Progress and Perspective of Geographical-ecological Processes
地理—生态过程研究的进展与展望

Under the background of human activity and global environmental change, the research of traditional geographical-ecological processes are undergoing fundamental change over the past few decades. Based on the general overview of the research situation, the development and perspective of geographical-ecological processes are discussed in the paper. From the research progress of geographical-ecological processes, it can be inferred that the basic science research issues of geographical-ecological processes include: (1) structure and processes, which consist of structure, function, dynamic, driving forces, processes and mechanism; (2) synthesis and integration, involving elements integration, processes integration, regional integration, and other scientific points. And the studies of geographical-ecological processes focus on the scale-structure-process interactions, natural-economic-social interactions, topographical-hydro-ecological processes mutual coupling, geographical-ecological processes and the combination with resources environmental effects. The research of geographical-ecological processes in the development is showing a systematic, integrated, cross-cutting and applied development trend. And the critical issues of geographical-ecological processes in the future study can be summarized as follows: (1) the processes of materials, energy and biological flows in earth surface systems; (2) the driving forces, procedure, effects of earth's surface environment; (3) regional composition and regional heterogeneity; (4) scale and scaling; (5) holistic synthesis of geography; (6) innovation of methodology; and (7) application of the geographical-ecological processes research. To promote geographical-ecological processes study in the future, more attentions should be paid to the following issues: (1) observation, experimentation, investigation and simulation; (2) integration of remote sensing and field observation; (3) regional integration and global research; and (4) interdisciplinary research.