Pattern of spatial evolution of rural settlements in the Jizhou District of China during 1962-2030

Rapid urbanization has led not only to the expansion of urban areas but has also greatly influenced rural development and the natural environment. When proposing schemes for rural settlement, and promoting sustainable development and living conditions in rural areas, it is important both to explore long-term trends of evolution and predict trends of development. Remote sensing images are useful to this end, but most date no further back than the 1980s, thus making it difficult to describe the spatial evolution of rural settlements over longer periods. In view of this, this paper uses decrypted remote sensing data from the KeyHole military satellite on the Jizhou District of China, and pushes the interval back by 20 years (to 1962) to study the long-term evolution of the spatial pattern of rural settlements over a longer time scale. By setting different development scenarios, we use the Conversion of Land Use and its Effects at Small Region Extent (CLUE-S) model to simulate and predict the evolutionary trends of rural settlements in Jizhou District in 2030. The results show that the evolution of the spatial pattern of rural settlements in this area during 1962-2015 can be divided into three stages: From 1962 to 1980, the number of rural settlements decreased continually, their boundaries gradually became more regular, and they were randomly distributed throughout the study area. However, from 1980 to 2000, the number, area, and spatial morphological features of rural settlements did not change much compared to the other two periods. From 2000 to 2015, the number of settlements increased drastically, and the boundaries became irregular and were somehow centralized. The evolutionary trend of rural settlements was found to be different under different scenarios of development. In the new-type urbanization scenario, the total area of rural settlements was projected to decrease by 2.23%, and regions where urbanization had a strong influence on rural settlements were concentrated in the southern-central part of Jizhou District. Moreover, the rural settlements are converted mainly into urban land and other construction land. In the tourism development scenario, the total area of rural settlements increased by 7.89%, and regions where tourism had a strong influence on rural settlements were concentrated in the northern mountainous areas of Jizhou District.