Continental red beds are widely distributed in mainland China and have long been considered to be formed in inter-mountain river and lake environments, while the red strata are considered to be secondary oxidation formations in the late stage. While this is a kind of scientific explanation and logical reasoning, there is no further concrete argument. In this study, the Eocene red-bed paleogeocline section of the Nanxiong Basin was selected as the research subject, and the paleoenvironment was analyzed in combination with the characteristics of magnetic minerals and geochemistry. The upper and lower parts of the Gucheng section are red, and the middle part is cinerous. All colors and their depth change gradually with the sedimentary strata / layers, indicating that the color was formed simultaneously with the sedimentary strata / layers, and the red of the strata is the primary color. The saturation isothermal remnant magnetic (SIRM) and remnant coercivity (Bcr) results showed a strong positive correlation with redness (a*). The thermomagnetic curves demonstrated that the red layer samples were mainly hematite with incomplete antiferromagnetism. Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) confirmed the existence of primary hematite and was the only magnetic mineral detectable. Hematite indicates that the sedimentary environment at that time should be oxidized at high temperature. In the middle of the section, there was a cinerous layer, which was previously interpreted as marine limestone by earlier researchers. However, instead of magnetic mineral signals, paramagnetic minerals were detected in the thermomagnetic measurements. DRS measurements after high temperature treatment also showed the presence of paramagnetic clay minerals. Geochemical element analysis showed that it was quite different from standard limestone, but similar to the typical loess in China. These data indicated that the limestone was not limestone. The upper and lower layers of the profile were red beds dominated by primary hematite, which represent the high temperature and strong oxidation environment on the surface. The formation is continuous and exhibits conformity. The “marine limestone” in the red beds of the two sections is not deemed to be limestone by chemical element analysis. Furthermore there was a high similarity between the cinerous layer and the red layer on both sides, upper crust and loess. The cinerous ash layer was more likely to have been formed by soil-forming processes under conditions of weathering and wetting. The ancient city section reflected the gradual change process of dry-heat oxidation-wetting redox and dry-thermal oxidation during the Eocene, which is of great significance for understanding the paleoenvironment of Nanxiong Basin.
The continuous development of the social economy has provided us with a modern and intelligent lifestyle, which may also increase citizens’ sedentary behaviors. How to improve citizens’ leisure time physical activities and public health at a country level has become a popular issue in recent years. Previous studies suggested that enhancing individual access to green spaces is a vital strategy to encourage leisure time physical activities. The imbalance between the supply and demand of green spaces may lead to environmental and health injustice problems. However, there is a lack of studies on the different spatial dimensions, when residents are considered, in homogeneous groups as a community, especially regarding various settling modes in China. Thus, it is of great significance to study the relationship between green space and leisure time physical activities from the perspective of community differentiation. This study used 776 effective samples (n=1 029) from 20 selected communities in Guangzhou. A multiple linear regression model was used to analyze the impact factors and underlying mechanisms. The results demonstrate that the residents’ leisure time physical activities have notable differences according to the type of community. That is, the residents’ average values of low-grade, middle-grade and high-grade communities were 782.99 MET-min/w, 871.70 MET-min/w, and 1 227.91 MET-min/w, respectively. Therefore, attention should be paid to these differences. The multiple linear regression model also illustrated that the significant factors that affect the leisure time physical activity levels in green spaces for the sample include “distance to the nearest park or square,” “neighborhood green coverage rate,” and “number of fitness facilities.” However, the significant factors vary at the level of community types. The influential factor of low-grade communities that impact residents’ leisure time physical activities is “distance to the nearest park or square,” for middle-grade communities it is “neighborhood green coverage rate,” while for high-grade communities it is “number of fitness facilities.” From the standpoint of mechanisms, time and monetary costs are the main elements that constrained residents of low-grade communities away from leisure time physical activities, which forced them to choose light-intensity leisure time physical activities such as walking, as their main fitness activity. Neighboring parks or squares undoubtedly are the first choice for these residents. Due to the imbalance between supply and demand in neighborhood greening, a green environment is the main element that affected residents of middle-grade communities, and the fitness opportunities are the main element that affected residents of high-grade communities. The well-equipped fitness facilities around high-grade communities provide these residents with ample opportunities to engage in leisure time physical activities, which makes their leisure time physical activity level far higher than the other two types of communities. To some extent, these findings expose the maladies caused by market-oriented residential space differentiation and the existing problems of green space planning. This study could provide a reference for the optimization of green space distribution and maintenance of social space justice, encouraging residents to participate in leisure time physical activities so as to improve public health.
In recent years, a large scale of greenways was constructed in China, which provides many new leisure and fitness spaces for citizens. Because residents in cities became the main users of these greenways, the spatial differentiation of greenway usage should be critically evaluated to obtain an optimized use pattern. From the perspective of greenway-neighborhood relationship, built environment surrounding greenways is assumed to serve as a potential source of users as well as a destination that attracts greenway use. To explore the association of greenway usage with properties of built environment surrounding greenways, this paper takes a typical urban waterfront greenway of Guangzhou as a case. Data such as greenway usage, activity type, etc. were collected by using floating bicycle technology. Multiple linear regression analysis was employed to explore the potential association of greenway usage with properties of built environment. Results show that there was a significant correlation between greenway usage and the surrounding built environment. Among the selected properties of the built environment that might influence the users’ travel behavior, population density and characteristics of land uses were the principle factors causing utilization differentiation by segment. The larger the population density or the larger the variation in land use, the higher the rate of utilization for walking and bicycling. In addition, social-economic characteristics, including age and income in the area accessible by walking and bicycling, impacted greenway use significantly, as did the land-use mixture and prevalence of richer or younger groups. Day-of-the-week also had an influence on usage of greenways, i.e., weekdays attracted more neighborhoods onto the urban greenway than weekend during peak hours for walking and bicycling. These findings may help with urban greenway construction and provide insights for greenway route optimization.
Landscape culture is the concentrated embodiment of cultural and geographical characteristics, and the study of cultural landscape gene’s identification and the extraction of the Linpan in western Sichuan is the cognition and interpretation of the essence of Linpan. According to the key features of the cultural landscape, such as regionality, inheritance, and time, through literature review and field investigations, we can obtain the landscape imagery and landscape elements related to Linpan, and comprehensively use questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to reflect regionality. The landscape that can leave a deep memory or impression on people is investigated and analyzed, and SPSS software is used for data statistics and processing to clarify the structural composition of the Linpan culture landscape objectively. Accordingly, the “landscape gene” theory which means the basic unit of Linpan culture landscape.in this paper was introduced, and the Linpan cultural landscape was taken as the research object. We classified the expression of genetic information and the rank, function, and importance of genes. We still explain the process flow of identification and extraction. Simultaneously, with the help of land use data, satellite imagery, and electronic maps of geographic information data, the identification of cultural landscape genes was conducted by taking the Xinjin, Wenjiang, and Chongzhou Linpan group and the Yuzikong, Gonglinpan, and Yujiayuanzi settlement units as examples. We identified their cultural landscape genes and summarized the common genes and individual genes. Furthermore, we extracted 1) genes that occupy the main position among Linpan, playing a major role in their overall layout, and included forest land, dwellings, canals and so on; 2) minor genes that affect the expression of some traits or play an important role in the formation of local landscape effects, including vegetable plots, wells, and bamboo utensils; 3) attached genes that enhance the information expression of main genes and minor genes, including gates, stone cages, and flat bridges; and 4) regulatory genes that inhibit or promote the expression of other genes, including water control engineering, immigration culture, and Taoist philosophy.
As a space to record urban culture and history, museum is an important place to inherit urban memory. From the perspective of “cultural performance”, this article conducted a text analysis of tourist comments concerning the Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King. A total of 1 294 tourist comments (207 offline comments and 1 087 online comments) were considered, and the four dimensions were found to constitute the factor system of cultural performance in museum, including architectural sites, cultural heritage, interpretation system, and tourist participation. In particular, initially, as a space of urban memory, the dimension of “architectural sites” is just like a stage for performance, which not only satisfies tourists' imagination of urban history and culture, but also awakens their perception of historical memory. Secondly, the dimension of “cultural heritage” confirms the unique cultural connotation and historical background in Guangzhou through the way of physical display, which helps tourists enhance their sense of cultural identity and strengthen their urban memory. Thirdly, the dimension of “interpretation system”, including professional commentators and multimedia technology, is just like the actors in performance, presenting the history and culture of the city in a dynamic way, and helping tourists understand the deep meaning of history and culture. Lastly, the dimension of “tourist participation” is the most important role in the process of urban memory. Tourists take the initiative to participate in activities and realize the transformation from “passive participation” to “active participation”, fulfilling the understanding of urban memory. Furthermore, this article emphasizes the important role of the perception of memory subject and the authenticity of culture in the process of urban memory. On the one hand, the form of memory is an interactive process, so that it is necessary to realize the understanding of cultural connotation through communication between memory subject and object. In this case, the content coding about the tourists’ perception accounts for about 51.08%, therefore, the behavior of memory subject determines the effect of cultural performance in museum. On the other hand, 41.4% of the content coding comes from real carriers, such as architectural sites and cultural heritage, which indicates that only by maintaining the original and integrity of traditional culture can tourists achieve the construction of urban memory. In a word, these four dimensions form an urban memory chain for museum and respectively play the roles of awakening, strengthening, activating and inheriting in the process of urban memory construction. In addition, both the behavior of memory subject and the cultural authenticity play indispensable roles in the construction of urban memory.
There are similarities and differences among different groups in destination image preferences. They can significantly influence the tourism destination marketing. Finding out what kind of tourism destination image people like, and the compatibility in different kinds of destination images makes sense especially to marketers. They can conduct targeted publicity and tourism product development according to the market demand preference, making tourism products more marketable. In addition, the compatibility in destination image preference has a significant meaning in the design of tourism routes. Students and working adults constitute an important part of the tourism market. Thus, it is of great significance to study the preference of these young groups. Knowing and producing what they prefer would be a great incentive to turn potential tourists into actual tourists. The present study uses the Q technique to verify the structure and compatibility of tourism destination image preferences, in order to provide suggestions for the design of tourism destination images and tourism routes. Q skill is a type of research method that can extract and describe subjective points of view. The method is a system with rigorous quantitative and quantitative analysis. It holds the view that subjective point of view possesses a certain structure. Thus, the Q-method can be used to conduct a qualitative and quantitative research on tourism destination image, which can help to break through the bottleneck of destination image research. Taking the students and the working group as the main research participants, the paper classified this young-group’s preferences of tourist destination image based on the Q-method. The P sample of this article included undergraduates, graduates, and working people, so it had a certain universality. A total of 106 questionnaires were distributed, but the effective sample amount was 82. The study results showed that there are five kinds of typical tourist destination image preference structures, and there exists incompatibility between the different kinds of tourism destination images. The five kinds of preference structures were named Natural Ecotourism, City Tourism, Natural and Cultural Tourism, Wandering Tourism, and Adventure Tourism. The classification could explained 55% of the variance. The characteristics of these preference structures are as follows: 1) The Natural Ecotourism people prefer natural resources but didn’t like culture resources and challenging tourism activities; 2) the City Tourism people turned out to be quite different than the first one, they prefer tourism activities in modern cities and other activities related to nature; 3) the Natural and Cultural Tourism people, female dominated, liked both cultural and natural tourism, but didn’t like rural tourism, as well as some extreme tourism activities; 4) the Wandering people preferred quiet places to enjoy; 5) while the Adventure Tourism people pursuit refreshing feelings and stimulating activities. Different kinds of preference structures for tourism destination images have different enlightening meanings to tourism marketing practices, which are provided at the end of this paper. In addition, a consensus statements analysis showed that these groups do not like massive cultural experiences. However, relaxing and interactive cultural experiences can improve the appeal of cultural destinations to the youth market. The five types of preference structures have high degree of differentiation, and the corresponding characteristics are significant. The results of the study have high reference value for both travel destination image marketing and tourism circuit design.
Evaluation utilization state of marine fishery resources of Africa is of great significance in promoting the sustainable development of fisheries in Africa and the cooperation between China and Africa. Based on the capture production data provided by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, integrating with trophic level of related fish species collected from Fishbase and trophic level of invertebrate provided by Sea Around Us Project database, in order to estimate fluctuations in the mean trophic level (MTL) of catch and the state of fishery resources of African coastal countries from 1950 to 2015. Results showed that the exploitation of marine fishery resources in African coastal countries has generally experienced the stages of underdevelopment, rapid development and over-exploitation. From 1984 to 1991, the marine fishery resources in North Africa have been damaged to a certain extent, the capture production of high-grade trophic fishery resources decreased by 33.5%, MTL decreased from the peak value 3.44 to 3.25; The catch of East Africa has been relatively low for a long time, nowadays, most of the fish resources are fully exploited. Fisheries in South Africa followed the phenomenon of ‘fishing down marine food webs’ in the early 21st century, MTL first went through a fluctuation growth trend during the period 1950-1996, then a relatively slow decreasing process during the period 1997-2004, and afterwards MTL recovered slight increasing trend, Fishing-in-balance index (FIB) kept steady from 2004 to 2015; MTL and FIB of Middle Africa declined in volatility in recent 3 years，indicated that the rate of increase in production is not sufficient to compensate for the reduction in the trophic level, and the structure and function of the ecosystem begins to be destroyed; The capture production in West Africa continued to increase in the past 66 years, overfishing has become more and more serious since the 1960s and led to a growth trend of the proportion of low trophic level fish. From 2001 to 2012, FIB was almost constant and between 1.2 and 1.4, MTL decreased fluctuatingly. When we compute MTL based on time-series of data that exclude trophic levels lower than 3.25(3.25MTL) so that to eliminate herbivores, detrivores and planktivores whose biomass trends to vary widely in response to environment factors. 3.25MTL showed a rising trend, suggesting that the decline of MTL was offset by the increase of production, overfishing led to an increase in the number of low and middle trophic fish in the sea area. Since the 21st century, some North African, South African and West African coastal countries have strengthened their fishery resources management and protection. The reduction in MTL indicates that the structure and function of the marine ecosystem has been destroyed, as changes in MTL are mainly caused by overfishing. We recommend that each country should establish a monitoring system which based on the capture production data to better assess the dynamic change of resources under fishing activities.
