Dalian covers an area of 12, 574 square kilometers, among which 2, 415 square kilometers of area is its old city. This area is abundant with mountains and hills, while plains and lowlands are rarely seen.

There are two main drainage systems in Dalian, namely the Huanghai Water System and Bohai Water System, with a total fresh water source of 3.786 billion cubic meters per year.

Land Resources

In 1993, the area of arable land covered 287,000 hectares, taking up 22.8% of the city's land, of which rice paddies occupied 33,000 hectares, and dry farmland 254,000. According to a survey made in 1985 by the Dalian Agricutural Resource Department, forest land added up to 424,000 hectares, occupying 33.1% of its total. The forest land totalled 344,000 hectares, the young afforestation land 30,000 hectares, barren mountains for deforestation 33,000 hectares. Statistics in 1985 showed that the total area for usable grassland totalled 267,000 hectares. There are 6 kinds of soil. Dalian’s brown zonal soils sum up to 907,000 hectares, amounting to 81.5% of the total; meadow soil, paddy soil, sand soil, saline soil and boggy soil take up 18.5%. Tideland totalled at 66,000 hectares, occupying 5.2% of the total area, 42,000 hectares in Huanghai, 24,000 in Bohai.

Biological Resources

Dalian is suitable for the growth of both animals and plants because of its pleasant climate and advantageous natural and ecological environments. It has the abundant biological resources. The terrestrial wildlife here in Dalian is 152 Families，666 Catergories，and 1747 Kinds，in which oil plants are 110 kinds, the medicinal plants 120 kinds, traditional Chinese herbs 50 kinds, and the plants for extracting the starch and making wine more than 50 kinds. Dalian is renowned for the production of apples. In addition, it is a big producer of hawthorn fruits, grapes and yellow peaches. In recent years, people in Dalian have begun to grow strawberries. There are more than 150 kinds of seaweed, inlcuding chlorophyta，brown algae, red algae, of which 50 are cash crops. Kelp and wakame are quite popular, and people have started to plant these crops. The average yearly capacity for organic carbon is 1400 per hectares. Sea curiosa is plentiful, including fish and shrimp, abalone, apostichopus, japonicus selenka, scallops, anthocidaris crassispina, and snails. In the gulf, it is lucrative to breed sea-mussel and scallops.

Mineral Resources

Nearly 30 types of metals, non-metals and natural mineral water resources have been discovered in more than 500 places in Dalian. More valuable non-metals are limestones, silica, diamonds, amianthus，magnesite，and talcum. The total amount of diamonds discovered in the whole country amounts to 54%, and 4 primary ores and 1 place in Wufangdian. Limestones are mainly scattered in Ganjingzi Districtand Wufangdian. The proved reserves in the province are 1/3 more or less, a dozen or more ore deposits are discovered with hundreds of mineral occurrence. The deposits for metals are not that big, scattering in Zhuanghe and Pulandian, and iron ore discovered are more than 70, with 40 copper ore, more than 20 of lead and zinc ore and fewer mineral occurence of nickle, gold and molybdenum.