Pollution characteristics of the rivers in suburban Shanghai

Forty middle and small rivers in three towns of Fengjing, Songjiang and Zhujiajiao of suburban Shanghai were chosen as sampling sites for water quality research. Measurement results of DO, CODCr, TP, TN and so on show that the rivers are under heavy eutropic conditions, which are several times greater than the critical values of the worst level (Type V) of water. Water pollution situation has different temporal and spatial characteristics. Non-point pollution, such as village domestic sewage, farmland runoff, livestock feces, has become the primary source of pollution of the middle and small rivers in suburban Shanghai.     

On shear-wave splitting in the Los Angeles basin

Three-component seismograms at the three USC stations, PVP, GFP and DHB, have been examined. Most earthquakes, with magnitudes ranging from 1.4 to 5.0, within a period from 1985 to 1988, show evidence of shear-wave splitting. The preferred polarization of the first split-shear wave arrivals at PVP is nearly in N-S which is consistent with both regional maximum horizontal compressive stress direction and local subsurface fault strike, showing that shear-wave splitting is caused by liquid-filled cracks or fractures associated with the N-S faulting. The polarizations of first shear wave arrivals at GFP are roughly divided into two almost perpendicular directions, ENE-WSW and NNW-SSE, which are parallel or perpendicular to the strike of the geology or topography near the station. Because GFP is near the foothills of Santa Monica Mountains, the shear-wave arrivals may be disturbed by topographic irregularities and by subsurface dipping interfaces. Two examples at DHB clearly display shear-wave splitting. Their polarizations of shear wave are in the direction of N-S, which agree with the fragmentary surface and fracturing direction there. From some relatively reliable delay times, the crack densities at three stations are given, that is, 0.025 at PVP, 0.020 at GFP and 0.045 at DGB. No systematic change of shear-wave polarization is discovered in this study.     

Modern and post-modern cities and ethnic residential segregation: Is Los Angeles different?

Dear and others associated with the ‘Los Angeles School of Urbanism’ have presented a series of challenging ideas regarding changes in urban form as a consequence of the shift from modernism to post-modernism. Some of those challenges relate to a city’s ethnic diversity and residential segregation, with Los Angeles presented as a paradigm exemplar of an emerging new urban form. This paper evaluates the arguments that Los Angeles in particular, and Californian metropolitan areas more generally, differ from metropolitan areas elsewhere in the United States in the nature of ethnic residential segregation there. Regression analyses provide little support for the argument, but graphical analyses show that although Los Angeles does not differ from the general, US-wide trends, its almost unique nature in terms of its ethnic diversity means that it clearly stands out as a place with a different pattern shared by very few others.     

昆明市居住郊区化现象及动力机制研究

居住郊区化是人口郊区化的最直接体现,也是引导城市其他经济活动郊区化的直接因素.因此,居住郊区化成为研究昆明郊区化的一个很有意义的视角.根据历年统计资料、文献资料以及他人调查的资料,从人口变化的情况人手,论证昆明市居住郊区化现象,得出昆明市已经开始进入郊区化阶段;进而分析昆明市住宅郊区化的动力机制和存在的问题,社会经济的发展、城市问题的产生、高速公路网以及私家车的日渐普及、住房制度改革以及保护文化名城的需要等多种因素.它们共同作用构成了昆明郊区化机制系统.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco . Janet Abu -Lughod . Marketplaces in a Developing Country: The Case of Western Nigeria . Isaac Ayinde Adalemo . Farming Development and Space: A World Agricultural Geography . Bernd Andreae . Section and Party: A Political Geography of American Presidential Elections, from Andrew Jackson to Ronald Reagan . J. Clark Archer and Peter J. Taylor . Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps . Shirley Ardener , ed. European Progress in Spatial Analysis . R. J. Bennett , ed. The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States . Brian W. Blouet Geographic Perspectives on Global Problems . Ronald Reed Boyce . Seasonal Dimensions to Rural Poverty . Robert Chambers , Richard Longhurst and Arnold Pacey eds. The New Nationalism and the Use of Common Spaces: Issues in Marine Pollution and the Exploitation of Antarctica . Jonathan I. Charney , ed. Communications Tomorrow: The Coming of the Information Society . Edward Cornish , ed. The Design of Suburbia . Arthur Edwards . Explorer on the Northern Plains: Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren's Preliminary Report of Explorations in Nebraska and Dakota in the Years 1855–56–57. With an Introduction by Frank N. Schubert . The Changing Climate: Responses of the Natural Flora and Fauna . Michael J. Ford . Essentials of Physical Geography . Robert E. Gabler , Robert J. Sager , Sheila Brazier , and Daniel L. Wise. The Road to Jaramillo . William Glen . Valued Environments . John R. Gold and Jacquelin Burgess , eds. Proximity and Preference: Problems in the Multidimensional Analysis of Large Data Sets . Reginald G. Golledge and John N. Rayner , eds. A Search for Common Ground . Peter Gould and Gunnar Olsson , eds. Geography: Its History and Concepts . Arild Holt -Jensen . A Population Geography . Huw R. Jones . The Human Mosaic: A Thematic Introduction to Cultural Geography, 3rd ed. Terry G. Jordan and Lester Rowntree . Urban Social Geography: An Introduction . Paul Knox . The Anatomy of Job Loss: The How, Why and Where of Employment Decline . Doreen Massey and Richard Meegan . The Information Society as Post-Industial Society . Yoneji Masuda . Map Librarianship, 2nd ed. Harold Nichols . India: Cultural Patterns and Processes . Allen G. Noble and Ashok K. Dutt , eds. The God that Limps: Science and Technology in the Eighties . Colin Norman . Geography: An Introductory Perspective . Robert E. Norris , Keith D. Harries and John D. Vitek . The Politics of Technology Assessment . David M. O'Brien and Donald A. Marchand . Ethnic Segregation in Cities . Ceri Peach , Vaughan Robinson and Susan Smith , eds. Churches and Church Membership in the United States, 1980 . Bernard Quinn , Herman Anderson , Martin Bradley , Paul Goetting and Peggy Shriver . Energy in Australia: Politics and Economics . Hugh Saddler . Development from Above or Below? The Dialectics of Regional Planning in Developing Countries . Walter B. Stóuhr and D. R. Fraser Taylor , eds. Human Impact on the Ecosystem . Joy Tivy and Greg O'Hare . Plants and People: Vegetation Change in North America . Thomas R. Vale . The Mapmakers: The Story of the Great Pioneers in Cartography from Antiquity to the Space Age . John Noble Wilford .     

50余年来岩溶山地近郊村域土地利用与景观格局演变——以贵州省清镇市王家寨地区为例

选取贵州省清镇市近郊村域王家寨地区为研究对象,在GIS支持下,利用该区域1963年、1982年、2005年、2010年和2015年5期土地利用图形数据叠加分析,提取出研究区50余年来的土地利用/覆盖信息,并结合相应的社会经济统计数据,分析了其驱动力因子,其结果表明:(1)1963—2015年间,土地覆盖类型的总体变化为高被草地和平坝旱耕地明显减少,低被草地、农村居民点、工矿用地、公路用地面积大幅增加,其中,平坝旱耕地有向经济效益更高的土地利用方式转变的趋势;（2）景观格局演变的总体趋势是:自1963年起,斑块数量、斑块密度持续增加,到2015年呈下降趋势,而最大斑块指数逐年减小,形状趋于不规则,同时,近50年景观的多样性指数持续增加;（3）区内土地利用/覆盖和景观格局呈阶段性变化,从1963年到2005年,坡地土地利用活动较强,2005年后,平地土地利用强度增加、农业逐渐转型、聚落持续扩展;（4）区内土地利用及景观格局的变化主要受经济、人口和政策因素的影响。      

Advanced sensitivity calibration of the Los Angeles strong motion array

Results are presented of recent sensitivity calibration of 76 accelerographs (SMA-1) of the Los Angeles Strong Motion Array. These have pendulum-like transducers and optical recording system. One characteristic of their design is off-axis sensitivity, which is magnified by transducer misalignment. A new calibration procedure was applied, which considers off-axis sensitivity and measures the angles of misalignment (φ and ψ), as well as the incident angle of the light beam onto the film (θ₀). These are required (1) for accurate estimation of sensitivity, and (2) for proper instrument correction of recorded accelerograms which considers also cross-axis sensitivity and misalignment. These effects are important near large acceleration peaks (approaching and exceeding 1g), e.g. like the ones recorded near the source of the 1994 Northridge earthquake (M_L=6·4). This earthquake was recorded by 65 stations of the Los Angeles Strong Motion Array, at epicentral distances from 2 to 85 km. Histograms showing distribution of the misalignment angles, light beam incidence angle θ₀ (for unloaded position) and the transducer sensitivities are presented. These indicate that the misalignment angles are typically 1–1·5°, but may also be 3–4°. Angle θ₀ (usually neglected), is mostly between ±8°, but may reach ±12°. Assuming θ₀=0 leads to systematically smaller values of the measured sensitivity (e.g. by ∼3% for θ₀=8° and ∼4% for θ₀=12°). Comparison of the newly measured sensitivities with those measured prior to installation (in 1979/1980), s^old, shows that, in general, the new values are systematically smaller. The difference is typically within 5 per cent, but in some cases is as large as 10 per cent. Other principal sources of the observed differences and their mechanisms are discussed. Those include long-term changes in the transducers (e.g. change of stiffness, reflected in changes of the natural frequency) and differences in the calibration procedure (e.g. errors associated with manual reading film records with tilt test data, and with transducer and instrument housing misalignment). The presented results may be considered typical of similar strong motion arrays worldwide. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A graph-based approach for the structural analysis of road and building layouts

A better understanding of the relationship between the structure and functions of urban and suburban spaces is one of the avenues of research still open for geographical information science. The research presented in this paper develops several graph-based metrics whose objective is to characterize some local and global structural properties that reflect the way the overall building layout can be cross-related to the one of the road layout. Such structural properties are modeled as an aggregation of parcels, buildings, and road networks. We introduce several computational measures (Ratio Minimum Distance, Minimum Ratio Minimum Distance, and Metric Compactness) that respectively evaluate the capability for a given road to be connected with the whole road network. These measures reveal emerging sub-network structures and point out differences between less-connective and more-connective parts of the network. Based on these local and global properties derived from the topological and graph-based representation, and on building density metrics, this paper proposes an analysis of road and building layouts at different levels of granularity. The metrics developed are applied to a case study in which the derived properties reveal coherent as well as incoherent neighborhoods that illustrate the potential of the approach and the way buildings and roads can be relatively connected in a given urban environment. Overall, and by integrating the parcels and buildings layouts, this approach complements other previous and related works that mainly retain the configurational structure of the urban network as well as morphological studies whose focus is generally limited to the analysis of the building layout.