Evolvement Of The Population And The Economy Gravity Center And Its Space Coupling In Tarim River Basin

The problem of regional differences in China has been one of the hot issues. In regional economics, there are many characterization indicators of the balance and differences of regional development. And the spatial variation of the population and economy are important component of regional differences, but also reflect regional differences as two main indicators. Under the conditions of an unified market information, the result of the coordination development of regional should be the consistent distribution in space of economy and population, while the degree of separation of economy and population distribution reflect the non-balanced regional development. In recent years, with the implementation of the country’s western development strategy, the economic differences of the Tarim River Basin which located in the arid areas of Northwest China has become the focus of academics and policy-making departments. Tarim River Basin has distinct geographical characteristics and population structure, and the ecological environment is extremely vulnerable, so the coordination of population and economic development relate to the social stability and sustainable development. This research analyses the space-time evolution of the population and economy gravity center and their spatial coupling characteristics of the Tarim River Basin over the past30years by the methods of regional center of gravity model and geographic concentration. In order to reveal the ecological environment caused by the impact of regional development characteristics and laws of population and economy and changes in industrial structure. In addition, this research is to reveal the degree of coordination of the regional population distribution and economy.The results show:①The gravity center of GDP, arable land area and the main three industries in Tarim River Basin show the trends of migration to west from east, while the population gravity center shows a trend of migration to east in the past30years. Population gravity center shows the negative correlation with the second and the third industry in the longitude and latitude direction, while shows the positive correlation with the first industry in the longitude direction, and population gravity center with arable land area has a strong correlation passing the significance level of0.05and0.01in the longitude and latitude direction.②The significant increase in deviation of population distribution with GDP, first industry, second industry, third industry and arable land area show the unbalance of population and economic development in the past30years. The first industry gravity center changes more complex than the population, and still exist a large imbalance between them. On the contrary, the imbalance of arable land area and population turn to smaller. The results show that there has poor coordination of economic development and population distribution.③The gravity center of population and economy exist a coupling relationship on the big trend; the geographic concentration of population showing high to low from west to east, while the geographic concentration of economic, showing high to low from north to south, and they all gather around the central city of the economic zone; the population is mainly cluster in Kashi agglomeration while economy in Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, which mainly affected by the traffic and geographic conditions. In addition, the Tarim River Basin can be divided into five types with the coupling index. They are economic polarization type, economic advance type, coordinated development type, lagging economy type and economic backwardness type.