. Finally, BRI‐SDG integration reiterates the methodological difficulties of delineating between 'development models' in an increasingly interrelated global governance of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wang Lingguan is a significant deity in Chinese Daoist beliefs and folk worship. His belief's formation and proliferation are rooted in specific spatial contexts. This paper introduces a spatial perspective to provide a fresh interpretation of Wang Lingguan's belief, examining it through the lenses of ritual, temple, and geography. In Daoist rituals that bridged sacred and secular spaces, Wang Lingguan emerged as Sa Shoujian's protector, manifesting his divine power to devotees. For the purposes of ritual simplification and spatial solidification, believers constructed Daoist Temples as emblems of sacredness and reimagined Wang Lingguan as the protector of these temples in their design. The active involvement of the Ming royal family in building Daoist Temples significantly contributed to establishing regional belief centers for Wang Lingguan. During the Qing Dynasty, although Wang Lingguan's royal patronage waned, his belief spread across most of China, becoming more localized and secularized. The dynamic interplay of ritual, temple, and geographical factors illuminates the establishment, dissemination, and evolution of Wang Lingguan's belief throughout China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of cities in specific locations depends on both geographical features (such as elevation and proximity to rivers) and institutional factors (such as centrality within an administrative region). In this paper, we analyse the importance of these factors at different levels of the urban hierarchy. To do so, we exploit a unique data set on the locations of cities of different status in imperial China from 221 BCE to 1911 CE, a geographically diverse empire with a long history of centralised rule. Developing a stylised theoretical model, we combine econometrics with machine learning techniques. Our results suggest that the higher a city is in the urban hierarchy, the less important are local geographical features compared to institutional factors. At the lower end of the scale, market towns without government responsibilities are most strongly shaped by geographical characteristics. We also find evidence that many cities of political importance in imperial times still enjoy a special status nowadays, underlining the modern relevance of these historical factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars such as John Strong and James Robson have laid firm foundations for the study of the development of Buddhist sacred geography, highlighting the role of relics, stupas and the importance of pre-Buddhist sites of religious significance. Their work has inspired this paper which examines extracts from three texts produced by the monk Shi Daoxuan between 650 and 667 CE: the Shijia fangzhi 釋迦方志 (A Geography of the Śākyas, 650 CE), the Ji Shenzhou Sanbao gantong lu 集神州三寶感通錄 (Collected Records of Stimulus and Responses to the Triple Gem in the Divine Continent, 664) and the Lüxiang gantong zhuan 律相感通傳 (Account of the Stimuli and Responses Related to the Vinaya, 667). Concentrating on two places, the Zhongnan Mountains and Mount Wutai, these materials provide a rare opportunity to examine the role one man played in the promotion of these sites over few decades. This paper argues that Daoxuan was among the first to promote the idea of Mañjuśrī being present in China, initially in the Zhongnan, and only latterly on Wutai, and that Daoxuan was influenced by the picture of Indian Buddhist sacred geography provided by the accounts of Xuanzang's travels in his consolidation and development of a similar geography for China. Daoxuan utilised Buddhist and non-Buddhist writings, and eyewitness testimony from the human realm and beyond, in his efforts to promote these two places. A close reading of these extracts can provide insight into the factors which stimulate the creation of sacred sites, and the methods and processes through which they develop and evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Huayuankou flood event (1938–1947) refers to the prolonged flooding caused by the artificial bursting of the Yellow River embankment at Huayuankou during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). It recreated the historical scenes of frequent floods in the lower Yellow River region of China since the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368–1911), with the counties along the Jialu River in the eastern plains of Henan especially becoming the disaster-stricken areas. The flood lasted for nearly nine years until the completion of embankment restoration work in 1947, causing long-term and extensive environmental impacts. This paper discusses this catastrophic historical flood event caused by human factors, the warfare strategies and hydraulic technology that acted as drives, and the location factors and historical context leading to the start of flooding in flood-prone areas of Henan. Based on spatial perspectives and the historical GIS approach, the paper compiles and integrates historical documents and maps with archival material and topographic maps from the 1930s and 1940s to present the extent of the flood, the associated disasters, and the persistent effects of official relief strategies and political situation in the wider context, examining how the Huayuankou flood was used as a military tactic, but with unpredictable disastrous consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a study of the publication data about translations in the field of geography in China from 1900 to 2017, this paper discusses translation as an inherent factor implying foreign geography's impact on modernising and promoting geography in China. The progress of geographical translation in China has been circuitous and arduous, and can be classified into four distinct yet interconnected phases according to the four‐fold aspects of growth, dominant origin, main field of the translations, and proportion of translations among the selected published works. Although translation has been so ubiquitous in Chinese geography that it seems the impact of foreign geography is inescapable, "impact" cannot be equal to translation. With that in mind, indicators including the number and proportion of translations, the import and absorption of translations, the intertwined variation of translations from various countries in different fields and phases, and the social and political contexts in China are considered. The discussion demonstrates that the role of translation in the growth of geography in China changed situationally, and translation implied not only a "foreign impact" but also a "domestic remodelling" of the discipline. Although the status of geography in China is very different from what it used to be, this conclusion suggests that "importing" quality work is necessary for the further promotion of Chinese geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dialectical relationship between 'big D' Development (broadly, the formal interventionist, international Development sector) and little 'd' development (the immanent structures and processes of capitalism) is a concept widely invoked in Geography and Development Studies. In this paper, we ask how the d/Development dialectic is evolving under current conjunctures of emergent state capitalism(s). We suggest that, going beyond 'containment', Development is ever more deeply inhabited by (capitalist) development; with implications for its palliative and restructuring roles, and for praxis, contestation and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on tourism geographies in China. He offers his observations on Anglo-American tourism geography review papers, the difficulty experienced by tourism geographers in publishing their work in mainstream geographical journals, and the historical background of Chinese tourism geography research.

This article investigates the geography of the fintech industry in China's cities, which has not been systematically studied. It contributes to the literature on fintech by applying a new theoretical perspective—evolutionary economic geography. Improving on the existing literature on fintech that conducts a relatively general analysis of the role of technology in fintech development, evolutionary economic geography offers a detailed analysis that zooms in on the specific kinds of technology that determine fintech development. Moreover, this article contributes to the literature on evolutionary economic geography by systematically examining the role of market demand in developing a new industry. Based on a unique data set from 2003 to 2019, this article provides a city‐level analysis of the fintech industry in China. The results show that the fintech industry tends to develop in cities that have accumulated technologies in the fields of finance, e‐commerce, data sciences, and security. Moreover, there is a positive relationship between the development of the fintech industry and the demand for fintech services. Finally, this paper sheds light on the role of a favorable regulatory environment in fintech development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study exposes and maps a hitherto little‐known dimension of China's urban geography – that of shrinkage, directly affecting one in 10 of its cities. Urban shrinkage is revealed to be a growing concern for the most populous country on earth, with the absolute number of shrinking cities rising by 71% from 164 in the 1990s to 281 in the 2000s. By developing its own definition of the city as an urban area (UA) in the Chinese political‐administrative context, this paper builds a morphologic taxonomy of China's shrinking cities. This reveals the overall net population loss across Chinese shrinking cities more than doubling since 1990, reaching 7.3 million inhabitants in 2010. Sixty‐eight Chinese UAs, mostly in north‐eastern China, are found to have been shrinking continuously since 1990. Despite the multifaceted and entangled make‐up of urban shrinkage, the paper identifies four distinct causes of this geographical phenomenon in China: (1) state‐incubated reindustrialisation and economic restructuring, impacting upon 63% of all shrinking UAs; (2) the country's new economic geography, with the underlying centripetal forces of agglomeration pushing around 34% of all shrinking cities towards marginalisation; (3) state‐propelled demographic change, leading to natural population decline in 26% of Chinese shrinking cities; and (4) state‐sponsored mega‐shrinkage, responsible for urban population loss in almost 20% of all the cases. This study further provides a theoretically informed reflection on the peculiarity of shrinkage in China and its public policy implications. This study exposes and maps a hitherto little‐known dimension of China's urban geography – that of shrinkage, directly affecting one in ten of its cities. The paper also identifies four distinct causes of this geographical phenomenon in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most current scientific policies incorporate debates on cities and the geographic organisation of scientific activity. Research on ‘world cities’ develops the idea that interconnected agglomerations can better take advantage of international competition. Thus, the increasing concentration of activities in these cities at the expense of others could be observed by certain scholars using measures based on scientific publications. Others, however, show that an opposite trend is emerging: the largest cities are undergoing a relative decline in a country’s scientific activities. To go beyond this seeming contradiction, this paper provides a global analysis of all countries with papers in the Web of Science over the period 1987–2007. The author’s addresses were geocoded and grouped into agglomerations. Registering of papers was based on the fractional counting of multi-authored publications, and the results are unambiguous: deconcentration is the dominant trend both globally and within countries, with some exceptions for which explanations are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contributes to debates about the globalisation of higher education by providing a pioneering geographical exploration of Chinese–foreign cooperation in running transnational higher education, or TNHE, programs. Departing from widespread neoliberal and postcolonial critiques of TNHE, which tend to emphasise liberal market forces and Anglo‐American hegemony in the circulation of academic knowledge, our study examines how the Chinese state's developmental targets, strategic policies, and political–ideological considerations have shaped the evolutionary trajectory, geographical distribution, and cross‐border connections of China's TNHE programs. We demonstrate that the place‐based development of TNHE is mediated by governments' interventionist policies and embedded in existing higher education regimes, especially in the context of East Asian developmental states. By maintaining a higher education system dominated by public universities and by being the ultimate examination and approval authority, the Chinese government both determines the status of TNHE in the national higher education system, constrains the typologies and sources of knowledge flows, and shapes the national landscape of TNHE development. The territorial geographies of TNHE thus reflect complicated interactions between the state and the market, the global and the local, and economic and political/cultural forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiological studies show strong associations between fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) air pollution and adverse pulmonary effects. In the present study, wintertime PM 2.5 samples were collected from three geographically similar regions-Sacramento, California, USA; Jinan, Shandong, China; and Taiyuan, Shanxi, China-and extracted to form PM CA , PM SD , and PM SX , respectively, for comparison in a BALB/c mouse model. Each of four groups was oropharyngeally administered Milli-Q water vehicle control (50 μL) or one type of PM extract (20 μg/50 μL) five times over two weeks. Mice were necropsied on post-exposure days 1, 2, and 4 and examined using bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), histopathology, and assessments of cytokine/chemokine mRNA and protein expression. Chemical analysis demonstrated all three extracts contained black carbon, but PM SX contained more sulfates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) associated with significantly greater neutrophil numbers and greater alveolar/bronchiolar inflammation on post-exposure days 1 and 4. On day 4, PM SX -exposed mice also exhibited significant increases in interleukin-1 beta, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and chemokine C-X-C motif ligands-3 and -5 mRNA, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 protein. These combined findings suggest greater sulfate and PAH content contributed to a more intense and progressive inflammatory response with repeated PM SX compared to PM CA or PM SD exposure., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This paper argues for a 'provincialised' critical geography of area studies by tracing the spatial genealogy of three waves of Chinese world regional geography and foreign area studies. The shifting terrains have been shaped strongly by the continually reconfigured power-geometries and Chinese thinking of 'the international'. The two coeval fields and knowledge production therein are situated in place-specific institutional contexts, which engender contingent disciplinary geographies and their enduring lack of dialogue. The contemporary regeneration of Chinese 'world-writing' brings its own identities and discourses, power relations and complex impacts to local-global epistemic (in)equality, which requires and rewards further critical mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the texts and ritual performances of three typical Kṣitigarbha (Dizang 地藏) or Maudgalyāyana (Mulian 目連) precious scrolls (baojuan 寶卷) in late imperial China, with an emphasis on locality. By examining the identification of Jin Dizang 金地藏 as Dizang Bodhisattva's emanation on Mt. Jiuhua 九華山 , Mt. Jiuhua's function as an essential geographical setting in texts, and the ritual contexts for their performances, this paper demonstrates that Mt. Jiuhua's rising fame is intricately reflected in Dizang or Mulian scrolls. Instead of reading these scrolls through the lens of a particular religious group, this paper adopts a local perspective to reveal the ways in which precious scrolls became important venues for representing sacred geography. Thus, this paper works as a case study of the confluences of religious history and vernacular literature. 本文以地方性為中心檢視了明清時期三種典型的地藏或目連寶卷的文本及儀式表演。通過考察宝卷中地藏菩薩在九華山的化身金地藏、九華山作为不可或缺的地理要素，以及演出这些寶卷的儀式背景，本文表明地藏或目連寶卷以曲折的形式反映了九華山的重要性。本文試圖避免僅從特定宗教傳統的角度來解讀這些寶卷，而是採取了地方視角揭示出寶卷如何成為表達神聖地理的重要方式。由此，本文可视作結合宗教史和民間文學的個案研究。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensifying strategic competition with China has introduced the need for the United States to consider extensive and stringent economic restrictions against the rising power. This article suggests that US economic containment of China is unlikely to materialise due to the presence of the EU states that are not militarily threatened by the geographically separated China and in a position to prioritise economic benefits in exchanges with that state. It first identifies the role of the EU in China's foreign economic exchanges and addresses the ability of the EU states to replace the economic function of the United States in China. Then, it discusses how geographical conditions surrounding China make the rising state largely an East Asian threat. It suggests that, devoid of any direct military threat from China, the EU states can undermine the effectiveness of substantial US economic containment measures against China by functioning as alternative economic partners or facilitating China's construction of alternative economic routes. Finally, this paper discusses the limitations in US ability to constrain the EU states' economic exchanges with China. While concerns grow over Washington's economic assertiveness against Beijing, the feasibility of a US-led upheaval in economic relations involving China should be carefully gauged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to apply a postcolonial perspective on the findings from ethnographic research in a multi-national corporation in Shanghai and shed light on the ways that western creativity narratives are deployed as a means to mobilise and transform workers into self-governing, obedient corporate subjects.Design/methodology/approach The research applied ethnographic approaches to understand how creativity narratives are enacted in cross-cultural settings.Findings Creativity discourses in China often provoke anxieties around national capacity, economic growth and indigenous innovation. Locally trained knowledge workers in China are often assessed as less creative than their western counterparts and the reason attributed to cultural, pedagogical and political differences. However, these factors are not static in China’s fluid economic landscape and neither do Chinese workers uniformly accept that they are less creative.Originality/value This paper sheds light on a previously unexamined aspect of dominant western creativity discourses, which may be useful in future work amongst practitioners in international business settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper uses geopolitics as a critical lens to analyze how four films in China's most popular movie franchise--Lost on Journey (2010), Lost in Thailand (2013), Lost in Hong Kong (2015), and Dying to Survive (2018)--construct different dimensions of post-socialist spatial and temporal sensibilities. All four films portray a morally flawed businessman amidst a journey that profoundly transforms him in the end. This paper examines how these journeys unfold in an expanding geography--China's secondtier cities, as well as Thailand, Hong Kong, and India--but fail in seriously engaging geopolitics. In particular, the last three films use China's geopolitical "others" as a strategic lure, playing up cultural stereotypes and cultural tourism. The depiction of China's geopolitical others ultimately serves as a vehicle to process China's rapidly changing realities and reflect upon distinctively Chinese experiences in the 2010s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourist satisfaction has always been a crucial research issue in the tourism economy. This paper utilizes the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to analyze the impact of urban tourism satisfaction on urban macroeconomics from a macro perspective, using quarterly data on tourist satisfaction in 35 large and medium-sized cities along with major urban macroeconomic variables. This study is quite distinct from previous research that focused on constructing a tourist satisfaction index and analyzing the influence factors of tourism satisfaction from the perspective of the micro-level internal composition of tourism. The empirical results show: Firstly, in respect of the impact of urban tourists' satisfaction on the GDP income of cities, the SDM and the SDM with a lagged first-order dependent variable (SDM_dlag) show that the short-term and long-term indirect effects of log-tourist satisfaction are significantly positive, indicating that city satisfaction has a significant positive spatial spillover effect on GDP growth in other cities; Secondly, in respect of the influence of urban tourist satisfaction on the cost of urban life in the SDM, the long-term direct and indirect effects of logarithmic satisfaction are significantly positive, implying, in the long run, that tourist satisfaction has a positive intraregional spillover effect and spatial spillover effect on urban living costs; Finally, the SDM_dlag for the regression of urban tourist satisfaction on the cost of urban daily life shows that the short-run direct and indirect effects of city tourist satisfaction are significantly negative, indicating that tourist satisfaction has intra-regional and spatial spillover effects, and its rise will reduce the cost of living expenses in local and other cities in the short term. Overall, we have further elucidated the role of different levels of urban tourist satisfaction in city macroeconomics from the spatial dimension, thereby enriching the existing research on tourist satisfaction to some certain extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a personal statement concerning the author's involvement in tourism research in Asia, particularly Indonesia and China, including Taiwan. Personal background and major projects are introduced, and seven research dimensions are suggested: the role of tourism, extending project activities, finance, synergy, timing, collaboration, and language and culture. Current activities are outlined. Concluding comments address timeliness, a long-term perspective, cultural empathy and making a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The relations between geographical proximity and spatial distance constitute a popular topic of concern. Thus, how geographical proximity affects scientific cooperation, and whether geographically proximate scientific cooperation activities in fact exhibit geographic scale features should be investigated. Methodology: Selected statistics from the ISI database on cooperatively authored papers, the authors of which resided in 60 typical cites in China, and which were published in the years 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010, were used to establish matrices of geographic distance and cooperation levels between cities. By constructing a distance-cooperation model, the degree of scientific cooperation based on spatial distance was calculated. The relationship between geographical proximity and scientific cooperation, as well as changes in that relationship, was explored using the fitting function. Result: (1) Instead of declining, the role of geographical proximity in inter-city scientific cooperation has increased gradually but significantly with the popularization of telecommunication technologies; (2) the relationship between geographical proximity and scientific cooperation has not followed a perfect declining curve, and at certain spatial scales, the distance-decay regularity does not work; (3) the Chinese scientific cooperation network gathers around different regional center cities, showing a trend towards a regional network; within this cooperation network the amount of inter-city cooperation occurring at close range increased greatly. Conclusion: The relationship between inter-city geographical distance and scientific cooperation has been enhanced and strengthened over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experience of migration brings particular challenges for wellbeing, especially as an individual's sense of disconnection from previous homes can persist over many years. This paper reports on how visitors to a Chinese community centre in NW England reflected upon their experiences of being uprooted from their homelands, even in cases where they had lived for more than half of their lives in the UK. Memories of their previous homelands were persistently called upon in understanding their sense of belonging and cultural identities in the present. We use their accounts in dialogue with recent theories of landscape, especially those that argue for an understanding of place as embodied, ambivalent and in a continual process of making and re-making, in order to trace memories of home in contemporary cultures of wellbeing., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Accidents, bad weathers, traffic congestions, etc. led to the uncertainties of travel times in real-life road networks, which greatly affected the quality of individual’s life and the reliability of transportation system. This paper addressed the school bus routing problem in such a stochastic and time-dependent road environment. Firstly, the problem was set based on a single-school configuration, and the students were picked up at their homes, which was in line with the current situation of school bus systems in China. Thus, it could be regarded as an independent problem of school bus route generation in random dynamic networks, which could be solved as a variant of extended Vehicle Routing Problem. However, due to the fluctuation and uncertainty of link travel times, the arrival time at each stop including the destination was varying. Therefore, the selection of optimal path connecting the current service node with the next one was treated as a sub-problem in this study, where the reliability of travel times in the stochastic and time-varying network was highly concerned by such time-rigid commuters. To this end, a Robust Optimal Schedule Times model with a hard time windows constraint was built to generate a most cost-reliable route for school buses. By the use of Robust Optimization method, it was intended to minimize the worst-case total cost which combined the cost of earlier schedule delays with the disutility of travel times. It was also proved that the proposed model could be converted into solving a conventional problem in deterministic dynamic networks for a reduction of computation complexity, which provided the potential of applying to the practical problems. Finally, the validity of the proposed model and its performance evaluation was analyzed through a small-scale computational instance, where all the link travel times in the simulated network were attributed to both time-varying and stochastic. Then, a mathematical programming solver was used to find the exact optimal solution. The results indicated that the model was valid, and the necessity of considering the stochastic and time-dependent nature of transportation networks was also confirmed in the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geographic associations of brands and branding have been well demonstrated in the country-of-origin (COO) effect literature in that a product's COO has a branding effect and consumers have preferences for goods from specific countries. The aggregation of these preferences can lead to unique and asymmetric trading patterns between countries. In this paper, we extend the geographic associations of brands and branding to domestic trade and document that seller provinces have a branding effect and geographic preference asymmetries can arise within peer-to-peer trade networks such as Taobao in China. We find that while buyers in one province in China are willing to purchase goods from sellers in another province, it is often the case that the relationship is not reciprocal. This asymmetry in preferences persists after controlling for time-varying factors at both buyer and seller locations. Like brands, a location therefore serves as a quality cue and reputation mechanism for the unobserved attributes of sellers, products, and logistics services from that location. We then explore factors that might be correlated with these time-invariant preferences across provinces. We find that in addition to the gravity effect of distance and the home-bias effect, other factors such as dyadic trust; migration; similarities in ethnicities; occupations and education levels; and levels of marketization and rule of law are correlated with the asymmetries. Notably, these factors differ from those identified in a contemporaneous study of eBay in the US, in which religiosity and political ideology contribute to the differences (Elfenbein et al. 2018). We believe that the Chinese and the US experiences differ because the two countries differ substantially in social, economic, political, religious, legal, and commercial environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances an affective geography of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in contemporary China. Drawing on existing theorizations of the potential roles of affect, emotion, and pre-consciousness in (re)shaping socioeconomic landscapes, we argue for an affective geography based on Ruez and Cockayne's affirmative theorization of ambivalence. The paper contends that SOEs are affective socio-spaces with divergent possibilities arising through workers' everyday life and not just a-priori institutional products of state power. The paper illustrates this framework with a close reading of the assemblage of workers' everyday life with the emergent socio-spatial formations of SOEs. The original case is based on in-depth interviews and on-site observations in 13 SOEs in the Northeast provinces of China. Ambivalent affects include sense of belonging and human kindness. These embody ambiguities and transformation of intense feelings, further acting on workers' ongoing employment practices to actualize the reproduction of SOE socio-spaces and workers' affective practices of "stabilities" and "mobilities". The results strengthen the affirmative meaning of ambivalence in (re)configuring SOE social, spatial and temporal relations. We thus call for further affective geographies that investigate the emergence of feeling-knowing-acting regime of ambivalence with possibilities for multiple becomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that while China now attaches geostrategic importance to Taiwan, it has not always done so. It has only accorded such significance to Taiwan in the post-Mao era. By reviewing how Taiwan became a Japanese colony, how it came under the control of Chiang Kai-shek's government, and how it came to be seen by the government of the People's Republic of China as a sacred territory before being deemed geostrategically significant, this paper seeks to demonstrate that Taiwan's importance to China is not based on geography, an immutable factor. Instead, it was the result of contingencies of history and the changed calculations of succeeding governments in China. This leads to the important conclusion that the geostrategic importance the Chinese government now attaches to Taiwan may change if the Chinese leadership alters its strategic calculus or if the government itself is replaced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are the main force of spatial restructuring in the location of economic decision making. This paper analyzes the changing geography of M&As and its influencing factors in China during the period of 2002–2016. It shows a significant "core‐periphery" spatial pattern or network structure, in which a core group of major metropolises and developed provinces, led by Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu, dominates China's M&As market and inter‐regional networks, marginalizing the other regions. The descriptive and modelling results indicate that spatial proximity and corporate preferences for localized assets can shape this geography of China's domestic M&As. The findings confirm that the "home bias" does exist in China's M&As partnering. Meanwhile, the key drivers of China's domestic acquirers are their desire to access and internalize localized assets, especially in the emerging market, new technology, and policy advantages. This study enriches the existing knowledge about the determinants of inter‐regional M&As in emerging economies (e.g., China), where the influences of regional disparities in the institutional setting, industrial structure, as well as economic marketization and financialization are more significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has radically expanded the role of algorithmic governance in everyday mobility. In China, urban and provincial governments have introduced health codes app as a national contract tracing and quarantine enforcement method to restrict the movements of "risky" individuals through malls, subways, railways, as well as between regions. Yet the health codes have been implemented with uneven efficacy and unexpected consequences. Drawing on glitch politics, we read these unintended consequences as "bugs" emerging from the introduction of platform-based management into everyday life. These bugs mediated individuals' lived experiences of the digital app and the hybrid space constituted by population governance, individual digital navigation, and technology. Drawing on a database of posts scraped from Zhihu, a popular Chinese question-and-answer site, we examine three dimensions of the bug: the algorithmic bug, the territorial bug, and the corporeal bug. This paper sheds light on the significance of end-user experiences in digital infrastructure and contributes to our understanding of the digital geographies of bugs in algorithmic governance and platform urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deterioration of water quality has become a primary environmental concern worldwide. Understanding the status of water quality and identifying the influencing factors are important for water resources management. However, reported analyses have mostly been conducted in small and focused areas. It is still unclear if factors driving spatial variation in water quality would be different in extended spatial scales. In this paper, we analyzed spatial pattern of inland surface water quality in China using a dataset with four water quality parameters (i.e., pH, DO, NH4+-N and CODMn) and the water quality level. We tested the effects of anthropogenic (i.e., land use and socio-economic) and natural (i.e., climatic and topographic) factors on spatial variation in water quality. The study concluded that the overall inland surface water quality in China was at level III (fair). Water quality level was strongly correlated with CODMn and NH4+-N concentration. In contrast to reported studies that suggested land use patterns were the determinants of inland surface water quality, this study revealed that both anthropogenic and natural factors played important roles in explaining spatial variation of inland surface water quality in China. Among the tested explanatory variables, mean elevation within watershed appeared as the best predictor for pH, while annual precipitation and mean air temperature were the most important explanatory variables for CODMn and DO, respectively. NH4+-N concentration and water quality level were most strongly correlated with the percent of forest cover in watershed. Compared to studies at smaller spatial scales, this study found different influencing factors of surface water quality, suggesting that factors may play different roles at different spatial scales of consideration. Therefore management policies and measures in water quality control must be established and implemented accordingly. Since currently adopted parameters for monitoring of inland surface water quality in China are largely influenced by natural variables, additional physicochemical and biological indicators are needed for a robust assessment of human impacts on water quality., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Empirical studies of the socio-economic determinants of the wellbeing of the oldest-old in China including the role of geography and spatial factors are rare. This paper applies binary logistic regression analysis to data on the oldest-old aged 80 years old and higher from the 2011 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study (CLHLS). Socioeconomic determinants of the self-reported quality of life (QoL) and self-reported health (SRH) of the oldest-old population are explored, with special attention paid to the role of residence and region. The results indicate that, after controlling for individual demographic and health behavior variables, both economic status and social welfare have a significant effect on self-reported QoL and SRH. There are also significant differences in self-reported QoL among cities, towns and rural areas, with the oldest-old respondents living in Central rural, Western town and Western rural areas being significantly less likely to report good QoL, compared to the oldest-old living in Eastern cities. Significant differences in SRH exist among Eastern China, Western China and Northeastern China, with the oldest-old from Western towns being significantly less likely to report good health, and the oldest-old from Northeastern cities being significantly more likely to report good health than those from Eastern cities. The results of this study indicate that socioeconomic factors that explain self-reported QoL and SRH of the older population are in general factors that explain the self-reported QoL and SRH of the oldest-old cohorts. The interaction effect of residence and region matters more than each of the individual factors, in providing us with more detailed information on the role of geography in explaining QoL and health of the oldest-old. At a time when the oldest-old cohorts in China are at the beginning of their projected growth, these findings are vital for providing policy makers with more information on the urgency of making more geographically targeted policy to improve more effectively the self-reported QoL and SRH of the oldest-old population.

This paper investigates whether China's provincial economies follow the same growth path by adopting a finite mixture model in which provinces are sorted into groups according to the similarity in the conditional distribution of their growth rates. The method is flexible in that it accounts for (i) endogenous classifications other than given priori, (ii) heterogeneous marginal effects of determinants, (iii) the possibility of growth path transformation, and (iv) the roles of geographic location and institutions in the growth path. The results reveal that all provinces do not follow a common growth process, but rather two distinct growth regimes. Particularly, one is dominated by foreign direct investment and financial depth, while the other is dominated by trade openness. The growth process of provinces in the central region evolves around the year 2004 from the former to the latter. More importantly, geography and institutions help sort provinces into groups, and institutions are more predominant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is heralded as the largest investment in infrastructure in history and is expected to re‐shape the geographies of urbanisation in the coming decades. In this paper we review the burgeoning, yet still embryonic literature on the BRI. Our aim is to move beyond currently dominant framings of the BRI as a geopolitical or economic strategy that tend to overlook the complex embeddedness of infrastructure. Drawing on theories of planetary urbanisation, we argue that the BRI constitutes a form of urbanisation that is bound up with the socio‐spatial and ecological restructuring of global capitalism. We illustrate this by mapping and analysing energy projects under the BRI. Overall, we outline a research agenda on the BRI that calls for (1) a more nuanced analysis of its spatial and scalar politics; (2) approaching the BRI as a distinctly urban question; and (3) a disruption of the dominant China‐centric discussions through critical in‐depth case‐study analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The era of digitization is revolutionizing traditional humanities research, presenting both novel methodologies and challenges. This field harnesses quantitative techniques to yield groundbreaking insights, contingent upon comprehensive datasets on historical subjects. The China Historical Christian Database (CHCD) exemplifies this trend, furnishing researchers with a rich repository of historical, relational, and geographical data about Christianity in China from 1550 to 1950. The study of Christianity in China confronts formidable obstacles, including the mobility of historical agents, fluctuating relational networks, and linguistic disparities among scattered sources. The CHCD addresses these challenges by curating an open-access database built in neo4j that records information about Christian institutions in China and those that worked inside of them. Drawing on historical sources, the CHCD contains temporal, relational, and geographic data. The database currently has over 40,000 nodes and 200,000 relationships, and continues to grow. Beyond its utility for religious studies, the CHCD encompasses broader interdisciplinary inquiries including social network analysis, geospatial visualization, and economic modeling. This article introduces the CHCD's structure, and explains the data collection and curation process. Dataset:  https://github.com/chcdatabase/data Dataset License: CC BY 4.0 DEED [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Intelligent interpretation based on high-resolution remote sensing is an important way to realize the fine generation and rapid update of geographic information. Based on the background of fine-accurate geographical application using remote sensing, this paper analyzes the limitations of remote sensing information products in production and application. We explain the necessity of remote sensing serving geographical research and the key of coupling the fine shape of the map and the accurate content of the spectrum. Methods: Based on the basic understanding that geography guides the research of intelligent remote sensing, we first put forward the development direction and technical ideas of high-resolution remote sensing geoscience analysis based on fine geographical scenes. Then, we propose an intelligent computing mode via the space-time/satellite-ground collaboration. Furthermore, we take the evaluation of rocky desertification cultivated land in Guanling County, Guizhou Province, China as an application case. Results: Through this case study, three basic models, namely zoning-stratified perception, spatiotemporal synergistically inversion and multi-granular decision-making, are used to show how to carry out fine-accurate application by high-resolution remote sensing collaborative computing in complex mountain areas from a comprehensive perspective of refinement, quantification and topicalization. Conclusions: Combined with the previous work experience and practical cognition, several key scientific problems are discussed, such as spatial expression using irregular grids, multimodal reconstruction of temporal features, multi-source un‐ certainty analysis and iterative optimization guided by uncertainty. We give some potential study directions and research ideas in order to establish a more complete and feasible theoretical system and explore the development paths for the research on intelligent remote sensing under the guidance of geography and the fine-accurate geographical application with remote sensing data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the Indo-Pacific as a new area of conflict between actors in maintaining strategic access - both marine resources and sea route access - for commercial and military transportation purposes. The results of this study explain that conflicts of interest describe differences in attitudes, especially between the United States (US), its allies, and several countries that also have security problems with China. On the other hand, various Chinese military steps are considered to be worrying for global interests in the Indo-Pacific, namely freedom of navigation that ensures the security of maritime transportation routes, as well as the ownership of marine resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first detect the uneven distribution of regional inequality in rural China with the per capita net income data at county level, and then diagnose the various factors that contribute to this as well as its driving mechanisms using the four-dimension transitional framework. The results suggest that rural inequalities are clustered at the province level, and those most unequal regions tend to be geographically gathered. Stemming from the framework, the study reveals that the spatio-temporal disparity in rural inequality is deeply embedded in the quadruple-transition process of marketization, globalization, decentralization and urbanization. Employing both the pooled OLS and spatial regime models, the study further unfolds that influences of the transition processes are diversified across regions and study periods. We finally argue that human investment rather than economic growth plays the key role in reducing the rural inequality in eastern provinces, and that the formulation of policies in line with regional characteristics would be helpful to address or alleviate rural inequality. • The uneven distribution of regional inequality in rural China is detected. • Major contributors and impetus of the disparities of rural inequality is diagnosed. • Rural inequalities tend to be geographically gathered. • Spatio-temporal disparity in rural inequality is deeply embedded in China's transitional process. • Human investment plays the key role in reducing the inequality in eastern provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper demonstrates the impact of an endemic fossorial animal, plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae), on soil properties and N2O flux at the Zoige Wetland. Pika burrow and control sites without disturbance by pika were selected to measure the soil water content, bulk density, soil organic matter (SOM), NH4-N content and NO3-N content in August 2012. N2O fluxes were measured with static opaque chambers at these sites in June and August 2012. Pika burrowing altered soil aeration by transferring deeper soil to the surface and by constructing underground burrows, which significantly increased bulk density, and reduced soil water content, SOM and NH4-N content at 0–10 cm and 10–20 cm soil depth. N2O flux had a significant correlation with bulk density, SOM and NH4-N content. Pika burrowing significantly influenced N2O flux by increasing N2O flux at the control site from near zero to 0.063±0.011 mg m-2 h-1. Our findings described how pika burrowing influences the soil traits and significantly increases the principal greenhouse gas N2O emission. As plateau pika was commonly considered as a pest, our findings give a novel clue to effectively manage populations of plateau pika on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from the perspective of greenhouse gas emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Themed‐Intervention commentary provides a brief overview of the history of Geography as a modern academic discipline in China, its development in the reform era (1979–), and the distinctive conventions and norms that distinguish it from paradigms and practices of geography in the Anglophone academia. We identify two tensions: between sciences and social sciences orientations, and between applied knowledge and critical/reflexive knowlegde. These tensions are both internal to Geography in China, and exist between Chinese and Anglophone Geography, the latter as embodied in major international journals. Mindful of these tensions, this commentary develops reflections over geography education in China and the challenges faced by academic dialogues between Chinese and Anglophone geographers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hearing loss is the most common sensory impairment, but limited studies focused on the association of socioeconomic status (SES) with hearing loss among adults of working age. This paper aimed to fill this gap among Chinese adults. We obtained data from Ear and Hearing Disorder Survey conducted in four provinces of China in 2014–2015. The survey was based on WHO Ear and Hearing Disorders Survey Protocol and 25,860 adults aged 25 to 59 years were selected in this study. Trained local examiners performed pure tone audiometry to screen people with hearing loss, and those who were screened positively for hearing loss were referred to audiologists to make final diagnosis. SES was measured by occupation, education and income. Results show after adjusting for SES measures and covariates, in urban areas, compared with white-collar workers, blue-collar workers and the unemployed were more likely to have hearing loss, with an odds ratio of 1.2 (95%CI: 1.0, 1.3) and 1.2 (95%CI: 1.0, 1.4), respectively. Compared with people with education of senior high school or above, those with junior high school, primary school and illiteracy had 1.6 (95%CI: 1.4, 1.8), 2.1(95%CI: 1.7, 2.5) and 2.6 (95%CI: 1.9, 3.7) times as likely to have hearing loss, respectively. In rural areas, the unemployed had 1.5 (95%CI: 1.0, 2.3) times the risk of hearing loss compared with white-collar workers, and illiterates had 1.6 (95%CI: 1.6, 2.1) times the risk of hearing loss compared with people with education of senior high school or above, after SES variables and covariates were taken into considerations. Income was not significantly associated with hearing loss in urban and rural areas. In conclusion, SES, in the form of occupation and education, was associated with hearing loss among working-aged population, and further studies are needed to explore the mechanism of such association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal mining is one of the core industries that contribute to the economic development of a country but deteriorate the environment. Being the primary source of energy, coal has become essential to meet the energy demand of a country. It is excavated by both opencast and underground mining methods and affects the environment, especially hydrological cycle, by discharging huge amounts of mine water. Natural hydrological processes have been well known to be vulnerable to human activities, especially large scale mining activities, which inevitably generate surface cracks and subsidence. It is therefore valuable to assess the impact of mining on river runoff for the sustainable development of regional economy. In this paper, the impact of coal mining on river runoff is assessed in one of the national key coal mining sites, Gujiao mining area, Shanxi Province, China. The characteristics of water cycle are described, the similarities and differences of runoff formation are analyzed in both coal mining and pre-mining periods. The integrated distributed hydrological model named MIKE SHE is employed to simulate and evaluate the influence of coal mining on river runoff. The study shows that mining one ton of raw coal leads to the reduction of river runoff by 2.87 m3 between 1981 and 2008, of which the surface runoff decreases by 0.24 m3 and the baseflow by 2.63 m3. The reduction degree of river runoff for mining one ton of raw coal shows an increasing trend over years. The current study also reveals that large scale coal mining initiates the formation of surface cracks and subsidence, which intercepts overland flow and enhances precipitation infiltration. Together with mine drainage, the natural hydrological processes and the stream flows have been altered and the river run off has been greatly reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circuity, defined as the ratio of the shortest network distance to the Euclidean distance between one origin–destination (O-D) pair, can be adopted as a helpful evaluation method of indirect degrees of train paths. In this paper, the maximum circuity of the paths of operated trains is set to be the threshold value of the circuity of high-speed train paths. For the shortest paths of any node pairs, if their circuity is not higher than the threshold value, the paths can be regarded as the reasonable paths. With the consideration of a certain relative or absolute error, we cluster the reasonable paths on the basis of their inclusion relationship and the center path of each class represents a passenger transit corridor. We take the high-speed rail (HSR) network in China at the end of 2014 as an example, and obtain 51 passenger transit corridors, which are alternative sets of train paths. Furthermore, we analyze the circuity distribution of paths of all node pairs in the network. We find that the high circuity of train paths can be decreased with the construction of a high-speed railway line, which indicates that the structure of the HSR network in China tends to be more complete and the HSR network can make the Chinese railway network more efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In geo-statistics, the Durbin-Watson test is frequently employed to detect the presence of residual serial correlation from least squares regression analyses. However, the Durbin-Watson statistic is only suitable for ordered time or spatial series. If the variables comprise cross-sectional data coming from spatial random sampling, the test will be ineffectual because the value of Durbin-Watson's statistic depends on the sequence of data points. This paper develops two new statistics for testing serial correlation of residuals from least squares regression based on spatial samples. By analogy with the new form of Moran's index, an autocorrelation coefficient is defined with a standardized residual vector and a normalized spatial weight matrix. Then by analogy with the Durbin-Watson statistic, two types of new serial correlation indices are constructed. As a case study, the two newly presented statistics are applied to a spatial sample of 29 China's regions. These results show that the new spatial autocorrelation models can be used to test the serial correlation of residuals from regression analysis. In practice, the new statistics can make up for the deficiencies of the Durbin-Watson test.

This paper presents the development and evaluation of the train-the-trainer (TTT) workshop for lay resident leaders to be lay health promoters. The TTT workshop aimed to prepare the trainees to implement and/or assist in conducting a series of community-based family well-being activities for the residents in a public low rent housing estate, entitled “Learning Families Project”, under the FAMILY project. The four-hour TTT workshop was conducted for 32 trainees (72% women, 43% aged ≥ 60, 41% ≤ elementary school education). The workshop aimed to promote trainees’ knowledge, self-efficacy, attitude and practice of incorporating the positive psychology themes into their community activities and engaging the residents to join these activities and learn with their family members. Post-training support was provided. The effectiveness of the TTT was examined by self-administered questionnaires about trainees’ reactions to training content, changes in learning and practice at three time points (baseline, and immediately and one year after training), and the difference in residents’ survey results before and after participating in the community activities delivered by the trainees. The trainees’ learning about the general concepts of family well-being, learning family, leadership skills and planning skills increased significantly with medium to large effect sizes (Cohen’s d: 0.5–1.4) immediately after the training. The effects of perceived knowledge and attitude towards practice were sustained to one year (Cohen’s d: 0.4–0.6). The application of planning skills to implement community activities was higher at one year (Cohen’s d: 0.4), compared with baseline. At one year, the residents’ survey results showed significant increases in the practice of positive communication behaviours and better neighbour cohesions after joining the family well-being activities of LFP. Qualitative feedback supported the quantitative results. Our TTT workshop could serve as a practical example of development and evaluation of training programs for lay personnel to be lay health promoters. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the economic transition, manufacturing in China has undergone profound changes not only in number of enterprises, but also in ownership structure and intra-urban spatial distribution. Investigating the changing manufacturing landscape from the perspective of ownership structure is critical to a deep understanding of the changing role of market and government in re-shaping manufacturing location behavior. Through a case study of Wuxi, a city experiencing comprehensive ownership reform, this paper presents a detailed analysis of the intra-urban spatial shift of manufacturing, identifies the location discrepancies, and examines the underlying forces responsible for the geographical differentiations. Through zone- and district-based analysis, a distinctive trend of decentralization and suburbanization, as well as an uneven distribution of manufacturing, is unveiled. The results of Location Quotient analysis show that the distribution of manufacturing by ownership exhibits distinctive spatial patterns, which is characterized by a historically-based, market-led, and institutionally-created spatial variation. By employing Hot Spot analysis, the role of development zones in attracting manufacturing enterprises of different ownerships is established. Overall, the location behavior of the diversified manufacturing has been increasingly based on the forces of market since the land marketization began. A proactive role played by local governments has also guided the enterprise location decision through spatial planning and regulatory policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil sealing (loss of soil resources due to extensive land covering for the purpose of house building, road construction etc.) and subsequent soil landscape pattern changes constitute typical environmental problems in many places worldwide. Previous studies concentrated on soil sealing in urbanized regions, whereas rural areas have not been given sufficient attention. Accordingly, this paper studies soil landscape pattern dynamics (i.e., landscape pattern changes in response to rural anthropogenic activities) in the Tiaoxi watershed (Zhejiang province, eastern China), in which surface sealing is by far the predominant component of human forcing with respect to environmental change. A novel approach of quantifying the impacts of rural anthropogenic activities on soil resources is presented. Specifically, quantitative relationships were derived between five soil landscape pattern metrics (patch density, edge density, shape index, Shannon’s diversity index and aggregation index) and three rural anthropogenic activity indicators (anthropogenic activity intensity, distance to towns, and distance to roads) at two landscape block scales (3 and 5 km) between 1985 and 2010. The results showed that the Tiaoxi watershed experienced extensive rural settlement expansion and high rates of soil sealing. Soil landscapes became more fragmented, more irregular, more isolated, and less diverse. Relationships between soil landscape pattern changes and rural anthropogenic activities differed with the scale (spatial and temporal) and variable considered. In particular, the anthropogenic activity intensity was found to be the most important indicator explaining social development intensity, whereas the other two proximity indicators had a significant impact at certain temporal interval. In combination with scale effects, spatial dependency (correlation) was shown to play a key role that should be carefully taken into consideration in any relevant environmental study. Overall, the findings of this work suggest that soil sealing can be a critical human forcing issue with considerable consequences deserving serious attention by the experts, the public and the government alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]