In four chapters and an introduction, this book systematically helps readers understand the development of the Geographical Sciences both in China and in the world during the past 30 years. Through data analysis of methodologies including CiteSpace, TDA, qualitative analysis, questionnaires, data mining and mathematical statistics, the book explains the evolution of research topics and their driving factors in the Geographical Sciences and its four branches, namely Physical Geography, Human Geography, Geographical Information Science and Environmental Geography. It also identifies the role of the Geographical Sciences in the analysis of strategic issues such as global change and terrestrial ecosystems, terrestrial water cycle and water resources, land change, global cryosphere evolution and land surface processes on the Tibetan Plateau, economic globalization and local responses, regional sustainable development, remote sensing modelling and parameter inversion, spatial analysis and simulation, and tempo-spatial processes and modelling of environmental pollutants. It then discusses research development and inadequacy of Chinese Geographical Sciences in the above-mentioned topics, as well as in the fields including Geomorphology and Quaternary environmental change, Ecohydrology, ecosystem services, the urbanization process and mechanism, medical and health geography, international rivers and transboundary environment and resources, detection and attribution of changes in land surface sensitive components, and uncertainty of spatial information and spatial analysis. It shows that the NSFC has driven the development in all these topics and fields. In addition, the book summarises trends of the Geographical Sciences in China and the research level in major countries of the world through an overview of geographical education in colleges and universities, the analysis of publications, citations and author networks of SCI/SSCI and CSCD indexed articles, and the description of Sino-USA, Sino-UK and Sino-German cooperation. This book serves as an important reference to anyone interested in geographical sciences and related fields.

Author Biography

LENG, Shuying, division head of geography, department of earth sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), also vice president of the 11th council of the Geographical Society of China. She received a bachelor's degree in Geography from Peking University in 1987, and a master's degree and Ph.D from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1990 and 2001, separately. She has published more than 60 research articles. Since 1999 when she engaged in project management in NSFC, Shuying has published 42 articles on the strategic research on the development of Chinese Geographical Sciences and project management as the first author. Up to November, 2015, her articles have been cited more than 980 times by CNKI (China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database)-indexed papers and downloaded more than 16 thousand times. She has proposed "Directions and Key Words of Geography and Related Fields of the National Natural Science Foundation of China", which is now an important guidance for project application and peer review of NSFC geography projects. She has been recruited to the "National one million talents" project in 2013 and awarded the "National Middle-aged and Young Experts having Outstanding Contributions" by Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People's Republic of China. In 2014, she was awarded "the Sixth National Excellent Science and Technology Workers", by China Association for Science and Technology.