Version 1
: Received: 12 September 2019 / Approved: 14 September 2019 / Online: 14 September 2019 (12:14:38 CEST)
How to cite:
Wang, X.; Zou, L.; Shen, X. The Development of Land Engineering as an Academic Discipline in China: Historical Overview and Strategic Thinking. Preprints2019, 2019090136. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201909.0136.v1
Wang, X.; Zou, L.; Shen, X. The Development of Land Engineering as an Academic Discipline in China: Historical Overview and Strategic Thinking. Preprints 2019, 2019090136. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201909.0136.v1
Wang, X.; Zou, L.; Shen, X. The Development of Land Engineering as an Academic Discipline in China: Historical Overview and Strategic Thinking. Preprints2019, 2019090136. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201909.0136.v1
APA Style
Wang, X., Zou, L., & Shen, X. (2019). The Development of Land Engineering as an Academic Discipline in China: Historical Overview and Strategic Thinking. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201909.0136.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Wang, X., Lilin Zou and Xiaoqiang Shen. 2019 "The Development of Land Engineering as an Academic Discipline in China: Historical Overview and Strategic Thinking" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201909.0136.v1
Abstract
Land engineering is a specific new academic discipline in China. Although the undergraduate major of land engineering was officially approved and established lately since 2017, the birth of land engineering as an academic discipline dates back 40 years ago. It has passed through four development stages: the incubation stage in 1978-1985, the initial stage in 1986-1997, the growth stage in 1998-2011, and the expanding stage from 2012 to present. However, land engineering as an academic discipline remains immature and seriously lags behind practice. There are still no unified academic community and broad academic consensus. After a historical overview of the four development stages, this study gave a strategic consideration to five key questions. We argue that the study object of the discipline is land engineering activity, which is defined as the artificial transformation of a land complex combined by various natural and human elements. The uniqueness of the discipline is rooted in its ability to study the comprehensive and integrated reorganization or rebuilding of various elements of land as a complex, with the theory of land complex reconstruction being the core theory. The discipline of land engineering is based on land pure science and land technology, and is one basis of land management. It consists of two modules (rural land engineering and urban land engineering), five secondary disciplines of each module (land development, land rearrangement, land improvement, land protection, and land remediation), and more than 30 research directions. Various technologies are only instrumental but not essential components of land engineering as an academic discipline.
Keywords
land engineering; development stage; discipline uniqueness; theory system; subject matter; land science
Subject
Engineering, Civil Engineering
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
