Relief degree of land surface and its influence on population distribution in China

Abstract

The relief degree of land surface (RDLS) is an important factor for describing the landform at macro-scales. This study defines a concept for RDLS and applies the concept for population distribution study of the entire country. Based on the concept and macro-scale digital elevation model datum and ARC/INFO software, the RDLS at a 10 km×10 km grid size of China is extracted. This paper depicts systemically the spatial distributions of RDLS through analyzing the ratio structure and altitudinal characters of RDLS in China. The conclusions are drawn as follows: the RDLS in more than 63% of the area is less than one (1) (relative altitude is less than 500 m), reflecting the fact that most of RDLS in China is low. In general, the RDLS in the west is larger than that in the east and so is the south than that of the north in China. The RDLS decreases with the increase of longitude and latitude and the change of RDLS at the latitudes of 28°N, 35°N, 42°N, as well as at the longitudes of 85°E, 102°E, 115°E could reflect the three major ladders of China. In the vertical direction, the RDLS increases with the increase of altitude. Analysis of the correlation between RDLS and population distribution in China and its regional difference shows that the R 2 value between RDLS and population density is 0.91 and RDLS is an important factor influencing the spatial distribution of population. More than 85% of the people in China live in areas where the RDLS is less than one (1), while the population in areas with RDLS greater than 3 accounts only for 0.57% of the total. The regional difference of correlation between RDLS and population within China is significant and such correlation is significant in Central China and South China and weak in Inner Mongolia and Tibet.

Empirical Estimation of Near-Surface Air Temperature in China from MODIS LST Data by Considering Physiographic Features

“…To characterize the effects of the topography on the surface thermal processes, we derived a topographic index (the relief degree of the land surface, RDLS) from the elevation [55]:…”

Overview and progress of Chinese geographical human settlement research

“…The subsequent rate of publication, however, was sluggish. Bibliometric analysis shows that research on human settlement went through two phases: The first phase is prior to 2006 when few scholars worked on human settlement and those that did mainly focused on living conditions and livable city dimensions (Wang et al, 2003;Zhang et al, 2005); the second phase is post-2007, starting with three articles about human settlement which were published in Acta Geographica Sinica and Scientia Geographica Sinica (Xiong et al, 2007;Feng et al, 2007;Zhang, 2007) and the first research project on human settlement named The Evolution…”

“…The natural environment is the very foundation of human settlement formation and development, and researchers are paying increasing attention to the impact of terrain, soil, meteorology, atmospheric environment, and acoustical environment on human settlement (Feng et al, 2007). Human settlement suitability research analyzes how regional natural elements affect human settlement and explores the dominant element on ArcGIS.…”

The change in population density from 2000 to 2010 and its influencing factors in China at the county scale

“…Based on the previous studies (Zhu, 2002;Yue et al, 2005;Feng et al, 2008), 11 natural and social-economic factors which might affect the change of population density were chosen as predictor variables (Table 2). Among all the natural indicators, the relief degree of land surface (RDLS) (Feng, 2008) and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from satellite image can reflect regional terrain conditions and vegetation status, respectively. Mean annual temperature and precipitation can reflect regional climatic conditions and have direct impacts on comfort level of local residents (Bai et al, 2009).…”