Post-disaster spatial reconstruction from the perspective of a rural settlement niche in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River

Post-disaster recovery and reconstruction provide an effective way to reduce the disaster vulnerability of, and promote leapfrog development in, an affected area. To date, studies that have used administrative boundaries to investigate the reconstruction of settlement space have not been able to clearly define the real boundaries of land use changes or quantify the degree of response to the 'Build-Back-Better' initiative, and have lacked any consideration of the fourth reconstruction stage-development period (10 years). This study constructed a mountain settlement niche and analyzed the characteristics, spatial reconstruction, and drivers of rural settlements during 2009-2019 in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River, southwest China. The results showed the following: (1) Natural factors were the basis for the formation and development of mountain settlement niches. The scale of the settlement niche and its land use structure depended on the physical geography features and the ethnic farming and grazing traditions. The settlement niche provided a realistic boundary for the spatial reconstruction. (2) The layout of residential land around cropland was the common feature of the mountain settlement niche. Of all the land use types, the roads and rural residential lands showed the most change over the 10 years; 13,860 residential patches increased in size and 4,742 patches were abandoned. (3) The area of orchards, planted to reconstruct the economy in the mountains, increased by nearly 2.5 times. (4) Collapses, landslides, and debris flow disasters and the ecological red line influenced the spatial reconstruction. While the main focus of postdisaster recovery is spatial reconstruction, initiatives should include economic and spiritual recovery, and should also achieve sustainable development of the region.