本文首先简要回顾了1990年以前中国乡村地理学的发展概况,然后从基础理论的发展、土地利用、经济、聚落、城市化、景观、文化、空间八个方面对1990年以来中国乡村地理学的主要研究内容进行了简略阐述。这一时期的研究紧跟乡村发展实际,在广度和深度上都有所拓展,众多学科的参与也使得内容与方法更加充实。但总的来看目前中国乡村地理学还很薄弱,许多基本问题还有待于学术界进一步研究。文章最后对其未来发展做出了展望。

Ruralgeography,as a branch of human geography established long time ago in western countries, was introduced in China in 1930s,which initial research focused on rural settlement and land utilization.In the first twenty years after Country-Foundation rural geography research have been simplified into the study of agriculture,till 1980s it just entered into the right path,which leading to acquire abundant research results and set up a steady basis for the subsequent work.
Rural geography researches in 1990s succeed to the merit of that in 1980s,and achieved plentiful and substantial harvest with more researchers' support,more advanced techniques and more available means. Though no obvious breakthrough on theory during this term,there were some valuable discussion about the object,content and basic concept.Meanwhile,with the idea of sustainable development seeping into all the fields of rural geography,the studies of setting up evaluation index system became a hot point.In recent years,the huge change on rural land utilization and rural economy has enriched the materials for the researchers considerably,especially the facets of evolvement,optimization,planning,regionalization,and food security and environment problem have been took more attention.Rural settlements research,a traditional field,made great progress chiefly on the characteristic,diffusion,spatial structure,distribution rule and so on, and generated some novel concepts such as ecotypic village,rural habitat ecosystem and rural settlement surrounding. With the development of town,the theory of rural urbanization maturates step by step.Rural landscape is a new research field,and its planning,evaluation and exploitation were the main work in this term. More and more researcher are interested in the economic behaviors and amusement of farmers.Rural space research is just on primary stage.
In summary,rural geology is still a weak subject,for its fundamental theory,subject system,and researching methodology waiting to be strengthened further.Henceforth,we should pay more attention to the study on small region,multi-subjects cooperation,deepening and expanding the study field to improve the Chinese research level of rural geography.