Sponsor: National Nature Science Foundation of China (NNSFC)

Headed by Yang Dewei

Date: 2011.01-2013.12

Project Abstract: The evolution mechanism of urban footprint region(UFR) will better contribute to elucidating the Symbiotic dependence relationship and sustainability between the city and its support regions in the context of rapid urbanization and global environmental changes. Based on the statistical data, questionnaire surveys, site investigation and RS/GIS spatial analysis data, this project took neighboring footprint region of Xiamen city as the main typical study case to analyze the evolution mechanism of UFR under the premise of the breakthrough of scientific definition of UFR in the view of function-space. Then combined with carbon footprint model, energy analysis model, ecological footprint and spatial landscape analysis, the spatial and human ecological processes such as ecological consumption behaviors, environmental pollution elimination, system resources exchange and landscape changes were assessed to elucidate the evolution of UFR within urban system and the spatial environmental effects of carbon emission and its human-driven mechanism. Based on the above analysis, the evolution mechanism of UFR were extracted including path dependence, social and cultural networks, supply-demand relationship and competitive coexistence, and the developing strategies were established incorporating resource sharing, advantage complementation, functional coordination, space optimization and institutional guidance. We suppose this project would provide important information for decision-making concerning on balancing the relationship of environmental resources between urban systems, scientific management of urban system at spatiotemporal scale and responding to global warming.