Spatiotemporal patterns of rural settlements in Jingzhou County, Hunan province, China

This paper applies the GIS technology to investigate the spatiotemporal patterns of rural settlement in Jingzhou County of Hunan province. First, the vector data layers of rural settlements were extracted from the land use data in 1990 and 2005, respectively. These data layers were used in GIS software to calculate such landscape metrics as TARP, TNP, MAP, LAP, MPS, LPI, which quantified the spatial distributions of rural settlement plaques in 1990 and 2005, respectively. The two data layers were also overlaid with road networks and river systems to visually examine the impact of the linear features on the spatial patterns of the rural settlements. The findings suggest that the size and the number of the rural residential points have decreased during the 15-year period. Moreover, the spatial distribution patterns of the villages in the study area were largely affected by roads and rivers.