7 Heihe River Basin is located in the arid inland area of northwest China and is facing 8 serious water shortage problems. Since irrigation is the largest water consumer in the 9 middle reaches of the Basin, it is crucial to study the crop yields and water 10 consumption in order to improve the agricultural water productivity and to support 11 sustainable economic development in this region. Ba...

The problem of soil pollution by heavy metals has been receiving an increasing attention in the last few decades. Geostatistics module in ArcGIS, could not however efficiently simulate the spatial distribution of heavy metals with satisfied accuracy when the spatial autocorrelation of the study area severely destroyed by human activities. In this study, the classification and regression tree (C...

Introduction According to the National Research Council (2010), a significant challenge in the GISciences is the creation and development of tools that enable the results of scientific modeling to be easily understood. For science-informed decision making as well as for the purposes of informing and engaging ordinary citizens in discussions regarding geographical technologies, the National Rese...

Geographic information systems provide a high level of functionality for spatial analyses but are not yet able to provide extended functionality needed to create a truly "scientific GIS". Functionality that is lacking include time series analyses, calculation of the volume of the overlap between two volumes or calculation of the intersection of a vector path with a volume. Other functions inclu...