The foundation and theoretical development of integrated physical geography of China
我国综合自然地理学的建立与理论拓展

After reviewing the forming and development of Integrated Physical Geography since the founding of People's Republic of China in 1949, this paper obtained some cognition results as follows. Since 1950, the IPG of China has been formed and developed gradually by continuous practice and theoretical summarization of some geographers with several generations. Relative to overseas researches, China's IPG has made some progress and relevant theoretical development in the research aspects such as gradation, structure, succession, series-mapping of land system, natural regionalization, division of natural belts, and down-up combination of small natural area etc. In the future, modern IPG should carry on studies of integrated geographical regionalization by systematic integration of every factor such as natural, human, ecological and economic conditions in the field of physical region system research, in order to promote the theoretic and practical values of regionalization. In the field of land system, the studies of structure and evolvement should be developed. Also the studies of features, driving power and ecological effects of land use/land cover should be emphasized by combination of scale, structure and process. In the research field of physical geographical process, unfolding integrated study of physical, chemical and biological processes in soil-plant-atmosphere continuous system is the main trend.