Reflections on Issues in National Geographical Conditions Monitoring

National geographical conditions are an important part of the basic national conditions, including spatial distribution and relationships among natural elements, cultural elements, and socio-economic information. The first national geographical census in China has recently been completed and geographical conditions monitoring has entered a phase of organization, summarization, and statistical analysis of census data. In the future, routine geographic conditions monitoring will be carried out. In this paper, some issues about contents, scales, units, models,and frequency of geographical conditions monitoring are discussed. Firstly, in addition to the existing census contents, impervious surface and socio-economic information necessary to obtain, a comprehensive national geographical conditions should be paid much attention. Secondly, suitable scales, units of monitoring, and statistics must be determined to make monitoring results more accurate. Thirdly, based on different requirements, corresponding monitoring models must be constructed for statistical data analysis. Finally, scientific monitoring plans ought to be made on the basis of characteristics and change rules of monitoring elements.