Geospatial characteristics and the application of land use functions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China: Perspectives on provinces and urban agglomerations

Abstract

As an essential tool to evaluate land use sustainability, land use functions (LUFs) have become a hot topic in the field of land use science for promoting sustainable regional development. Previous studies focused more on the interaction analysis among LUFs and the zoning management of LUFs, ignoring the importance of geospatial characteristics of LUFs for regional development patterns. In this study, a series of geospatial analysis methods were adopted to identify the abrupt changes in LUFs, and evaluate the geospatial characteristics of LUFs in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), including agglomeration, coordination, and inequality. Finally, we combined the evaluation results to distinguish the development patterns of provinces and urban agglomerations (UAs). The findings show that the abrupt changes in LUFs occurred in 2002 and 2013, and the changes of LUFs experienced three stages: sharp decline, rapid rise, and steady development from 1990 to 2018. There was a significant agglomeration of LUFs in low value areas, and gradually to high value areas over time. The coordination of LUFs exhibited moderately coordinated, which was higher in the east than in the west, though the gap has been narrowing. The major contributor to LUF inequality was from within the province rather than among them, and so did UAs. All provinces and UAs were classified into radiation-driven, multi-core driven, stable, and low-level ones. Our research provides a reference for large-scale regional development and land use management.