中国自然地域分区研究前沿与挑战

分区是地理学认知世界的基本途径。作为综合自然地理学的重要研究内容,自然地域分区通过对区域的划分,有助于进一步认识自然地域系统要素特征及其相互作用过程的地域分异规律,可为制定差异化的空间管治政策提供科学依据。自然地域分区的主题与方法随着社会经济发展在不断变革与创新,本文系统梳理了中国学者在自然地域动态分区、分区界线自动划定与多分区方案定量优选等前沿领域的近期进展,总结了自然地域分区理念、方法的创新与拓展。在此基础上,探讨了新时代自然地域分区在理念、技术与任务方面面临的挑战,建议开展面向人类—自然耦合系统、综合定性与定量途径、从全球到地方多尺度的自然地域分区研究,以期进一步完善自然地域分区理论与方法。

Research frontier and challenges of terrestrial system regionalization in China

Regionalization is a fundamental way for geographers to cognize the world. As an important part of integrated physical geography, terrestrial system regionalization aims at revealing rules of regional differentiations of terrestrial system features and their interaction processes, supporting the development of reasonable land management policies. The topics and methods of terrestrial system regionalization are constantly changing and innovated with the development of society and economy. After a brief review of research on terrestrial system regionalization in China, this study summarized the progress of Chinese scholars in the research frontier, i.e., dynamic regionalization, quantitative optimization of multi-regionalization schemes, and automatic demarcation. The study of dynamic regionalization could effectively depict the pattern and process of terrestrial system, with important guidance for regional sustainable development in the context of global change, while the study of quantitative optimization of multi-regionalization schemes and automatic demarcation might offer significant theoretical and technical supports for automatic regionalization. Furthermore, this study discussed the research challenges faced today, including the challenges of undertaking terrestrial regionalization for coupled human and natural systems, integrating qualitative and quantitative methods, and carrying out regionalization from the global to local scales.