MAPPING THE CHINESE PAST GEOGRAPHY WITH GIS

MAPPING THE CHINESE PAST GEOGRAPHY WITH GIS Wang, J., Chen, X., Wang, H. and Hong, Z. Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping, Beijing, China, 100039. Address: 16 Bei Tai Ping Lu, Beijing, China Telephone: +86-10-68219569, 88217640 Telefax: +86-10-68218654 E-mail: wangjun@casm.ac.cn ABSTRACT Generally known, compilation of historical atlas have achieved much in the recent several decades, such as in Canada, in the United States, and in China. There are authoritative eight volumes of Chinese Historical Atlas published since 1980 s, accumulating the large works of historical geographers and cartographers for more than dozen years. Since the atlas published, next and more complex atlas was put into compilation, while next dozen years past, the National Historical Atlas could come true due to many reasons, notably the shortage of fund for paper print, and the diversification represent to the past geography. Meanwhile, the development of geographic information system provides the highly effective method to process the historical geographic data, and make the view of that much easy on screen, than on paper. As far as the authors know, the historical GIS in US, and the Great Britain, have been accelerated in recent five years, to process the historical records on the distribution of land and people [ 1 ]. Under the support from Luce Foundation in the US, the international workshop on Chinese Historical GIS initiated in 2000, and has the version 1.0 published in 2002, with content on the boundary of the Qing Dynasty of 1820. In the geographic view, in additional to the historical administrative boundary, the elements of the river and lake, the distribution of population and residence, the traffic network, the land cover and the agriculture, and the topography, etc, would be included into the integrity of Chinese Historical GIS framework. For the author s present works, the vector graphics database on the administrative boundary under the provincial level in 1820 of Qing Dynasty was spatially matched with present geographic data of 1:1M in the scale. The boundary data on county level was put through for Shaanxi Province in the West of China as sample. On the other side, the historical statistics information of past land and census according to the administrative unit was digitalized into attribute tables of GIS. In the platform of ArcGIS, including Arc/Info and ArcView, the graphics and attribute data perfect jointed with the common key item of place name that is the past county name or prefecture name. So, the readable views to the distribution of land, people, and residence in various spatial scales are achieved. With the primary steps, the further planed works would the advanced analysis and the Internet data share for the international colleagues. At present, the above work is the joint effect with the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Resource Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Institute of GIS and Cartography, Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping. The main progress is introduced in this paper of collaboration. 1. DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL STATUS The first initiative about Chinese Historical Geographical Information System in local China was in middle of 1999, as free idea of historical geographer. In 2002, the framework became clear and got much acquaintance by more and more scholars. The geographers in the Fudan University joint the effects with the Harvard University and Australian associates. That is one of main program ongoing for in recent years, holding international workshop in the August 2001 in Shanghai, with more than 60 scholars attendance. Till the middle of 2002, the first edition of the joint result of Chinese Historical GIS came into being, and for limited data-shared. The main content of the 1 st Ed. of CHGIS the general graphic data of territory of 1820 in Qing Dynasty, with boundary of the prefecture level, and the detail data of county level with region of the lower reach of Changjiang River, that is the southern part of Jiangsu Province and the north part of Zhejiang Province. Much attention was put on the verification to the attributes to the county level, even to the town level, including the boundary, the location and the place name changes. The task of development and construction of dynamic GIS data model of time was carried out mainly by the Australian geographer. It is expected that much progress achieved since 2002. Proceedings of the 21 st International Cartographic Conference (ICC) Durban, South Africa, 10 16 August 2003 Cartographic Renaissance Hosted by The International Cartographic Association (ICA) ISBN: 0-958-46093-0 Produced by: Document Transformation Technologies

Another achievement was the joint collaboration of Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping with the Academia Sinica of Taiwan, digitalized the each territory map of main dynasties in Chinese history. The dataset of coverage includes boundary and location of province and prefecture level, and the location point of county level, and the place names. All of the spatial data matched with the authority of ArcChina in 1:1M. On the meeting of CHGIS workshop in August 2001 in the Fudan University, the data process achievement was presented to public. Furthermore work on historical population data process and more detail work to county level boundary of Shaanxi Province in the Qing dynasty was carried on. Aside from the main trend above, there are scholars putting attention on GIS application to the regional archaeology in the Shandong Province. And the significant process is made in the remote sensing application in the field works of archaeology. The group in National Museum made use of both modern and contemporary aerial photographical image to analysis the field spot of ancient urban and tombs. In such a complex work, the RS, GIS and other digital techniques, altogether with lots of experience of field investigation, produce much result. 2. DATA MODEL FOR HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY The suitable data model would be designed for the complexity of the past geography, including vector data and grid data, in addition to the related remote sensing image and attribute data. With the author s experience, to describe the element of boundary, residence, and some distribution phenomena with historical statistical data in ancient records, the vector data model fit the purpose and is more applicable for the other historical geographer who is not familiar with the GIS techniques and database process. About the grid data, at present stage, the group of authors just makes use of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from the present topographical map, as the terrain background for the understanding to the past geographical environment. For the reason of absent of terrain element in the paper map of Chinese history, much information which benefiting the reader and the scholar was absent. It is conceived that the vector data of the polygon representing the population, farmland and the type of land cover distribution could be transformed to grid data, with the fit cell size or 500m or 1000m, and form the data column according to the time evolution on the same region as cell or pixel, just according to the famous idea of socializing the pixel in LUCC. This reasonable idea would go into action with the profound program. About the attribute data related with the graphic data, which including various type and items. Take the boundary data as example, the designed items including the levels of the administrative such as province, state or prefecture, and the period and dynasty code, and the name of residence in each level, which indicating the urban and towns in the past geography. Much of Chinese historical event was taken place or relevant to the urban and towns. So the literature records could be digitalized and treated as quantitative number to fill in the items, especially the population items, with will be drawn out on the view of GIS with the statistic symbol to show the difference and diversity of population distribution. 3. FUNDAMENTAL AND THEMATIC ELEMENTS Most of the historical geographical element represent in the historical data system are similar to the present, such as levels of administrative boundary, levels of residence, road, river and lake. Above could be handled as fundamental elements, much of the related distribution data would be drawn into graphic representation, with the attribute data. For most of the dynasty in Chinese history, the fundamental element, especially the residence and boundary, were clearly drawn on the Atlas of Chinese History. So the database construction would be based on the evidence sources. Take the dataset of 1820 in the Qing Dynasty as example, the designed coverage including the polygon of province, prefecture and state, and some detailed county in Shaanxi province, and the point of the local administrative site of government. The screen snap of the dataset in ArcView3.2a is as follow. For the exactly match of various elements, and the measurement of area and distance of geographical locations, the projection of dataset is selected with the Alerts, with the parallel of latitude of 25N and 47N, the central longitude of 110E, and the initial latitude of 10N. The data comes from the digitalization of the hardcopy of the Atlas of Chinese History. So, the authority of the data source was assured and the graphics data was matched and transformed according to the dataset of ArcChina. The items of the attribute data is designed mainly according to the published standard of Data Classification and Codes for National Fundamental Geographic Information (GB 13923-92), and adding the item to indicate the representative year of the dynasty. For the items of thematic elements such as the population and agricultural land distribution, the code to the attribute information is designed with the reference of the actual data. For example, in his large book of Chinese History of the Population in the Qing Dynasty, Dr. Cao Shuji of Fudan University verified large quantity of local records and set the list of population distribution in the Ming and the Qing Dynasty [ 2 ]. According to these reviewed data, the items of attribute database would include the original population records, the revised number, the

population density, and the comparison of original and revised one. The attribute data could be easy linked to the graphic data of polygon or point of the administrative area, and for the geographer to carry out the view, layout and the spatial analysis. The sample figure view of the Chinese population distribution in the 1820 is attached as the figure 3. In addition to the element of the population census, some other ones like the farmland statistics and the natural disaster damage to local area could be digitalized and link to the graphic data of the administrative polygon or points. Aside of the draft views of historical data in the GIS interface, the legend and symbol design to the GIS project are the necessary part of work. The main design is on the point symbol to the residence of urban and town, the line symbol to the arc of boundary, river and traffic road, and the fulfilled area symbol to the region of administrative and population distribution, etc. Figure 1. The main Provinces of Qing Dynasty in 1820 Figure 2. The Population Distribution in the Shaanxi Province in 1820 in county level

Figure 3. The view of Chinese Population Distribution in 1820 in prefecture level 4. GENERAL AND REGIONAL IN SPECIFIC For the boundary of and above the prefecture level was presented on the Atlas of Chinese History, and be digitalized according to the paper maps, the left work on the administrative boundary is from the general level to the detailed level in the county, the basic unit of Chinese area since the early Qin Dynasty, and much of historical records were related to the county level area or residence. The detailed records on the location of county and state boundary emerge in the local chronicle from the Ming Dynasty, and are verified with the graphic local map in the late of the Qing Dynasty. However, unlike the boundary maps existed in the ancient Europe, from which, the arc and line could be drown and digitalized, the exactly county boundary map just drawn around 1900, with import technique of surveying and mapping. So, the first exact digital map on county boundary could be achieved at the period of the late Qing Dynasty, and trace the early boundary with document records backward. For the author s limited practice, the county polygon of Shaanxi Province in the late of Qing dynasty, together with the point of administrative location, is put into coverage of data, and view as figure 2. With the basic evidence of map, other records in the local chorography about the village location, the river route, the road, and the hill belonging were the evidences as well, to give the clear judgment to the past boundary. For the thematic records on the population and farmland, etc, as well the boundary, in the general level of the whole empire, much information on the state and prefecture unit, while less and draft in the county unit. [3] Moreover, the records in the county unit bring the shortage on the comparableness. Much work left over for the verification the lot of historical records and numbers with the GIS implementation. 5. FRAMEWORK IN ACTUAL AND IN PLAN The works mentioned above are mainly on the vector format and attribute database, Another alternative is the grid or raster format, to record the territory geographic evolution in the unified grid format, such as in 100*100m pixel or 1*1km pixel. At this point, the complex of boundary changes and much of data confusing would be solved in rather easy data model, and be comparative at the same landmass. As some international scholars have risen, that the pixelizing the past social and physical information of geography, would be suitable solution to the historical GIS. One project deserved attention would be the Time Mapping 3000 years of Globalization: Knowledge Modeling World Historical System, including the author as one of advisors, and aiming at development of a scalable data infrastructure prototype for integrating sources of historical data. Another one is planned by the Institute of Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for the man-land relationship study with the aid of GIS technique and data platform. [4] Both the projects are abundant of the ideas and frameworks for the future, and need academy fund to carry on. 6. REFERENCES [1] Ian N Gregory, Chris Bennett, Vicki Gilbam and Humphrey Southall, The Great Britain Historical GIS Project: From Map to Changing Human Geography, the Cartographic Journal, 39(1): 37-49, (2002) [2] Cao Shuji, History of Chinese Population in the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai: Fudan University Press, (2001) [3] Wang Jun, Chen Xiangdong, Yu Wenzhong, GIS Data Process of Historical Records the case of the Qing Dynasty in Shaanxi, Geo-Information Science, 5(1): 58-61, (2003) [4] Wang Jun, Ideas about Promoting the Digitalization in Historical Geography, Progress in Geography, 20(2), (2001)