Analysis of the Coupling of Farmland and Rural Housing LandTransition in China

Abstract

Land use transition refers to the changes in land use morphology of a certainregion over a certain period of time driven by socio-economic change and innovation,and itusually corresponds to the transition of socio-economic development phase.In China,farmland and rural housing land are the major sources of land use transition.This paperanalyzes the spatio-temporal coupling characteristics of farmland and rural housing landtransition in China,using high-resolution Landsat TM(Thematic Mapper) data in 2000 and2008,and the data from Reports on China's Land-use Survey and Update during 2000-2008released by the Ministry of Land and Resources of China.Conclusions are summarized asfollows:1) During 2000-2008,the correlation coefficient of farmland vs.rural housing landchange is-0.921,showing that the change pattern of farmland and rural housing land isuncoordinated;2) The result of Spearman rank correlation analysis of the change rate of ruralhousing land and the correlation coefficient of farmland vs.rural housing land change showsthat rural housing land change has played a major role in the process of farmland and ruralhousing land transformation from each other;and 3) During 2000-2008,a high-degreecoupling is found between farmland and rural housing land change in the southeast China,based on the calculation of the coupling coefficient of China's farmland and rural housingland change at provincial level.In general,farmland and rural housing land transition inChina is driven by socio-economic,bio-physical and managerial three-dimensional drivingfactors through the interactions among rural population,farmland and rural housing land.However,the spatio-temporal coupling phenomenon and mechanism of farmland and ruralhousing land transition in China are largely due to the 'dual-track' structure of rural-urbandevelopment.