National Physical Atlas of the People's Republic of China
中华人民共和国国家自然地图集
China · 中国地图出版社 · 1999
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Classic Milestone: National Atlas
Unknown · 2014
The national atlas is an important symbol of a country's scientific, technological and cultural level. In the mid-1950s, China included the compilation of a national atlas in its national scientific development plan, and in 1958 established an editorial committee headed by Zhu Kezhen. The project was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution but resumed in 1981 with the approval of the State Council. The atlas was planned in five volumes: general, physical, economic, agricultural and historical. The compilation involved 216 institutions and more than 1,700 experts and scholars, and the volumes were published successively from 1990 to 1999, with Chinese-English bilingual editions and electronic versions. The national atlas systematically summarizes information on China's nature, population, economy, society and history, providing authoritative references for macro decision-making, scientific research and education. It received multiple national awards and high praise from the international cartographic community. The project also promoted the compilation of provincial atlases and cultivated a large number of cartographic talents, making it a milestone in the development of modern Chinese cartography.
Evaluation of the National Physical Atlas of China
叶夫捷耶夫, O. A.; 科托娃, T. B.; 吉库诺夫, B. C. · 2000
This review evaluates the National Physical Atlas of China (1999), a monumental cartographic work compiled by over 300 specialists from nearly 40 Chinese institutions under the leadership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and with Professor Liao Ke as editor‑in‑chief. The atlas comprises 540 maps on 225 pages, systematically structured into five sections: introductory maps, physical environment, natural resources, natural hazards, and nature utilization and conservation. The evaluation highlights the atlas’s interdisciplinary and encyclopedic character, designed to support environmental change studies, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development. By integrating extensive field data with satellite remote sensing, the atlas offers innovative thematic coverage, including maps of heavy metal bioaccumulation in fish, potential net primary productivity under hypothetical climate‑change scenarios (precipitation ±10%, temperature +4°C), temporal distribution of earthquakes, and human diseases caused by selenium, iodine and fluorine deficiencies. Cartographically, the work successfully merges traditional drafting with computer‑aided multimedia and GIS techniques, achieving high scientific accuracy and aesthetic quality at a primary scale of 1:10 000 000. The review concludes that the National Physical Atlas of China is an unparalleled scientific reference, providing critical support for national security, education, and global environmental cooperation, and it stands as one of the finest national atlases published in recent decades.
The National Physical Atlas of China
Ke Liao · 2001
The National Physical Atlas of China is a large-format comprehensive scientific reference atlas representing national achievement in atlas compilation, published by China Atlas Press in 1999, with Chinese and English editions issued simultaneously. It consists of five sections—Preface Maps, Physical Environment, Natural Resources, Natural Disasters, and Natural Utilization and Reservation—organized into 18 map groups, containing 540 map sheets, 115 charts and photos, and nearly 300,000 words of map explanations. The atlas systematically integrates the findings of integrated scientific surveys and long-term observational data accumulated since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, together with historical records spanning thousands of years. It comprehensively depicts the natural environment, resource endowments, disaster distribution, and the achievements in nature utilization and conservation across China, thereby providing a scientific basis for resource assessment, ecological conservation, disaster prevention, and socioeconomic planning. The compilation embodies multiple innovations: it extends and updates basic scientific data in both spatial and temporal dimensions; it highlights sustainable development concerns by devoting about 40% of its content to resources, disasters, and nature protection; it substantially expands plant and animal maps reflecting biodiversity research; it introduces new topics such as lithospheric dynamics, paleogeography, and global-change response; and it pioneers a fully digital workflow for the design, compilation, and automatic plate-making of a large-format national atlas, reaching an internationally advanced level in the late 1990s. The atlas has been acclaimed by international scholars as one of the finest national atlases published in recent decades, and its compilation marks an epoch-making event in China’s scientific and technological life. Future work will establish a national physical atlas information system and publish an electronic edition incorporating dynamic, 3D, and analytical capabilities, contributing further to the Digital China initiative.
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