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To explore the spatial-temporal evolution and driving factors of cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination development, this paper applying the data of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2018 evaluated cultivated land production-living-ecological functions and revealed the spatial-temporal evolution of cultivated land multifunction with kernel density estimation and visualization mapping. Furthermore, this paper adopted coupling coordination degree model to analyze the cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination development. Finally, this paper explored driving factors and driving mechanism of cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination development by geographical detector. The results showed that: 1) from the perspective of temporal evolution, cultivated land production function level showed a fluctuation evolution trend of “rising-falling-rising”, the living function level showed an evolution trend of “rising-falling”, and the ecological function level increased slightly. All cultivated land functions had polarized characteristics. From the perspective of spatial pattern, the cultivated land production function level changed within [0.030, 0.608], showing a non-equilibrium spatial pattern of “high in the east, low in the west”. The living function level changed within [0.042, 0.672], showing a non-equilibrium spatial pattern of “high in the north, low in the south”. The ecological function level changed within [0.058, 0.897], showing a non-equilibrium spatial pattern of “high in the west, low in the east”. The areas with high level of production and living function were concentrated in the Northeast Plain, the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain and the Yangtze Region. The areas with low level of production function were located in the northwest and southwest regions, and the areas with low level of living function were located in the Beijing-Tianjin, Yunnan-Guizhou and southern regions in China. The area with high level of ecological function areas were located in the northeast and southwest regions, while the low-level areas were located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region and the central region of the Yangtze River. 2) The cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination level changed within [0.093, 0.554], and the overall level had steadily improved but was still low. The cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination levels of most provinces were still out of balance. The spatial pattern of cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination level showed an evolution trend of agglomeration and promotion. In detail, the cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination level of the northeast China, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze River Delta were relatively high, while that was low in the northwestern part of China. 3) The evolution of cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination level was significantly affected by the business entities conditions, agricultural development level, industrial development level and urbanization level. In short, the driving force of the business entities conditions and urbanization level were more significant than that of the agricultural development level and industrial development level. Moreover, the interaction type of two driving factors was two-factor enhancement or nonlinear enhancement, which indicated that the driving force of various factors had obvious divergence and interaction of factors positively strengthened the single-factor driving force, indicated that the divergence and interaction of various driving factors positively strengthened the single-factor driving force. In conclusion, the research results provide the guiding effect for deepening the study on cultivated land multifunction and decision support for promoting the differential governance of cultivated land resources and mutual promotion of cultivated land functions. To explore the spatial-temporal evolution and driving factors of cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination development, this paper applying the data of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2018 evaluated cultivated land production-living-ecological functions and revealed the spatial-temporal evolution of cultivated land multifunction with kernel density estimation and visualization mapping. Furthermore, this paper adopted coupling coordination degree model to analyze the cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination development. Finally, this paper explored driving factors and driving mechanism of cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination development by geographical detector. The results showed that: 1) from the perspective of temporal evolution, cultivated land production function level showed a fluctuation evolution trend of “rising-falling-rising”, the living function level showed an evolution trend of “rising-falling”, and the ecological function level increased slightly. All cultivated land functions had polarized characteristics. From the perspective of spatial pattern, the cultivated land production function level changed within [0.030, 0.608], showing a non-equilibrium spatial pattern of “high in the east, low in the west”. The living function level changed within [0.042, 0.672], showing a non-equilibrium spatial pattern of “high in the north, low in the south”. The ecological function level changed within [0.058, 0.897], showing a non-equilibrium spatial pattern of “high in the west, low in the east”. The areas with high level of production and living function were concentrated in the Northeast Plain, the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain and the Yangtze Region. The areas with low level of production function were located in the northwest and southwest regions, and the areas with low level of living function were located in the Beijing-Tianjin, Yunnan-Guizhou and southern regions in China. The area with high level of ecological function areas were located in the northeast and southwest regions, while the low-level areas were located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region and the central region of the Yangtze River. 2) The cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination level changed within [0.093, 0.554], and the overall level had steadily improved but was still low. The cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination levels of most provinces were still out of balance. The spatial pattern of cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination level showed an evolution trend of agglomeration and promotion. In detail, the cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination level of the northeast China, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze River Delta were relatively high, while that was low in the northwestern part of China. 3) The evolution of cultivated land multifunctional coupling coordination level was significantly affected by the business entities conditions, agricultural development level, industrial development level and urbanization level. In short, the driving force of the business entities conditions and urbanization level were more significant than that of the agricultural development level and industrial development level. Moreover, the interaction type of two driving factors was two-factor enhancement or nonlinear enhancement, which indicated that the driving force of various factors had obvious divergence and interaction of factors positively strengthened the single-factor driving force, indicated that the divergence and interaction of various driving factors positively strengthened the single-factor driving force. In conclusion, the research results provide the guiding effect for deepening the study on cultivated land multifunction and decision support for promoting the differential governance of cultivated land resources and mutual promotion of cultivated land functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational construction of a well-facilitated farmland become necessary for food security and modern agriculture in China. In farmland construction, the automatic management of spatial data can benefit to accurately distinguish well-facilitated farmland from the various land types. Various discriminating ways of well-facilitated farmland are adopted due to the different influence factors of agricultural production in in different regions, where the spatial distribution and structural features of well-facilitated farmland are quite different from place to place across the country. Most of the previous studies focus mainly on policies, benefit evaluation, preliminary planning and design in the well-facilitated farmland construction. There is still lacking on the studies of the discrimination and analysis for the regional structural features of the well-facilitated farmland. In this paper, a framework of an index system was constructed to identify the spatial distribution and structural features of the well-facilitated farmland using the law of spatial differentiation together with the related national standards and strategic planning, ranging from the scale and shape of farmlands, irrigation and drainage facilities, traffic accessibility, and farmland protection ratio. The identifying system was designed on the basis of the index framework with C#. NET and Arc Object. Subsequently, the proposed system was verified for its availability by taking a case study of a Loess Plateau and a southern mountainous region. The results were as follows: (1) In the Loess Plateau area, the standard rate of the farmland scale, farmland shape, irrigation and drainage facilities, traffic accessibility was 87.01%, 83.12%, 80.52%, 90.91% and 83.12%, respectively. The well-facilitated farmland area can be identified by the system was 38.33 hm² with the total discriminating precision was 94.38%. There were some farmlands that did not meet the requirements of the well-facilitated farmland, such as incomplete irrigation and drainage facilities, the irregular shapes of the fields that distributed in the branch furrow and furrow head around the farmland. (2) In the southern mountainous area, the standard rate of all spatial features was 100%. The well-facilitated farmland area that identified by the system was 30.07 hm², which was 10.34 hm² higher than that of the state-approved well-facilitated farmland. The high identified areas can be because some fields that meet the requirements of well-facilitated farmland have not been classed as the permanent basic farmland in some administrative regions. When regardless of this classification, the total discrimination precision was 100%. This index system can be used in different scenarios, such as macro monitoring and evaluation, project design and inspection of the well-facilitated farmland. This system was also applied for the Northeast Plain, North China Plain, Loess Plateau and southern mountainous regions, while the key elements of the spatial features of well-facilitated farmland construction can be detected with a reliable discriminant resolution. When combining with the remote sensing technology, the index system can help automatic management to know the real-time spatial data of well-facilitated farmland construction. Therefore, the developed system can be successfully applied to identify the extract well-facilitated farmland in the construction area, and then to analyze the obtained spatial data in real time, finally to implement automatic management for well-facilitated farmland construction. Furthermore, the proposed system in this paper can offer a promising reference to the current comprehensive supervision platform, and improve the management effectiveness of well-facilitated farmland construction in modern agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a complex interaction mechanism between land intensive use and regional ecological efficiency, and research on their coupling coordination is of great significance to promote urban sustainable development and construction of ecological civilization. Based on the definition of land intensive use and regional ecological efficiency, this paper established an evaluation index system to measure land intensive use and regional ecological efficiency respectively. Firstly, the entropy weight method and the non-expected output super-efficient SBM model were employed to evaluate and measure the land intensive use degree and regional ecological efficiency of 284 prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2016 in China respectively. Secondly, the coupling coordination degree model was adopted to evaluate their coordination degree, and the paper analyzed the spatial-temporal evolution characteristics of coupling coordination degree.The spatial auto-correlation method was employed to measure the spatial correlation pattern of the coupling coordination degree between intensive land use and regional ecological efficiency. The results showed that the coordination of land intensive use and regional ecological efficiency of prefecture-level city was in a mild imbalance stage at present in the whole, and the coupling coordination degree between the two increased over the time.The spatial distribution of the coordination between land intensive use and regional ecological efficiency showed a pattern of “higher in the mid and east, lower in the west”; and the spatial distribution of the coupling coordination degree between the two had little transformation over the time.The global spatial auto-correlation results showed that there was a significant positive correlation of the coupling coordination degree between land intensive use and regional ecological efficiency, and the correlation degree between the two increased first and then weakened over the time.The results of local spatial auto-correlation analysis showed that there were four types of the coordination spatial association between land intensive use and regional ecological efficiency, these were the spatial positive correlation type including high-high aggregation (HH) and low-low aggregation (LL) and the spatial negative correlation type including high-low aggregation (HL) and low-high aggregation (LH).The results showed that spatial positive correlation type of HH and LH were mainly distributed in the east, and the spatial negative correlation type of HL and LL were mainly distributed in the middle region,the types of HH,LH and LL emerged as the shape of cluster and always had a powerful agglomeration, and the LH type distributed discretely; except for the HL type, the overall pattern of the spatial distribution of the other types were stable over the time relatively and only the number increased or decreased partially. The major findings derived from the study can be summarized as follows: it is necessary to implement scientific environmental economic and environmental technology policies, strengthen differentiated monitoring and management of cities, carry out district management and control rationally and promote technical and innovation cooperation between cities. Only in this way, can we enhance the coordination of land intensive use and regional ecological efficiency, then promote the sustainable development of the cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The simulation of land use change in mountainous urban fringes is always a difficult problem. Existing methods, based on the traditional cellular automata (CA)-Markov coupling model, to capture and simulate such changes in this special areas suffer from notable deficiencies. In this paper, we explore, based on a case study of a mountainous urban fringe in Southwestern China, the performance of an improved method that combines the traditional CA-Markov model with multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). We develop an MCE based AHP model fitted by constraining conditions and factors in the study area. The MCE output is then used as the input of the CA-Markov model to simulate land use changes in the study area based on three periods (2006, 2011, and 2016). Meanwhile, the simulated results by the traditional CA-Markov model are also obtained. Both land use simulation results (the simulation images) are then compared against the observed land use in 2016 (the existing image in 2016) to examine the performance of the improved CA-Markov method. The results show that: 1) Establishing the missing link between the MCE process and the conventional CA-Markov model using land use suitability maps can significantly improve the performance of conventional CA-Markov model in mountainous urban fringes. The results from the case study show that the overall 93.15% simulation accuracy is much higher than that of the average 80% accuracy from most traditional CA-Markov models used in other similar areas. 2) The case study further indicates that from 2006 to 2016, the areas of cultivated land, garden, woodland, grassland, water body, and unused land in study area are decreasing annually. By contrast, the areas of urban land and rural settlement are increasing. The types with the most changes are cultivated land and urban land. This situation indicates that the rapid urbanization in mountainous urban fringe is still a mode of denotation expansion, in which a large amount of agricultural land, especially cultivated land, is occupied by urban construction. 3) The simulation shows that if the current rapid urbanization rate is maintained, then by 2030, the areas of cultivated land, garden, woodland, water body, unused land and rural settlement will be decreased by 6442.46, 923.53, 3239.17, 72.55, 41.26, 352.07 hm2, respectively. The increased land types mainly include urban land and grassland. We also argue the implications of the findings and suggest areas of further work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the historical change trajectory of Land Use/Land Cover Change (LUCC) is helpful to analyze the land use trends under the interference of human activities and changes in the natural environment, thereby helping decision makers to eliminate the negative impact of unreasonable land use patterns to the greatest extent. Yellow River Basin is the fifth longest river in the world, its ecological environment continues to deteriorate due to the rapid population growth and urban expansion, which has become one of the regions with the most serious soil erosion in China. Aiming to promote the ecological quality and high-quality development of social economy under the human interference and natural environment change, we analyzed the spatiotemporal dynamic of the LUCC in the Yellow River Basin (Henan section) from the watershed scale and proposed policy recommendations. We introduced the chord diagram visualization model to intuitively show the flow, direction and diversity of land cover changes, which would enrich the visual research method system of the land cover quantity transfer trajectory. The land use change index, chord diagram model and gravity center transfer model were used in this paper to analyze the spatial-temporal evolution trajectory and policy implications of the land use pattern in the Yellow River Basin (Henan section) in the past 30 years based on the land use remote sensing data in 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2018. The results showed that: 1) Ecological conservation land (35%) was mainly concentrated in the mountainous areas with higher elevation in the middle reaches; food security land (55%) and production and living land (10%) were mainly distributed in the central and eastern plains. 2) The outflows and inflows of dry land from 1990 to 2018 showed significant dominance; paddy field, water and grassland were dominated by outflow; urban land, rural settlements and other construction land were dominated by inflow. 3) The land use change in central cities had significant regional driving effects throughout the period. 4) The gravity center of food security land and ecological conservation land moved to the West and the area showed a decreasing trend, which proved that the high-quality cultivated land in the plain area in the lower reaches decreased and the ecosystem service function gradually weakened; The shift of gravity center of urban land to the East indicated that the social and economic development in the lower reaches were gradually active. The shift of gravity center of rural residential and other construction land to the West indicated that the population scale in the middle reaches was gradually increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable management of landscapes determines the relationship between each ecosystem service on different spatial scales. Taking Yanchi County of Ningxia in China as the research area, this paper aims to clarify the interaction between the main ecosystem services of grazing-prohibited grassland in agro-pasture ecotone, using various techniques, such as data extraction of grassland, remote sensing inversion, and spatial analysis. After local correction to InVEST model, three key ecosystem services, including the carbon storage, the water conservation and soil conservation after grazing prohibition during 2000－2015, were measured to define the features of their spatial-temporal changes. The spatial trade-offs were represented quantitatively for three services, and the partial correlation analysis at a pixel scale was used to analyze the spatial synergies at the township scale. The results show that three indicators of grassland ecosystem, including the functions of carbon storage, water and soil conservation, were significantly enhanced since the grazing prohibition. Specifically, the total carbon storage and density increased from 2 174 600 tons and 5.78 t/hm2 to 2 631 200 tons and 6.19 t/hm2, respectively; the quantity and density of water conservation increased from 28.84 million tons and 76.69 t/hm2 to 61.18 million tons and 143.92 t/hm2, respectively; and the total quantity and density of soil conservation increased from 13.83 million tons and 36.78 t/hm2 to 34.74 million tons and 81.71 t/hm2, respectively. However, there was a significant "N" type fluctuation in the increasing process. During the whole period, the range of carbon storage in grassland ecosystem varied slowly with continuous increase or decrease; while the water and soil conservation showed a remarkable increase or decrease. In terms of regional differences, the increases of carbon storage and water conservation in the north were higher than that in the south, whereas, the increase of soil conservation in the south was higher than that in the north. The function of carbon storage was closely related to the grassland type, indicating small interannual fluctuation and stable growth. The water and soil conservation can depend significantly on precipitation and terrain, leading to large interannual fluctuations and significant spatial differences. There was a spatial synergistic relationship between the soil and water conservation (86.34%) of grassland. The relationship between carbon storage and water conservation was complex, where the spatial trade-off and synergetic relationship were not correlation (47.66% and 52.34% respectively), while the carbon storage and soil conservation showed a spatial synergistic relationship (69.55%). Terrains dominated the synergies and trade-offs relationship between the carbon storage and water conservation, as well the carbon storage and soil conservation. Specifically, the synergetic relationship in areas revealed a large topographic relief, while there was most trade-offs relationship in flat areas. Therefore, the quantitative visualization can be used to evaluate the spatial trade-offs and synergies among the services of grassland ecosystem. The proposed method can further provide a scientific basis for the optimization of the grassland ecosystem, and thereby serve as a sound support for the sustainable management of grassland resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolution of cultivated land needs to be clarified in the driving mechanism for the sustainable land use in China. Most studies generally focused on the relationship between the evolutionary data and the driving mechanism in the evolution of cultivated land use. However, research on the drivers of marginal impact is rare, such as the spatial factor density that represented by the POI points. There can be a tipping point of marginal impact, when the quantity reaches a specific region, in the distance to the main road represented by the human factors. In this paper, the marginal effect analysis was used to make a preliminary evaluation, taking Southern Hubei as an example. Landsat remote sensing images were selected for the interpretation data of three periods from the year of 2000-2005, 2005-2010 and 2010-2015, including 15 types of POI spatial data. Firstly, the evaluation system of spatial factors was constructed from three aspects, including Euclidean distance indices, POI kernel density indices and locational indices. The Spatio-temporal evolution of cultivated land was systematically analyzed, together with dynamic change in the area from 2000 to 2015. Secondly, the principal component analysis was used to integrate the driving factors for the change of cultivated land. The extracted principal components were selected to construct the multiple Logistic regression models, including interaction terms. Lastly, an emphasis was put on the bidirectional marginal effect of spatial elements in the driving mechanism, and the change rule that illustrated by the graph of marginal effect. The results indicated that: (1) The evolution types of cultivated land showed the agglomeration of the same type, while the specific conversion type strongly depended on the spillover effect of neighboring land use. There was obvious evolution trend from cultivated land to construction, but others were not, possibly due to the influence from the macro-control policy of land use. From 2000 to 2015, the proportion of cultivated land converted to construction land increased from 28% to 44%, and then jumped to 96%, mainly concentrated in areas around towns and along major roads. (2) Marginal effects of spatial factors depend on types of cultivated land and periods. From 2000 to 2015, there was a gradual decrease in the variation range of marginal effect for different conversion types of cultivated land, while the homogeneous intersection point moved in the same direction for marginal effect curves of different transformation types. The dominated marginal effect of natural location factors was on the conversion of cultivated land to construction land, and cultivated land to water area, when the spatial elements of POI were different values. (3) The curve of spatial factors implied that there was a critical value of marginal effect. In the range of critical values, marginal effect changed significantly with the spatial factors, but outside the range, marginal effect tended to be stable. The qualitative and quantitative analysis on the marginal effect of spatial factors can offer a theoretical reference for the optimization of cultivated land layout, and the formulation of regional coordinated development strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultivated land fallow pattern is an important part for the implementation of the arable land fallow system. Therefore, it is necessary to explore different fallow patterns for the fully utilization of farmlands in China. This paper aims to refine the differentiated fallow pattern of cultivated land using literature analysis and case studies, together with field data collected from the main pilot areas of cultivated land fallow in China. Results showed that: 1) the pattern design of cultivated land fallow depends on three factors, including system subject, system object and system environment, in the specific land fallow system. The guideline of pattern design can be based on the principle of available local conditions, food security, the trinity of social, economic and ecological benefits, and the main standard of "rest, maintain and utilization" for fallow land. In pattern design of differentiated cultivated land fallow, the main contents include the pattern definitions, pattern categories, applicable areas, case areas of pattern, and typical fallow technical measures. 2) Five fallow patterns of cultivated land in China mainly are: fallow pattern of water-saving and retention in the groundwater funnel area, fallow pattern of clean decontamination in the land pollution area, fallow pattern types of ecological restoration in the ecologically degraded area, productivity conservation of cultivated land in highly intensive cultivation area, and the pattern of "transfer + fallow" in the seriously abandoned area of cultivated land. 3) Technical measures of fallow patterns are related to fallow time, fallow cultivation and fertilization, fallow tillage, fallow experiment and demonstration fields. The fallow time of pattern design can be divided long-term, short-term and seasonal fallow. The fallow fertilization of patterns consists of no-till net green manure, less tillage with green manure and bean rotation, no-tillage green manure mixed with grass, no tillage manure returned to the field, straw returning, and organic fertilizer (fertilized farmyard manure), and mixing with the above various ways. The fallow tillage mainly includes crushing and returning green manure to the field, fallow shallowing, deep turning and drying, and rotary tillage, and other related technical systems. The fallow patterns of experiment and demonstration fields include a variety of screening test, fallow time test, determination test of soil index, and comparison test between fallow and uncultivated farmland. 4) The typical fallow experimental demonstration fields in Huanxian county, Gansu Province, can be expected to popularize in different fallow areas of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, the vegetable planted by seedling cultivation and transplantation accounts for more than 60% of the total vegetable planting. It has the advantages of high and stable yield, climate compensation and land use efficiency improvement. However, vegetable production belongs to labor-intensive industry, the increasingly serious problem of difficult employment leads to the fact that the labor cost of vegetable production accounts for more than 50% of the total cost of vegetable production, which has become the main factor restricting its development. Therefore, it is an inevitable trend for the sustainable development of vegetable industry to study the mechanization and automation of vegetable transplantation. Taking and dropping seedlings is a very important link in vegetable transplanting. In view of the problems of automatic transplanting of vegetable seedlings in China, such as the complex and easy to fail of seedling picking and throwing device, a kind of oblique inserting plug seedling taking and throwing device is designed in this paper. The principle of picking and seeding device was analyzed, and then the location of taking point, throwing point and any point in the process of picking seedlings were selected. The projection method was used to design the device, and the structure and working parameters were determined. The length of the frame, driven rod, connecting rod, driving rod and seedling clip were 122, 196, 80, 186 and 227 mm respectively. In order to ensure that the device has a good effect of taking and throwing seedlings, the tilt angle of the seedling tray and the parameters of the seedling clamping into the hole are designed, and the movement process is analyzed. The feasibility of the scheme is verified by comparing the simulation trace curve with the actual test trace curve. According to the mathematical model of the working process of seedling taking and throwing device, kinematics analysis and simulation are carried out, and the position of seeding taking and throwing, speed and acceleration curve of the seedling clamp endpoint are obtained, the design meets the requirements of automatic transplanting. Considering the factors affecting the effect of taking and throwing seedlings, the spring stiffness coefficient, rotational speed of the active rod and the inclination angle of the seedling tray are selected as the experimental factors, and the orthogonal experiment was carried out. The results show that the best effect is obtained when the spring stiffness coefficient is 500 N/m, the speed of the active rod is 12 r/min, and the inclination angle of the seedling tray is 45°. Repeated experiments were conducted with the optimum parameters, the results show that the broken rate of substrates is 3.13%, the expulsion rate of seedlings is 2.43%, the success rate of seedling taking and throwing is 94.44%, the reliability of the device is high. The design provides a reference for the study of full automatic transplanting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rapid development in economy in China the demand for tourism has been changed exerting pressure on tourism resorts to transform and upgrade. As tourism area bears the responsibility of sustaining social and economic development, its land use has to be diversified, leading to a potential land use conflicts. However, there is a paucity of study on that and we attempt to address this knowledge gap. Assuming that a tourism resort should at least have ecological function, productivity and suitability for living (ecological-production-living suitability), we proposed an empirical model to identify and diagnose potential land use conflicts in tourism resorts by taking Wuyishan National Tourism Resort as an example. The potential land use conflict in resort was divided into five zones with different conflicting levels: zone without conflict, zone with mild conflict zone, zone with moderate conflict, zone with intense conflict, and zone with severe conflict. The conflict was divided into four levels: stable and controllable, quite controllable, slightly out of control, uncontrollable. Preliminary studies showed that there were significant differences in ecological-production-living suitability of the land use in this region, revealing existence of competitions and conflicts in land use. The results showed that the areas with land use conflict ranging from controllable to uncontrollable accounted for 17.76%, 35.59%, 22.37%, 23.74% and 0.55% of the whole area. The stable and controllable zone was mainly in the western, southeastern and central regions, and areas in the high-end health resort area, pastoral health resort area and eco-recreational area. The quite controllable zone was mainly in the transition zone from human production areas to the life and ecological protection area, including the waterfront recreation area and eco-recreational areas. The basic out-of-control conflicts were mainly distributed in the intensive activities of human production and life, which had both constructive and destructive conflicts. The serious out-of-control conflicts were smaller in area but deeper in degree. The spatial distribution, expression and conflict degree of potential land use conflict areas determined the conflict governance strategies should also be different. For example, strategies such as spatial control, quality improvement, and functional manifestation could be adopted according to local conditions. The framework of identification and governance of potential land use conflicts in tourist resorts proposed in this paper can accurately reflect the actual pattern of land use conflicts and can provide reference for the land use planning and management in tourist resorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land is the carrier of human activities. All kinds of social and economic problems in the process of urbanization can be reflected in land use. A large number of labor force has been transferred from rural areas especially in mountainous areas to cities, which has changed the population distribution pattern and land use pattern in different time and regional systems. The marginalization of cultivated land is a typical land use pattern in mountainous areas, and clarifying the characteristics of land marginalization and its mechanism can be used for reference to realize land capital appreciation and rural revitalization. By employing the survey data about 901 farm households involving 6563 plots in Wulong District and Youyang County in Chongqing City of China in 2012 and 2018 and compilation of agricultural product cost and benefit data from 2007 to 2017, this paper regarded cultivated land as an asset for families and revealed the evolution characteristics of cultivated land asset value in recent years, and a Probit model was constructed to identify the driving forces and explored the driving mechanism of abovementioned phenomena. The results showed that: 1) in recent years, the assets value of cultivated land in the investigated areas kept declining, which was manifested in the fact that the generally cultivated maize per km² has changed from yield to loss, and the average weighted net yield of major crops has decreased from 1 384.50 yuan per hm² in 2012 to 252.30 yuan per hm² in 2018, with a drop of 77.09%. The average rent of cultivated land dropped from 1577.45 yuan/hm² in 2012 to 361.65 yuan/hm² in 2018, while the proportion of rent-free land transfer rate from 71.09 % to 82.21 %. It can be seen that the assets value of cultivated land in typical mountainous areas in Chongqing are in the decline stage. (2) Plot size, the distance from the homestead, plot quality and land fragmentation were the important determinants of free-rent land transfer, while the rising opportunity cost of farming was the root cause. The mechanism of devaluation of cultivated land is that urbanization has pushed up labor costs and reduces agricultural profits, and cultivated land assets have devaluated and even abandoned. From the view of cost-benefit analysis, the abandonment of cultivated land in the study area is a normal and rational economic activity for farmers, and the devaluation of cultivated land assets is exactly in line with the original intention of returning farmland to forests. The devalued cultivated land or abandoned land of these assets is conducive to improving the ecological environment of the mountainous areas. At the same time, the idle or abandoned land resources in mountainous areas become relatively rich. The government should reasonably introduce urban capital and fully exploit the land resources in order to realize the land capital appreciation in mountainous areas and develop local economy. Furthermore, the government should stop large-scale land reclamation projects in mountainous areas and appropriately replenish cultivated land through land reclamation to avoid waste of public financial funds and destruction of the ecological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of the healthy productivity of cultivated land in China, analysis of key problems of different regions that endangers cultivated land health is of great significance to explore sustainable cultivated land utilization path and safeguard national food security and ecological security. The evaluation of cultivated land healthy productivity should be executed base on integration of existing evaluation indicators system and evaluation method achievements and clarification of key factor states and driving processes that affecting cultivated land health from the perspective of cultivated land components. And interaction characteristics between cultivated land health and cultivated land productivity should be analyzed by coupling them with each other. In this paper, we selected 65 counties (cities) nationwide as research regions with considering the difference of climate conditions in different regions of China, and used 5 categories of indicators including topographic characteristics, soil properties, tillage conditions, environmental conditions and biological characteristics to present the cultivated land health status. And on that basis, we defined critical health threshold and critical sub-health threshold of different indicators by analyzing counties’ indicator standard deviation convergence characteristics and scoring rules. We divided all pilot counties into three statuses: Health, sub-health and unhealth, and analyzed spatial distribution features of counties with different health status. Furthermore, regional climate conditions indicator, cultivated land natural conditions indicator and tillage technique level indicator had been synthetically integrated to evaluate the productivity of cultivated land, and regional cultivated land health-productivity interaction characteristic had been analyzed. Experimental result showed that counties whose cultivated land in sub-healthy or unhealthy status expressed significant regional features, and the key factors of limiting cultivated land health were different among pilot counties. On the one hand, the sub-health status cases caused by inferior farming conditions indicator were more common (accounting for nearly 40% of pilot counties) than other indicators, which was not only manifested by serious fragmentation of cultivated land and imperfect farmland infrastructure, but also reflected the urgent requirement for promoting high-standard farmland construction. On the other hand, the form of biological characteristics was severe, indicating that under the interaction of climatic conditions, soil structure and tillage technology, the ability of cultivated land to guarantee the healthy growth of animals was facing degradation. Furthermore, through coupling analysis of cultivated land health and cultivated land productivity, we divided the cultivated land healthy productivity characteristics of pilot counties into six categories: “health-high productivity”, “health-low productivity”, “sub-health-high productivity”, “sub-health-low productivity”, “unhealth-high productivity” and “unhealth-low productivity”, and respectively analyzed the regional farmland protection directions for each category. “Sub-health/unhealth-high productivity” type was widely distributed, which was the core region for implementation of “storing grain on land and storing grain in technology” strategy in China. Therefore, it is necessary to give consideration to the health and productivity of cultivated land in this region, and strengthen the research and practice on methods to improve the health of cultivated land. This study provides scientific basis for improving cultivated land healthy productivity and provides effective support for designing protection paths of cultivated land resources in different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of the healthy productivity of cultivated land in China, analysis of key problems of different regions that endangers cultivated land health is of great significance to explore sustainable cultivated land utilization path and safeguard national food security and ecological security. The evaluation of cultivated land healthy productivity should be executed base on integration of existing evaluation indicators system and evaluation method achievements and clarification of key factor states and driving processes that affecting cultivated land health from the perspective of cultivated land components. And interaction characteristics between cultivated land health and cultivated land productivity should be analyzed by coupling them with each other. In this paper, we selected 65 counties (cities) nationwide as research regions with considering the difference of climate conditions in different regions of China, and used 5 categories of indicators including topographic characteristics, soil properties, tillage conditions, environmental conditions and biological characteristics to present the cultivated land health status. And on that basis, we defined critical health threshold and critical sub-health threshold of different indicators by analyzing counties’ indicator standard deviation convergence characteristics and scoring rules. We divided all pilot counties into three statuses: Health, sub-health and unhealth, and analyzed spatial distribution features of counties with different health status. Furthermore, regional climate conditions indicator, cultivated land natural conditions indicator and tillage technique level indicator had been synthetically integrated to evaluate the productivity of cultivated land, and regional cultivated land health-productivity interaction characteristic had been analyzed. Experimental result showed that counties whose cultivated land in sub-healthy or unhealthy status expressed significant regional features, and the key factors of limiting cultivated land health were different among pilot counties. On the one hand, the sub-health status cases caused by inferior farming conditions indicator were more common (accounting for nearly 40% of pilot counties) than other indicators, which was not only manifested by serious fragmentation of cultivated land and imperfect farmland infrastructure, but also reflected the urgent requirement for promoting high-standard farmland construction. On the other hand, the form of biological characteristics was severe, indicating that under the interaction of climatic conditions, soil structure and tillage technology, the ability of cultivated land to guarantee the healthy growth of animals was facing degradation. Furthermore, through coupling analysis of cultivated land health and cultivated land productivity, we divided the cultivated land healthy productivity characteristics of pilot counties into six categories: “health-high productivity”, “health-low productivity”, “sub-health-high productivity”, “sub-health-low productivity”, “ill-health-high productivity” and “ill health-low productivity”, and respectively analyzed the regional farmland protection directions for each category. “Sub-health/ill-health-high productivity” type was widely distributed, which was the core region for implementation of “storing grain on land and storing grain in technology” strategy in China. Therefore, it is necessary to give consideration to the health and productivity of cultivated land in this region, and strengthen the research and practice on methods to improve the health of cultivated land. This study provides scientific basis for improving cultivated land healthy productivity and provides effective support for designing protection paths of cultivated land resources in different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the basic means of agricultural production, cultivated land plays an irreplaceable role in ensuring food security and promoting social and economic development. With the enhancement of urban interactions in space, the land use conflicts between urban development and agricultural protection have been intensified due to the diversified land demands caused by population agglomeration, industrial restructuring and infrastructure construction. Exploring the impacts of urbanization on cultivated land change has become a hot issue in China at present. Most of current studies have paid increasing attentions to the relationship between the growth of individual cities and cultivated land occupation, and few of them attempted to reveal the driving factors of cultivated land change from the perspective of spatial interaction of cities. Urban agglomeration is the main form of new urbanization in China. It is crucial to identify the distribution of cultivated land change and its driving factors from the perspective of urban agglomeration. In this paper, we measured the spatial connection of urban agglomerations based on the gravity equation and the urban flow intensity model, and then explored influencing factors of cultivated land conversion at the scales of individual cities and urban agglomerations during the period of 2005-2015 using a multilevel linear regression model. The research results show that the area of cultivated land in the major urban agglomerations has dropped sharply by 17 572.8 square kilometers in the decade from 2005 to 2015. The situation of cultivated land protection is grim. Then it shows significant scale effects and regional heterogeneity of cultivated land change in urban agglomerations. At the urban scale, the change of cultivated land is positively correlated with agricultural population, industrial economy and agricultural science & technology development, whereas negatively correlated with the growth of foreign investment and the expansion of construction land. At the scale of urban agglomeration, both indicators of spatial connection have a negative correlation with cultivated land change. Moreover, remarkable regional differences of influencing factors of cultivated land change exist between coastal and inland China. Comparing the regional differentiation of the degree of influence of outward functional forces, it can be found that the spatial interaction of coastal urban agglomerations has a more positive effect on the protection of cultivated land than the inland urban agglomerations with relatively backward development, and the negative impact is also smaller than that of inland urban agglomerations. The comparison with other models verified the effectiveness of the multilevel linear regression approach to reveal the influencing mechanism of cultivated land change on different scales. And the result of null model has proved the necessity and rationality in the research perspective of spatial interactions between cities. As a word, the strengthening of spatial interaction in urban agglomerations under rough development will obstruct the protection of cultivated land. In this case, controlling industrialization and urbanization reasonably, concerning the scale effects and regional heterogeneity, improving laws and regulations, correcting the rough development path, and improving land use efficiency might be the critical roads to relieve conflicts between development of urban agglomerations and protection of cultivated land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to ensure China's food and ecological security, it's particularly necessary to perform desertification monitoring and early warning during the land consolidation projects execution. The study area was located in Kezuohouqi which is famous for the sandy land. Based on Landsat 8 OLI image data, desertification monitoring was achieved by the decision tree classification method. The desertification early warning system was constructed by PSR (pressure-state-response) model; the natural and human influencing factors of desertification were regarded as "pressure", the desertification monitoring results were regarded as "state", and the land consolidation projects were regarded as "response". The weight of each factor in the PSR model was set by expert scoring method, and DESI (desertification ecological security index) was adopted in this paper; the greater the index, the lower the risks of desertification. Based on the DESI, the results of desertification early warning were divided into 4 different levels through natural breakpoint method, namely, no desertification warning, slight desertification warning, medium desertification warning and severe desertification warning. In the end, the validity of land consolidation could be evaluated through calculating the area of different desertification early warning results in the land consolidation projects and conducting the comparison. The results showed that: 1) The area of desertification accounted for 88% of study area. To be exact, the area of medium and severe desertification accounted for 61% of the total area, and the extremely severe desertification was mainly concentrated in the western part of the study area whose area accounted for 6% of the total area. 2) The zonal differentiation of desertification early warning results was clear; the spatial distribution from east to west in Kezuohouqi in turn was no desertification warning, medium desertification warning, slight desertification warning, medium desertification warning, severe desertification warning, and then medium desertification warning. The area of medium desertification warning was the largest, and the distribution laws of severe warning desertification and extremely severe desertification were similar, but the severe warning desertification tended to gather in the northwest pastoral areas of Kezuohouqi, the slight warning and no warning areas were located in the eastern part of Kezuohouqi, and the land use pattern was mainly agricultural land. 3) In the land consolidation projects, high quality capital farmland construction and arable land consolidation were mainly distributed in the areas with no desertification warning. The potential land suitable for agriculture and the project of land reclamation were mainly distributed in slight desertification warning area and medium desertification warning area. There was the sever desertification warning land among the farmland consolidation, the potential land resources suitable for agriculture, and forage grass base construction projects, whose distribution style was sporadic. However, the severe desertification warning area in high quality capital farmland was not up to the mark and should be eliminated from the projects. Overall, in the context of land consolidation, the risk of further desertification is small. The severe desertification warning area would be a key point for land consolidation projects, and the government must put a high premium on the sever warning area. The results of desertification early warning in this paper can provide the reference for land consolidation and adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to study the coupling relationship between rural population and rural residential land area change and promote the economization and intensification level of rural residential land, in this paper the Tapio decoupling model was introduced to reveal the decoupling degree of rural population-land change. From the perspective of urban and rural demographic shift, the factors decomposition model for rural residential land expansion was established. The logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) was adopted to quantitatively analyze the influencing factors accounting for the changes in rural residential land area. The change of rural residential land area was decomposed into 4 main driving effects including rural residential land intensive use effect, urban-rural population structure effect, urbanization effect and total population effect. The addition decomposition method was used to measure the magnitude of 4 driving effects. The rural residential land area of China (1996-2016) and 31 provinces or municipalities (2000-2016) were taken as example. The results show that China has experienced rapid urban-rural transformation in the past few years. Rural population continues to decrease, presenting a 30.7 percent decline. But in the meantime, the total area of rural residential land increases continuously. The changes in rural residential land area among different provinces (municipalities) varied obviously, and overall the eastern and western regions indicated a greater growth. The relationship between rural population and rural residential land change is uncoordinated, and rural residential land tends to be more extensively utilized. From the decoupling index of China and 31 provinces or municipalities, the decoupling relationship between rural population and residential land area change were mainly characterized by strong negative decoupling. The degree of negative decoupling in the eastern and western regions was more serious than that in the central areas. What's more, the degree of negative decoupling is generally deteriorating. The values of 4 driving effects were measured from 1996-2016. The results indicated that the scale of rural residential land in China increased by 2.020×105 hm2 from 1996 to 2008 including a decrease of 116.833×105 hm2 caused by urban-rural population structure effect, and the increase of 33.497×105, 71.813×105, 13.544×105 hm2 for rural residential land intensive use effect, urbanization effect and total population effect, respectively. Additionally, during 2009-2016, the scale of rural residential land in China increased by 7.275×105 hm2. The rural residential land intensive use effect, urbanization effect and total population effect caused the increase of 36.689×105, -68.271×105, 32.164×105, 6.692×105 hm2, respectively. Among 4 driving effects, the urban-rural population structure effect was stronger than the others. The contribution of 4 driving effects to the change in rural residential land area in different periods performed differently. The value of urbanization effect was greater than that of rural residential land intensive use effect during 1996-2008, but after 2009, the rural residential land intensive use effect gradually exceeded the urbanization effect, and become the dominant factor caused the increase of rural residential land. Therefore, strengthening the planning and management of rural residential land, gradually promoting rural residential land consolidation, and actively exploring the exit mechanism of rural residential land may be effective measures for improving the intensification level of rural land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, there are still a large number of poverty-stricken counties in the western part of China. Although the government has recently increased financial support for rural areas, and the policy guidelines have been steadily tilting toward rural areas, especially poor rural areas, rural poverty is still difficult to resolve. In order to reasonably determine the optimal layout direction of rural settlements in poor mountainous areas, and put forward some scientific guidance in the rural land remediation and new rural construction in mountainous areas, this paper took Xundian Hui and Yi Autonomous County, a former national poverty-stricken county that was out of poverty in 2018, as a research area, and used the methods of remote sensing interpretation, GIS analysis, landscape shape index model, buffer analysis, Kernel density estimation and Getis-Ord Gi* to study the evolution characteristics and influencing factors of rural settlements in Xundian County from 2001 to 2017 in terms of space, scale and form. The research results showed that: 1) During 2001-2017, there were some changes in the scale, density, shape and spatial distribution of rural settlements in Xundian County. The main changes were as follows: from 2001 to 2017, the overall scale of rural settlements had expanded significantly, the landscape shape tended to be regular, and the average patch size increased; the characteristics of rural settlements clustering in areas with superior terrain were becoming more and more obvious. The analysis results of kernel density and Getis-Ord Gi* showed that the spatial divergence characteristics of rural settlements patch scales were apparent, and the distribution patterns were gradually expanding from small-scale decentralization to large-scale clustering; 2) The natural geographical factors such as geological and topographical conditions were the basic factors that influencing the distribution pattern of rural settlements in mountainous areas. The basic pattern of spatial distribution of rural settlements in mountainous areas is the result of long-term adaptation to topographic and geomorphological conditions; 3) Socio-economic factors, location factors and policy factors were the important factors influencing the change of spatial distribution. As the urban-rural income gap increased, the rural population of Xundian County flew to urban areas, so rural settlements were more concentrated in urban areas; the results of the neighborhood analysis of towns and roads also indicated that rural settlements tended to be concentrated in the distribution of towns and roads. In addition, the precise poverty alleviation policy with relocation as the main means was another major factor leading to the concentration of rural settlements in the plain areas with superior terrain conditions. According to the study, for mountainous rural areas with scarce natural resources, the poverty alleviation in mountainous areas should rely mainly on industrial assistance rather than policy assistance in the future. The local government should focus on increasing the employment opportunities of farmers and improving the livelihood conditions of farmers. Only in this way can we really help the poor and achieve the rural revitalization. This study can provide a practical guidance for the poverty alleviation work in the rural areas of the southwestern frontiers with frequent geological disasters; also provide a scientific theoretical basis for the optimization of the spatial layout of rural settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With socio-economic growth, arable land fragmentation has increasingly become a serious obstacle to agricultural development, in terms of waste of scarce land resource, need of intensive labor input, obstruction of application of machineries, increasing production cost and reducing land use efficiency. Land consolidation has widely been taken as a necessary approach for solving this problem. In the context of rural revitalization, it is of great significance to explore novel patterns of land consolidation besides traditional government-dominated pattern. The objective of this paper was to expound on the mechanism and examine the effectiveness of a new land consolidation pattern, namely the farmer-dominated pattern of “merging small plots to large plot”, emerging in the rural area of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in hope of making contributions to innovations on land consolidation, rural land reform, and rural revitalization. Methods of semi-structured interviews, quantitative models, and case studies were adopted. This new pattern combined a BOTTOM-UP process of land tenure adjustment, land consolidation plan, design and engineering, spontaneously carried out by farmers, with a TOP-DOWN financial support from government, which was conditional on meeting the requirements of high-standard basic farmland construction. Before “merging small plots to large plot”, land fragmentation affected agricultural output, production cost and land use efficiency by directly or indirectly acting on input factors of land, labor, capital, technology among others in arable land use system. While “merging small plots to large plot” could reallocate land parcels and readjust land tenure, enhance the coordination and mutual adaption of various input factors, hence promote the alignment of productive forces and relations of production. In the case study of Nongnong Village, farmer-dominated land consolidation pattern increased the area of arable land through filling earth ditches and merging field ridge, dramatically reduced plot number through merging small plots, significantly improved arable land use efficiency and agricultural productivity through infrastructure construction such as roads and irrigation facilities and agricultural machineries application. Furthermore, this new pattern substantially increased farmers’ income through adjustment of cropping structure and transfer of rural labor into non-farm employments. It was concluded that farmer-dominated land consolidation pattern was a typical model of the BOTTOM-UP land consolidation by the farmers combined with the TOP-DOWN supervision and support by government, could effectively solve the problem of arable land fragmentation and promote optimization and coordination among various input factors of arable land use system, and proved itself as an effective approach to bridge the gap between smallholders and modern agriculture characterized of industrialization and mechanization, which could contribute to rural revitalization and be extended to other regions in China as well as other developing countries. Three insights are suggested to extend this innovation pattern. First, central and provincial governments should issue policies to address the legitimacy problem concerning farmers self-organized land merger and consolidation and to provide financial supports for construction of farmland infrastructures. Second, village elites should play an important role as facilitators, coordinators, or brokers in whole process. Third, a special work team on site, comprised of village cadres, village elites, representatives of all clans and interest groups, should be assembled to deal with conflicts of interests and ensure the synergy of multiple interests and objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agro-pastoral ecotone in northern China is fragile in ecology. Desertification is the prominent eco-environmental problem which is mainly induced by unreasonable land use in this area. In the background of ecological civilization construction in China, it is significant to study land suitability for cultivation in the agro-pastoral ecotone in northern China to prompt ecological protection and scientific utilization of land resource. Taking Horqin Left Back Banner as a case study, from the aspects of ecology, production and life, this paper constructed the evaluation index system to evaluate land suitability for cultivation. The results showed that the unsuitable cultivation area in cultivated land in Horqin Left Back Banner was 15996.87 hm2 accounting for 5.339% of total cultivated land area. Owing to ecological, production and living factors, the unsuitable cultivation area of cultivated land were 7 519.23, 9 337.23 and 6 039.99 hm2 and their proportions were 40.78%, 32.84% and 26.38%, respectively. There were 6 unsuitable cultivation types including ecology; production; ecology and production; ecology and life; production and life; ecology, production and life. We reckon that unsuitable cultivation land should be de-farmed firstly in Grain for Green Project. The grass land suitable for cultivation was 197 195.94 hm2 accounting for 32.18% in total grass land area. Namely, about a third of the grass land could be reclaimed into cultivated land in Horqin Left Back Banner. However, it was found that the proportion of high quality grass land suitable for cultivation was very small from perspectives of soil suitability and topographic conditions. From the perspective of soil suitability, the most suitable, the moderate suitable and the low suitable were 26 058.42, 34 347.78, 136 789.74 hm2, accounting for 13.214%, 17.418%, 69.367% of the total grass land suitable for cultivation, respectively. From the perspective of topography condition, when the micro topography index were [1.5, 1.6), [1.6, 1.7), [1.7, 1.8) and [1.8, 1.9) ,the grass land areas were 0.18, 0 2, 8.1 and 277.29 hm2, accounting for 0, 0, 0.004% and 0.141% of the total grass land area suitable for cultivation, respectively. However, when the micro topography index were [1.9, 2.0), [2.0, 2.1), [2.1, 2.2), the grass land area were 82 389.24, 112 996 and 1 525.05 hm2 respectively, accounting for 41.780%, 57.301% and 0.773% of the total grass land area suitable for cultivation. From two aspects of soil suitability and topography condition, the grass land area proportion of soil suitability for most grade and micro topographic index for [1.5, 1.9) was only 0.039% to the total grass land area suitable for cultivation. And the grass land area proportion of soil suitability for most and moderate grade and micro topographic index for [1.5, 1.9) was only 0.085% to the total grass land area suitable for cultivation. In order to avoid the destruction of ecological environment and the expansion of desertification caused by the reclamation of low quality grass land, it is suggested that priority should be given to the high quality reserved cultivated land resource in reclamation and the national coordination should be maintained in cultivated land balance across provincial region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The livability evaluation of living space was an important topic, which had important guiding significance for improving the livability of living space.This study aimed to explore the theoretical logical relationship between the multi-function of land use and livability of living space, and make use of the research about multi-function of land use for the optimization practice of livability of living space. So, this paper discussed the theoretical logical relationships between multiple functions of land use and livability of living space from the perspective of human needed products and services supplied by land use, and the evaluation index system was built based on the relationship and previous research. And then, the scheme of index spatialization was designed based on the technology of geographical information system(GIS) and remote sensing(RS). At the same time, multi-source data like remote sensing, survey, statistical and other spatialdataset were integrated by analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to quantify the spatial distribution of living space in ZhangbeiCounty, Hebei Province. The results showed that the livability of living space in ZhangbeiCounty presented the trend that the high value center was concentrated in the ZhangbeiTown and the subcenterwas distributed in Ertai-ShagouTown. The living space area above relatively strong levelwas only 2.42% of all county area.The spatial distribution characteristics of 3 types of land use were significantly difference;livingbearing function presented a trend like network distribution takingmain traffic trunk line as high value axis and ZhangbeiCounty as high value center. Living support function presented 2 groupsof high value centerscontaining the ZhangbeiTownand the north of YoulougouTown, and Ertai-shagouTown. The high value center of mental purification function was distributed in the ZhangbeiTown and the subcenterwas distributed in the area along the southwest of ZhangbeiTown to DaheTown and Ertai-shagouTown. There was a large difference in the distribution of livability between towns and villages. Most of the areas of livability space in town land were above the moderate level, especially, the area the livability level of which belonged to the higher and highest accounted for 78.37% of the total area of the town land, and meanwhile, accounted for 74.94% of the total area with higher and highest level of living space. This area was mainly distributed in the town of Zhangbei, Ertaiand Shagou, and YoulougouVillage. Most of the livability areas in rural land were under the moderate level, and the area oflower and lowest level accounted for 78.39% of the total area of the rural land, whatwas more, accounted for 95.32% of the total area with lower and lowest level of living space. This area was mainly concentered in the town ofHailiutu, Erquanjing, Dahe, Danjinghe, and Liangmianjing. The spatial difference of the functional elements of land use was the main reason to the difference in livability of living space. So, according to the above results, some conclusions can be drawn in this research. The villages, which containlarge lower and lowest livability space area, are the key areas of primary concern inthe implementation process of the“Revitalizing the countryside” strategy; what’s more, the theory and method of land use multi-function can be applied to the study of livability evaluation of living space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yellow River Delta Nature Reserve (YRDNR) is a national nature reserve designed to protect the newly built wetland ecosystem and the rare and endangered birds. It is one of the fastest growing coastal wetland ecosystems around the world and an important site for red-crowned cranes during migration and wintering periods. It is an urgent task to effectively manage and control resource utilization activities and protect the wetland habitat of red-crowned cranes in the YRDNR. Spatial optimization model can be applied to a variety of spatial planning problems to identify trade-offs between conflicting objectives and solve the optimum allocation problem (such as allocation of reserve sites or management actions). In this paper, we firstly had a secondary development with C++ language to construct a land use pattern spatial optimization model based on LUPO (land use pattern optimization) model developed by Annelie Holzkamper et al. The LUPO model can be applied to identify trade-offs between habitat conservation of red-crowned cranes and sustainable development of community economy in the nature reserve, and to optimize allocation of land use in YRDNR. Secondly, we designed 3 target-driven scenarios according to management requirement in YRDNR to balance ecological protection and economic development. Finally, we simulated the spatial optimization of land use pattern in YNRDR under the 3 scenarios by integrating the scenarios into the LUPO model. The results showed as follows: 1) Under Scenario A, it obviously achieved the ecological conservation target with a 30% increase of suitable habitat area of red-crowned crane by converting the areas of reed ponds and mudflats to seepweed tidal flats and Chinese tamarisk-seepweed tidal flats, which are the birds preferred habitats. However, the regional economic benefit had a small increase of only 11%; 2) Under Scenario B, it achieved 54% regional economic growth by converting the area of farmlands, reed ponds and mudflats to shrimp ponds, which owned a highly economic value. In the meanwhile, the habitat area change of red-crowned crane was not obvious, and became more fragmented in Scenario B; 3) Under Scenario C, it achieved the target of 24% suitable habitat area expansion of red-crowned crane along with 41.3% regional economic growth. It may mainly respectively result from significant expansion of seepweed tidal flats and shrimp ponds converted from mudflats and farmlands. In conclusion, it is more reasonable and practical under Scenario C than Scenarios A and B in YNRDR due to the fact the trade-off between wetland habitat conservation and sustainable development is comprehensively considered. We consider that our LUPO model can offer a good technique support for habitat protection of red-crowned crane and wetland landscape management in YRDNR. However, we also recommend a further secondary development of LUPO model to improve the accuracy, feasibility and operability of the model in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]