Sustainable use zoning of land resources considering ecological and geological problems in Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, China.

The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone is one of the fastest growing areas of China's social and economic development. However, the contradiction between people and land, the deterioration of ecological environment and the damage of urban ecological security have become more serious problems. In previous studies there was single land utilization type in small-area and the evaluation method was not suitable to large areas, this study proposes a new method. Firstly, the study implements ecological land zoning from assessing the importance of ecosystem services functional in four aspects: biodiversity, water conservation, soil conservation and coastal protected zone. Then, the suitability evaluation index system of agricultural and construction land is established from the geological environment perspective, and introduces variable weight-analytical hierarchy process-comprehensive index model to evaluate the suitability of agricultural land and construction land. Re-zoning the type of land that has a special effect on the socio-economic, the mining land, protected area of geological relics and groundwater resources, respectively. Finally, considering the actual condition use status and suitability distribution of land, the results of comprehensive zoning of land utilization is got. The results of this study can provide some geological basis for the future land utilization zoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]