Coupling responses of landscape pattern to human activity and their drivers in the hinterland of Three Gorges Reservoir Area

Abstract

Human activities and landscape patterns are important representations of two major elements in the human-land system. Therefore, analyzing coupling characteristics of human activity intensity and landscape patterns is of great significance to reveal the evolution of regional human-land relationships. To fill the hole on the coupling response of human activity intensity and landscape pattern, the mountainous human activity intensity and landscape pattern coupling model was constructed, and the comprehensive dominant-recessive human activity intensity index (CHAI) was proposed. Moreover, based on the AHP and cumulative index method, we quantitatively evaluated the human activities intensity of Fengjie County in the hinterland of Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA) from 2000–2020, and analyzed spatial coupling patterns between CHAI and landscape pattern through the local spatial autocorrelation model. Finally, factors influencing the type of coupled change in CHAI and landscape pattern were explored by a binary logistic regression model. The results show: (1) There are no obvious changes in CHAI of Fengjie County, but the spatial change shows the characteristics closely related to the terrain gradient and the level of economic development of Fengjie County with an overall contraction while local enhancement. (2) The spatial coupling between CHAI and landscape pattern in Fengjie County shows four types: Coordination type, antagonism type, gradually coordinated type, gradually antagonistic type. (3) The important impact factors of the coupling between CHAI and landscape pattern are distance to county administrative center, distance to the town government, and landform, etc., which reflects socio-economic factors were the main factors in the evolution of the regional social ecosystem. (4) There are diverse and special coupling responses between human activity intensity and landscape patterns in the hinterland of TGRA. In general, the hinterland of TGRA has achieved a win-win situation for the ecology and economy through partial disharmony in exchange for overall coordination. Moreover, the research results reveal the uniqueness of China's mountainous landscape pattern in response to human activities in recent years.