استفاده از PCA یکپارچه شده با CA و GIS در منطقه سازی سازگار با محیط زیستی _ اقتصادی فلات لس چین

Eco-economic regionalization (EER) is to divide an area into geographical zones. Each zone is linked to the others based on the eco-economic similarity and disparity. In this study, models of EER of the Chinese Loess Plateau were constructed. Data on 22 selected indicators were gathered for the 282 administrative counties. Then they were analyzed through an approach of PCA integrated with CA and GIS. In the generated model, the plateau was assigned to 4 belts and 18 eco-economic zones. The relationship among the subdivisions was able to represent the real situation. It demonstrates the division scheme is very comprehensive, concise and applicable. The work has established a novel methodological framework for EER of large-scale area.

The Chinese Loess Plateau is an area congested with problems of over-population, scarce resources and harsh environment in China; however it is also the major region where large energy industry and heavy chemical manufactories are located. The ecological environment is very fragile under a situation of population growth out-control and environmental protection largely neglected. Human activities in terms of reproduction and daily life do not comply with the nature; and the consequential degradation in ecological environment is very serious. The recent economic development has not only exacerbated the deterioration process, but also made the environment more vulnerable. The complex ecological structure has been disrupted due to localized damages, and the ecosystem is slowly receding into a dysfunctional state. This situation also has made a tremendous negative impact on the overall ecological environment in China. The deterioration of natural ecological environment causes declining of productivity and other tangible economic losses; it also affects the price of the local products in the international market and the investment environment of the area. The resultant threat on living conditions will inevitably harm the quality of human life. Such unfavorable situation has formed a vicious circle in several locations on the Chinese Loess Plateau. In order to improve the situation, the Chinese government has implemented various measures albeit without much success on managing the Loess Plateau since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Among the many reasons, lack of a comprehensive agro-ecological economic regionalization map is the key factor. In the past 60 years the Loess Plateau was under the control of the central government. During this time period, no strategic management plan was executed. There were only several debates over the strategies of ecological environment construction. The first debate occurred in the 1950s. The central issue was to reduce soil erosion whether through increasing natural ground coverage with forests and herbaceous plants or by adopting a civil engineering approach. The second debate lasted from the late 1970s till the early 1980s. The focus at this time was on what should be done about the ecological environment in the Loess Plateau. A group of scientists strongly advocated a forestry-based policy; they insisted that the Loess Plateau should be developed into a state-owned forest farm. Another group of scientists upheld that animal husbandry should be the priority, and proposed to develop this area into an animal production base. The third group supported a comprehensive strategy; they argued that the developmental plan for this area should include subsistence agriculture, protective forestry, and commercial livestock production. The third debate has been going on since the late 1990s up to date. Different from the previous ones, the current focus is more on protecting the ecological environment. Three schemes were put forward. The first one aimed at implementing the policy of “returning farmland to forestry and grassland”, the second one proposed to keep sufficient acreage of basic farmland, forestry and grassland, and the third proposal recommended to build a central dam in the valley to harness all the natural resources in the area. Overall, the first two ideas were based on pure academic understanding of nature, and the last one was more on building a balanced relationship between the interests of investors and different local authority departments. The common drawback in the three proposals is that the effect from the regional variation in the whole plateau was not appropriately assessed. Furthermore, economic development has never been featured as a positive factor in the environmental protection plan (Jing, 2006). The goal of this study was to promote a healthy natural environment in which agro-ecological economic development, forestry and animal husbandry coexist and develop in harmony. The Chinese Loess Plateau is a special geographical region where the original ecological environment has undergone visible regional differentiation. Thus the overall ecological environment and economic development models should be constructed to accommodate each individual resources and environmental characteristics. Previously, several zoning maps including the comprehensive ecological or economic zoning of the Loess Plateau have been dawn based on regional differentiation. In these zoning plans, the whole Plateau was divided based on single-element variation, instead of combining ecological function with economic principles. In the older versions of the ecological function zoning maps, the landscape plans were mainly focusing on environmental protection paying little or no attention to the economic impact. On the other hand, the economic function zoning map was constructed using administrative divisions as basic units without assessing the impact from industrial development on regional ecological systems. This study aimed to develop a system which features coordinated developments of both ecological and economic systems as a whole in the Loess Plateau. The general regional delineation of the eco-economic status was assessed using principal component analysis (PCA) method integrated with clustering analysis (CA) and geographic information system (GIS) technologies. Results from this study will provide the foundation for guiding the ecological and economic development in this area, furthermore, they are the methodological framework for regionalization of areas on as large scale as the Chinese Loess Plateau. These findings will be used as the specialized supplemental information for optimizing theoretical concepts in regional eco-economy.

In the past, the division models of Chinese Loess Plateau were constructed according to either ecological or economic situations. In reality, ecological conditions and the social economic development of the Loess Plateau reinforce each other. Unhealthy ecological environment is the underlying cause for the failure of social economic development. On the other hand, a strong social economic system is the driving force for improving the local ecological condition. However, very few studies have integrated both the ecological and economic factors. In this paper, PCA integrated with CA and GIS technology was applied successfully in defining the large-scale regional ecological and economic divisions in the Chinese Loess Plateau. PCA method is designed to isolate patterns of covariance in a set of measurement variables, and CA method is well suited to study the patterns of covariance in a table of incident variables recorded for a number of objects. GIS performs spatial analysis by combining multiple datasets to derive meaningful information. PCA integrated with CA and GIS method is recognized as the most powerful approach for large-scale regionalization. The integration of qualitative analysis and quantitative computing greatly has enhanced the persuasiveness and credibility of the generated models. Results obtained from this project indicate that this comprehensive method is concise, applicable and effective. Most importantly, it has established a methodological framework for regionalization of large-scale areas such as the Chinese Loess Plateau. The regionalization methodological framework of the Chinese Loess Plateau can be considered as the specialized supplemental information for forming the theoretical concepts in regional eco-economy. The framework was built using the county-level ecological and economic data, therefore it can be used as references for county-level planning and construction in the Loess Plateau, as well as in other regions bigger or smaller across the country. In summary, the methodological framework has an important value in both theoretical development and practical guidance. Regionalization of the Chinese Loess Plateau should be a dynamic process on the long run, although the system is relatively stable within a certain period of time. From a historical point of view, the development of the Loess Plateau is a coordinated process coupling between economic system and ecosystem. Therefore, future research will be targeted to develop evaluation tool for the process using the regionalization models developed in this study. Data used in this project were collected at county-level, and the corresponding administrative units were used as the basic division units. In future, the project will be expanded to using township (town) as the basic unit, in order to improve the accuracy and applicability of the modeling system.