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Henan Province is the birthplace of Chinese civilization and one of the earliest human settlements, which means that the area has an important national cultural heritage. Traditional villages are an important facet of this cultural heritage, and studying their spatiotemporal characteristics in different periods has important theoretical and practical significance for the sustainable development and protection of cultural heritage in the region. This paper takes the traditional villages of the Yellow River basin in Henan Province that were formed before 1919 as the research object. Information on the ancient river was obtained through a literature search as well as via field research, and the important tributaries of the Yellow River in different periods were mapped using ArcGIS 10.0 software. The nearest neighbor index, kernel density estimation, standard deviation ellipse and other methods were adopted to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of the traditional villages. The factors that influenced the evolution of traditional villages were explored in depth by combining changes in the course of the river and water conservancy projects. The results show that the formation of traditional villages along the Yellow River in Henan Province has experienced a historical track of growth, contraction, growth and prosperity and stability. The traditional villages along the Yellow River in Henan Province generally show a clustered pattern, forming a dense concentration of traditional villages in the middle reaches of the Yellow River. The center of gravity shows a migration trend from southeast to northwest. In terms of influencing factors, the spatiotemporal evolution of the relationship between villages and their distance to water is closely related to climatic fluctuations, changes in channel, water conservancy projects and social and cultural factors. This paper deepens our understanding of the relationship between traditional village evolution and watersheds by improving the consistency between village spatial distribution and historical geography and provides a useful theoretical reference for the sustainable development of China's traditional villages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquiring freshwater resources is a necessary component of sustainable human settlement subject to increasing pressure from population and climate changes. This sometimes scarce resource primarily comes from rivers, and international river basins ( IRBs), where watersheds and watercourses cross political boundaries, are often spaces of great political tension and conflict worldwide. Such conflict potential has garnered interest from a wide range of research communities, and each emphasises public access to hydrologic data as integral to successful international management of IRBs. However; these hydrologic data, especially measurements of river flow rate, are often closely guarded state secrets. Satellites have been cited as a key technology set to challenge this data monopoly that have yet been unable to calculate river flow rate without some form of guarded ancillary data. Now, at-many-stations hydraulic geometry ( AMHG) offers a means of circumventing data limitations without any a priori information, and the forthcoming NASA/ CNES Surface Water and Ocean Topography ( SWOT) satellite also promises to estimate flow rates solely from its novel measurements following launch. In this paper, we explore how these newly available estimates of river flow rate could reconfigure water-management and interstate relations in IRBs, and demonstrate AMHG, for two cases: the Ganges- Brahmaputra and Mekong. For these basins we find that satellite flow rate retrievals will likely reinforce and favour state-level negotiations of water resource governance. Also, satellite flow retrievals can have the direct, concrete effect of improving hydrologic understanding of the upstream Ganges- Brahmaputra, a sorely needed advance that will positively benefit millions of Bangladeshis and affect state-level interactions between India, China, and Bangladesh. Finally, we avoid offering prescriptive water management solutions for each case, as local stakeholders will ultimately determine if and how such satellite retrievals will be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]