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The urban-rural integrated area in Sanshui District of Foshan City was selected for research, and the impact of landscape pattern around the No.269 provincial highway was analyzed based on the land-use data in 2014 using the spatial analysis in GIS and the moving window method. The results showed that: ①within the scope of a 2 km-range buffer zone, with a low degree of heterogeneity, land for construction use and water area were the dominant land-use types, while with a high degree of fragmentation, cultivated land, wooded land, grassland, garden land, land for other farm uses, and land unused were scattered; ② the 250-m square moving window could well detect the change characteristics of landscape pattern on both sides of the toad; ③ the gradient analysis of landscape pattern in urban-rural integrated area, which was conducted with the aid of a 750-m transect on both sides of the road, indicated that there were significant differences between landscape indexes both in the urban-rural integrated area and on both sides of the road; ④ the road that had an obvious cutting and fragmentation impact on the landscape was an important factor leading to the increasing fragmentation and heterogeneity to regional landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air connectivity is a crucial factor for economic development, especially for a free port city such as Hong Kong. This paper examines the role changes of Hong Kong in providing connectivity for the international market that originates from regional airports in Mainland China. The time-dependent earliest arrival time method is employed to assess its connectivity levels compared with other Chinese air gateways in 1998 and 2018, with measurement of three indicators: accessibility, dependency, and centrality. Empirical evidence demonstrates that extensive progress of accessibility and dependency has been presented in both Hong Kong and other Chinese gateways as for liberal arrangements after 2001, while foreign transfers are still an inescapable theme to strengthen air connections. In addition, Hong Kong retained its hub status even while deemed inferior to Beijing and Shanghai in the international market of Mainland China, especially for the Northeast and East Coastal region and air travel to Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. What is more, although Hong Kong benefited from its massive traffic generation, major air gateways would be dispersedly located across Mainland China with the rise of central China, geographical proximity effect, and differential market cultivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The factors affecting tourist behavior are complex and diverse, but research on its effect from a purely spatial perspective is still limited. The aim of this paper is to explore the dichotomous interaction between tourists and islands: the behavioral patterns of tourists in island destinations and the mechanisms by which island spaces constrain tourist behavior. This study uses fine-grained global positioning system (GPS) tracking data actively authorized and released by tourists. We empirically studied tourist behavior from a spatial constraint perspective and discovered the following: island space has a strong influence and constraining effect on tourist behavior; different spatial attributes have different constraining effects on tourist behavior; and people with different identities interact with different attributes of space to produce different spatial properties, resulting in a 'harmony-contradiction' model of spatial interaction. These findings are of great value in expanding the perspective of spatial constraints and exploring the interactions between people and land. They are also of great practical significance in promoting spatial planning synergy, facilitating the construction of high-quality island-based tourism destinations, and building a harmonious relationship between people and land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatiotemporal variability of droughts over a region can often be characterized by combining orthogonal climate modes with corresponding temporal coefficients. The temporal characteristics of climate modes have been extensively addressed, while their spatial development remains largely unexplored. Hence, this study investigated the spatiotemporal evolution of meteorological droughts from the perspective of climate modes. Nearly 50 years of monthly precipitation records (1960–2007) from 73 meteorological stations in the Poyang Lake basin, China, were used. The standardized precipitation index at a 1-month scale was applied to quantify meteorological droughts. The dominant modes of the droughts over the basin were identified using principal component analysis, K-means cluster analysis, and analysis of variance. Based on the trajectory migration identification method, the role of the climate modes in spatiotemporal evolution was analyzed. The results showed that four spatial modes of the droughts in the basin were identified. The spatial extents, centroids, and severity of the drought clusters based on the identified modes were significantly consistent with those based on the meteorological stations (R2 > 0.8, p < 0.05), which indicated that these modes could mostly match the large areas where serious dry/wet conditions occurred. Moreover, their performances in characterizing the spatiotemporal evolutional features (severity, migration distance, and pattern) of drought events were valid, which indicated that they might be considered as the elementary constituents of the historical meteorological drought events across the basin. The findings might offer some implications to understand drought development and causes through possible connections between the dominant modes and climate variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The climatological spatial scales (CSS s) of meteorological droughts are investigated. • The CSS s of multi-timescale droughts in China are determined and attributed. • The CSS s generally show a significant decrease with increasing timescale. • The five climate anomalies have significant impacts on the multi-scale CSS s. • The climate anomalies and the CSS s show complex spatiotemporal interaction effects. This study investigates the climatological spatial scales (CSS s) of meteorological droughts in China and the linkages to climate variability. The Global Precipitation Climatology Centre monthly gridded precipitation with a spatial resolution of 25 km × 25 km for 1961–2010 is used. The standardized precipitation index at different timescales (1-, 3-, 6-, 9-, 12-, 24-, 36-, and 48-month) is applied to characterize meteorological droughts. The CSS s of meteorological droughts are calculated using a method considering spatial correlation and anisotropy. The relationships between the CSS s and main monsoons and climate teleconnections in five selected regions are quantified using dynamic spatial panel models. The five regions are South China (SC), the Yangtze River Valley (YRV), North China (NC), Northeast China (NE), and the Tibetan Plateau (TIB). The following results are obtained: (1) The CSS s of multi-timescale meteorological droughts in China are determined. The means of the CSS s at various timescales in China are 68.9, 73.8, 71.8, 69.7, 68.8, 65.9, 62.9, and 60.8 × 104 km2, respectively. The CSS s in eastern China generally show a significant decrease with increasing timescale. (2) Significant quantification relationships (R2 greater than 0.85) suggest that there is not a simple linear relationship between climate anomalies and the CSS s, but rather a complex spatiotemporal interaction including exogenous and endogenous interaction effects. The CSS s not only strongly depend on their neighbors on the same timescale but also significantly depend on the CSS s of neighbors on adjacent timescales. Three monsoon indices (Indian monsoon, East Asian monsoon, and western North Pacific monsoon) have significant impacts on the multi-timescale CSS variations in the five regions, especially for NE, YRV, SC, and TIB, while the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation affect mainly SC and YRV. These findings could broaden our understanding of the spatiotemporal relationships of droughts and be useful for drought risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A method to measure the spatial extent of drought at any location was proposed. • The parameters of the method were reasonably specified using sensitivity tests. • The method was tested over a humid region located in southern China. • The difference in spatial lengths of 8 directions showed the anisotropy of drought. • The spatial extents of multi-scale droughts decreased as the time scales increased. The spatial characteristics of droughts are important for understanding drought development and water resource allocation. Most previous studies mainly focus on the spatial display of drought characteristics and the identification of drought spatial extents. Little attention is given to measuring the spatial extent of drought at any location. To this end, a new framework was proposed for measuring the spatial areal extent of drought based on spatial autocorrelation and anisotropy principle. The Global Precipitation Climatology Centre monthly gridded precipitation data with a spatial resolution of 25 km × 25 km were used. The standardized precipitation index on a three-month scale (SPI-3) was applied to characterize meteorological droughts. The base period of 1961–2010 (50 years) was selected for calculating climatology lengths (Cls)/spatial extents (SPEs) of meteorological droughts over the Poyang Lake basin. The parameters of the proposed method, including the drought threshold (SPI ≤ −1), the number of search directions (8), search radius (500 km), distance step (25 km), bandwidth (56.95 km), and angle tolerance (22.5°), were examined using sensitivity tests. The results showed that notable differences in Cls of 8 search directions confirmed the spatial anisotropy of droughts. The statistics of SPEs of the SPI-3 series over the basin were reported. SPEs were mainly between 50 and 100 × 104 km2. The distinctive spatial pattern of the SPEs was revealed and characterized by a high-value belt from the northeast and southwest and two low-value areas. The SPI on other time scales (SPI-1/SPI-6/SPI-12) revealed similar characteristics as SPI-3. Moreover, SPEs are potentially associated with time scales, revealing a decreasing change (or increasing spatial fragmentation) as time scales increased. The proposed method based on anisotropy is reasonable and useful for mining the spatial characteristics of droughts and can be applied in other fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]