Ecological Indicators (Dec 2022)
Study on land use conflict identification and territorial spatial zoning control in Rao River Basin, Jiangxi Province, China
Abstract
The coordinated development of territorial space is a necessary condition for sustainable regional development. In the context of rapid socio-economic development, how to construct a spatial control model to coordinate land use conflicts between agriculture, construction, and ecology has become an urgent problem to be resolved. By taking the Rao River Basin, a typical region with land use conflict issues, as an example, this study developed various land use suitability evaluation systems to identify and evaluate the land use conflict status in 2020 under the three major land use objectives: agricultural production, urban construction, and ecological protection. Then, based on the consideration of ecological priority, the remote sensing ecological index was applied to characterize the ecological quality of the watershed. Afterwards, a framework for spatial control zoning was developed to guide the land use approach within the context of territorial spatial planning by integrating regional ecological quality and land use conflict status. The results found that the spatial distribution of the suitability of agricultural land, construction land, and ecological land in the Rao River Basin exhibited overlap and intersection, causing significant land use conflicts. According to statistics, 36.55 % of the basin was affected by conflict, with medium conflict as the main grade and agriculture-construction conflict being the most significant with an area of up to 1,397.01 km2. Therefore, it is necessary to develop differentiated management strategies and divide spatial control zones to mitigate land use conflicts according to the basin's current development status. Integrated land use conflicts and ecological quality, the watershed was split into six spatial control zones: eco-dominated zones, agricultural production zones, urban construction zones, priority treatment zones, controlled development zones, and development potential zones. The study results can provide a basis for decision-making on the spatial development of the Rao River Basin and a methodological reference for identifying and mitigating land use conflicts.
