Multidimensional Analysis of the Spatiotemporal Variations in Ecological, Production and Living Spaces of Inner Mongolia and an Identification of Driving Forces

Spatiotemporal Variations in the Intensity of Human Activity in Inner Mongolia and the Identification of Influencing Forces

The quantitative evaluation of the intensity of regional human activity can reflect changes in the relationship between people and the environment and provide a scientific basis for the formulation of land-use policy and for the construction of the ecological environment. This paper adopted the ratio of the area of construction land to the total area to calculate human activity intensity in Inner Mongolia at the league/city, banner/county, and pixel levels, respectively. On this basis, the overall change in human activity intensity and its spatiotemporal differentiation, geographical unit change, and spatial autocorrelation were analyzed. The results are as follows: (1) The intensity of human activity increased from 2000 to 2020. The intensity of human activity in Inner Mongolia was 8.71% in 2000, and it increased to 8.73% in 2010 and to 9.71% in 2020. The growth rate has accelerated since 2010. (2) The areas with high and medium intensity of human activities are mainly concentrated in the area south of the Hinggan–Yinshan–Helan Mountains. The intensity in the Hulunbeier grassland area and Alxa desert area is relatively low, and the diffusion effect gradually becomes prominent in the proximal local area. (3) The results for the detection of influencing factors indicate that the livestock density, multi-year average precipitation conditions, and population density have significant driving effects on the changes in intensity of human activity in Inner Mongolia.

Evaluation and Classification of Rural Multifunction at a Grid Scale: A Case Study of Miyun District, Beijing

Rural areas are a natural, economic and social complex with multiple functions. Identifying rural multifunction scientifically is the basis for promoting efficient rural spatial planning and sustainable development strategy. In this paper, we calculated and characterized the rural production-living-ecological (PLE) functions at a grid scale of 300 × 300 m in Miyun District by establishing an evaluation index system. Several types of rural functional area were identified with the help of an ISO cluster unsupervised classification tool. Three main results were found as follows. (1) The values of the production, living, ecological functions and multifunction ranged from 0–0.101, 0–0.204, 0.009–0.241 and 0.009–0.302, respectively. Ecological function was dominant in this area. (2) The overall spatial patterns of production and living functions showed the characteristic of being “high in the south and low in the north”, and areas with high values were almost distributed around urban areas and the Miyun Reservoir. While for the ecological function and multifunction, they possessed the opposite characteristics to production and living functions, with high values concentrated in the mountainous areas in the northwest, northeast, east and south of Miyun District. (3) According to the clustering results, rural multifunction of Miyun District was divided into four types: ecological conservation, employment and residence, recreation and potential development, with the area proportions of 44.22%, 17.92%, 20.73% and 17.13%, respectively. Each functional type showed a characteristic of agglomeration. In the future, the study of rural multifunction at micro scales should be paid more attention to better understand the functional differences within the country. This research can provide a decision-making reference for demarcation of rural production-living-ecological space and compilation of spatial planning.