As an important subsystem describing rural development, the mutually beneficial symbiosis of rural settlements and cultivated land is crucial for sustainable rural development. Under the heterogeneous physical environment of Gansu province, 1384 townships were taken as the research units, and the symbiosis theory was introduced to construct a framework for the symbiosis between rural settlements and cultivated land. We construct a system of indicators for evaluating rural settlements, cultivated land, symbiosis environments, and identify their symbiosis patterns with the help of the Lotka-Volterra model. In the context of the new round of territorial spatial planning, the SD-FLUS coupled model is used to compare and analyze the evolutionary trends of symbiosis patterns under the baseline development scenario (BD) and the planning development scenario (PD) in 2035. The study found that: (1) The development level of rural settlements and cultivated land in Gansu shows a trend of first increasing and then decreasing, and the symbiosis environmental capacity shows a continuous decreasing trend. Three indicators of the five agricultural zones have significant differences. The irrigated agriculture area of the Hexi Region (IA) has an obvious advantage in the regional development. (2) The overall pattern of symbiosis between rural settlements and cultivated land in the province showed a shift from mutually beneficial symbiosis to mutually detrimental symbiosis, with the proportion of mutually beneficial symbiosis decreasing from 59.80% to 38.97%. There were significant differences in dominant patterns between regions. Alpine pastoral area (AP), mountainous agricultural area (MA), and IA are dominated by mutually beneficial symbiosis, while dry agricultural area (DA) and rain-fed agricultural area (RA) are dominated by rural settlements-bias and cultivated land-bias. During the 21-year period, the dominant pattrens of each region tended to be diversified and showed a commonality in the transformation from mutually beneficial symbiosis to mutually detrimental symbiosis. (3) The symbiosis relationship between rural settlements and cultivated land varies significantly under different scenarios. In the BD scenario, the five regions continue the historical rough development pattern, and the proportion of mutually beneficial symbiosis continues to decrease. In the PD scenario, the symbiosis pattern evolves to mutually beneficial symbiosis due to the improvement of symbiosis unit and environmental development level. © 2024 Science Press. All rights reserved.
