Study on tobacco spatial agglomeration pattern based on remote sensing and GIS methods in Henan province, China

Industry spatial agglomeration is a world-wide phenomenon. As the raw material of tobacco industry, tobacco is the only economic crop which is intensive produced in China at present. The statistic data is used to analyze the regional specialization and agglomeration of tobacco planting industry, but the spatial pattern of tobacco sown area is always neglected. In this paper, Henan province is chosen as the study area, and the distribution pattern of tobacco sown area has been studied using RS and GIS methods. According to the analysis of phenology characters of crops, the tobacco sown area and its growing condition were monitored using two-temporal data, which was in Jan and June 2008 respectively. Then the tobacco sown area of each county was calculated and tobacco patch was derived using ARCGIS 9.0. According to the result, the regional Geordie coefficient which indicates industry agglomeration distribution status and the fragmentation index were studied. Results showed the higher regional Geordie coefficient means the higher planting scale at present, but does not totally equal the higher level of aggregation. The fragmentation index of tobacco sown area shows different trend. So both the economic coefficient and the fragmentation index should be considered during discussing the aggregation level. In order to increase the development potential of Henan tobacco industry, it should increase the planting scale of the central part of Henan province.