Tracking climate change in Central Asia through temperature and precipitation extremes

Journal of Geographical Sciences - Under the impacts of climate change and human activities, great uncertainties still exist in the response of climate extremes, especially in Central Asia (CA). In...     

Analog simulation of urban construction land supply and demand in Chang-Zhu-Tan Urban Agglomeration based on land intensive use

Journal of Geographical Sciences - Urban land intensive use is an important indicator in harmonizing the relationship between land supply and demand. The system dynamics (SD) can be used to...     

The effect of terrain factors on rice production: A case study in Hunan Province

Journal of Geographical Sciences - Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the most important staple crop of China, and its production is related to both natural condition and human activities. It is fundamental...     

Trends and risk evolution of drought disasters in Tibet Region,China

Journal of Geographical Sciences - The risk posed by natural disasters can be largely reflected by hazard and vulnerability. The analysis of long-term hazard series can reveal the mechanisms by...     

Spatial associations between NDVI and environmental factors in the Heihe River Basin

Journal of Geographical Sciences - The Heihe River Basin is located in the arid and semi-arid regions of Northwest China. Here, the terrestrial ecosystem is vulnerable, making it necessary to...     

How forest gaps shaped plant diversity along an elevational gradient in Wolong National Nature Reserve?

Journal of Geographical Sciences - Understanding the underlying ecological processes that control plant diversity within (α-diversity) and among (β-diversity) forest gaps is important for...     

Rural settlement spatial patterns and effects: Road traffic accessibility and geographic factors in Guangdong Province,China

Journal of Geographical Sciences - Based on land use classification data of remote sensing images, using kernel density, the minimal cumulative resistance model of road traffic accessibility, and a...     

Integration of nighttime light remote sensing images and taxi GPS tracking data for population surface enhancement

The population distribution grid at fine scales better reflects the distribution of residents and plays an important role in investigating urban systems. The recent years have witnessed a growing trend of applying the nighttime light data to the estimation of population at micro levels. However, using the nighttime light data alone to estimate population may cause the overestimation problem due to excessively high light radiance in specific types of areas such as commercial zones and transportation hubs. In dealing with this issue, this study used taxi trajectory data that delineate people’s movements, and explored the utility of integrating the nighttime light and taxi trajectory data in the estimation of population in Shanghai at the spatial resolution of 500 m. First, the initial population distribution grid was generated based on the NPP-VIIRS nighttime light data. Then, a calibration grid was created with taxi trajectory data, whereby the initial population grid was optimized. The accuracy of the resultant population grid was assessed by comparing it with the refined survey data. The result indicates that the final population distribution grid performed better than the initial population grid, which reflects the effectiveness of the proposed calibration process.     

Novel Hybrid Integration Approach of Bagging-Based Fisher’s Linear Discriminant Function for Groundwater Potential Analysis

Natural Resources Research - Groundwater is a vital water source in the rural and urban areas of developing and developed nations. In this study, a novel hybrid integration approach of...     

A surface network based method for studying urban hierarchies by night time light remote sensing data

Urban hierarchies are closely related to economic growth, urban planning and sustainable urban development. Due to the limited availability of reliable statistical data at fine scales, most existing studies on urban hierarchy characterization failed to capture the detailed urban spatial structure information. Previous studies have demonstrated that night time light data are correlated with many urban socio-economic indicators and hence can be used to characterize urban hierarchies. This paper presents a novel method for studying urban hierarchies from night time light data. Night time light data were first conceptualized as continuous mathematical surfaces, termed night time light surfaces. From the morphology of these surfaces the corresponding surface networks were derived. Hereafter, a night time light intensity (NTLI) graph was defined to describe the morphology of the surface network. Then, structural similarity between the night time light surfaces of any two different cities was calculated via a threshold-based maximum common induced graph searching algorithm. Finally, urban hierarchies were defined on the basis of the structural similarities between different cities. Using the 2015 annual NPP-VIIRS night time light data, the urban hierarchies of 32 major cities in China were successfully examined. The results are highly consistent with the reference urban hierarchies.