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To comprehensively understand the law of urban-rural relationship and propose scientific measures of urban-rural coordinated development in Northeast China, this study uses the coupling coordination degree model and geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model to analyze the spatial-temporal patterns and the corresponding driving mechanisms of its urban-rural coordination since 1990. The results are as follows. First, the urban-rural coupling coordination degree in Northeast China was very low and improved slowly, but its stages of evolution is a good interpretation of the strategic arrangements of China's urbanization. Second, the urban-rural coupling coordination degree in Northeast China had spatial differences and was characterized by central polarization, converging on urban agglomeration, which was high in the south and low in the north. Moreover, the gap between the north and south weakened. Third, the spatial-temporal evolution of the urban-rural coordination relationship in Northeast China was influenced by pulling from the central cities, pushing from rural transformation, and government regulations. The influence intensity of the three mechanisms was weak, but the pulling from the central cities was stronger than that of the other two mechanisms. Furthermore, the spatial difference between the three mechanisms determines the spatial pattern and its evolution of the urban-rural coordination relationship in Northeast China. Fourth, to promote the development of urban-rural coordination in Northeast China, it is essential to advance urban-rural economic correlation, enhance the government's role in regulating and guiding, and adopt different policies for each region in Northeast China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanization has triggered large rural population floating into cities, which in turn affects rural human-land relationships. The actual human-land relationship involves the coupling level of a time point and dynamic change of a time interval. However, few studies have identified the rural human-land relationship from these two perspectives. This study combined static coupling analysis with a dynamic decoupling model to analyze the relationships between rural population and settlements from 2009 to 2018 in Jiangsu Province, China. Although the static coupling degree in Jiangsu Province was relatively high, the decoupling analysis found that the rural human-land relationship in most counties was uncoordinated. There were 11 combination types based on the coupling and decoupling relationships. The most common two types (accounting for 76.74%) were recession decoupling with high-level coupling and strong decoupling with high-level coupling. Although the majority of counties had a high-level coupling degree, an uncoordinated change in rural population and rural settlements was observed in these counties. Counties with relatively reasonable human-land relationships accounted for only 12.79% of the total. The combination features for each type were identified and differential policies were proposed for optimizing human-land relationship in rural areas. This study would contribute to our understanding of the multiple relationships between rural population and settlements involved in different patterns and processes, and expect to provide theoretical and methodological support for promoting rural revitalization and sustainable development in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the trends of Chinese rural transformation development, and the sustainable development goals for resources and environment, reasonable arranging the potential development space and the ecological space, so as to optimize the distributions of rural settlement would be the key challenge for rural areas in ecologically fragile regions. From the perspective of maintaining regional ecological security, this paper takes Da'an City, a typical ecological fragile region in Jilin Province, as the case area, constructing the comprehensive ecological security pattern (ESP) on basis of landscape ecology, and applying the landscape pattern indexes to quantitative analysis the spatial distribution characteristics of rural settlements. Then, different optimization directions and management strategies are put forward for rural settlements in each secure zone under the comprehensive ESP. The experimental results showed that 1) the area of the low security zone, the general security zone, the moderate security zone and the extreme security zone was 1570.18 km2, 1463.36 km2, 1215.80 km2 and 629.77 km2, representing 32.18%, 29.99%, 24.92% and 12.91% of the total area of the target area, respectively. 2) The rural settlements in Da'an City were characterized by a high degree of fragmentation with a large number of small-scale patches. 3) The area of rural settlements in the ecological relocation zone, the in situ remediation zone, the limited development zone and the key development zone was 22.80 km2, 42.31 km2, 36.28 km2 and 19.40 km2, accounting for 18.88%, 35.03%, 30.04% and 16.06% of the total area of rural settlements, respectively. Then, different measures were proposed for settlements in different optimization zones in order to scientifically plan important ecological space, production space and living space in rural areas. This paper aims to provide fundamental support for rural settlements based on redistribution from the perspective of landscape ecology and provide insights for rural planning and rural habitat environmental improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban population and urbanized land in China have both increased markedly since the 1980s. Urban and suburban developments have grown at unprecedented rates with unknown consequences for ecosystem functions. In particular, the effect of rapid urbanization on the storage of soil carbon has not been studied extensively. In this study, we compared the soil carbon stocks of different land use types in Beijing Municipality. We collected 490 top-soil samples (top 20 cm) from urban and suburban sites within the Sixth Ring Road of Beijing, which cover approximately 2400 km, and the densities of soil organic carbon (SOC), soil inorganic carbon (SIC), and total carbon (TC) were analyzed to determine the spatial distribution of urban and suburban soil carbon characteristics across seven land use types. The results revealed significant differences in soil carbon densities among land use types. Additionally, urban soil had significantly higher SOC and SIC densities than suburban soil did, and suburban shelterbelts and productive plantations had lower SIC densities than the other land use types. The comparison of coefficients of variance (CVs) showed that carbon content of urban topsoil had a lower variability than that of suburban topsoil. Further findings revealed that soil carbon storage increased with built-up age. Urban soil built up for more than 20 years had higher densities of SOC, SIC and TC than both urban soil with less than 10 years and suburban soil. Correlation analyses indicated the existence of a significantly negative correlation between the SOC, SIC, and TC densities of urban soil and the distance to the urban core, and the distance variable alone explained 23.3% of the variation of SIC density and 13.8% of the variation of TC density. These results indicate that SOC and SIC accumulate in the urban topsoil under green space as a result of the conversion of agricultural land to urban land due to the urbanization in Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of rural household survey in 12 provinces of China in 2005, this research built an econometrical model to find the area standard for rural housing land. This standard is expected to facilitate rural housing land administration, efficient and intensive housing land use and policy making. This research concludes: 1) according to the household survey data, the average area for rural housing land in China is about 235.26 m, and the rural housing land mainly includes unused land (42.89%) and house construction land (37.76%) with the average floor-area ratio of 0.42; 2) the indexes in the standard concern the factors such as location, landform, house form, household population and cultivated land area per farmer, which all have significant effects on rural housing land use; 3) the reasonable area for rural housing land may be 150 m in average before 2020, and the referential standards in different provinces are 120 m, 130 m, 140m, 150 m, 160 m, 170 m, 190 m, 200 m, 210 m, 220 m, 230 m and 250 m respectively; and 4) if there are less than two persons or more than five persons in a family, these standards need to be decreased or increased by 7%. When the cultivated land area per farmer is lower than the provincial average, the standards have to reduce by 3.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]