[Towards <<the atlas of plague and its environment in the People's Republic of China>>: idea, principle and methodology of design and research results].

<<The Atlas of Plague and Its Environment in the People's Republic of China>>is the first atlas with spatial analysis methods to study on plague distributions, epidemics, controls, foci characters and their relationships with environment in China. This paper briefly introduces the idea, principle and methodology of its design and the main research results from it. The atlas include ten map groups as general maps, environmental background maps, plague epidemic and foci background maps in the world, maps of plague foci and their environments, epidemic maps, distribution maps of reservoirs, distribution maps of vectors, biotype distribution maps of yersinia pestis, maps of control institutions and control result maps. All map groups are composed together to focus the research on the relationship between plague and its environment for control. The atlas not only expatriates the temporal and spatial distribution of plague in last 200 years in China, but also reveals spatial distribution of plague foci and regional difference of the plasmid combination and biochemical types of yersnia pestis. The close relationship between plague and its geochemical environment (enriched in Fe or Ca) is one of the most important discovers which provide further study and control directions of plague.