Land use conflict identification and sustainable development scenario simulation on China's southeast coast

Abstract

The southeast coastal region of China is a typical frontier region between urbanization and industrialization, where land use is facing the pressure and challenge of continuous expansion of construction land, decreasing agricultural land and accelerated degradation of ecological land. Solving the resulting land use conflicts (LUCs) has become an urgent issue in regional sustainable development. In order to explore LUC status and to guide LUC governance, an empirical model of land use conflict identification and intensity diagnosis was constructed, and a method for simulating sustainable land use scenarios based on conflict management was proposed. Nan'an City was selected as an empirical study area. The empirical model divides the conflict intensity into seven levels, and divides the LUC zones into 16 types according to their “dominant land + conflict intensity”. We recommend formulating land use change rules according to the “distribution-land type-performance- intensity” of conflict zones when simulating future sustainable land use scenarios. The empirical results showed that the current land use pattern in Nan'an City has led to fierce competition and conflict. The spatial distribution, land type composition, conflict manifestation and intensity of different LUC zones varied widely; therefore, it is necessary to adopt different governance strategies to achieve a balance between the differential demands of land use and to guide the direction of sustainable development. The constructed empirical model and proposed simulation approach could better reflect the true situation of land use in the economically developed areas of China, and would provide theoretical and methodological support for the prevention and resolution of LUCs.