The Temporal-spatial Characteristics of Rural Residential Land in China in the 1990s
近10年来中国农村居民点用地时空特征

According to statistics of the rural land vector datasets on the scale of 1:100000, rural residential land in China increased by 7.88×105 hm2 in the 1990s. Rural residential land expanded more rapidly during the first five years, which took up 70.3% of that of the 1990s and slowly during the latter five years, being 29.7%. In order to compare the spatial pattern of rural expansion in the two periods, the rural residential land zoning is completed using CA (cellular automata) and ANN (artificial neural network). Rural land percentage, morphology, slope and neighborhood index are used to build the bottom-top zoning model. The paper studies the temporal-spatial characteristics of rural residential land in China. (1) During 1990-1995, rural residential land expanded dramatically in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and North China Plain. It increased most rapidly in the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas, being 28.11% and 24.31% respectively or 72.34% of the total rural expansion in China during 1990-1995. (2) During 1996-2000 the rural expansion in eastern coastal area slowed down but speeded up in the western area. The rural expansion in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and North China Plain was 35.44%. The other coastal areas fell to 1.45%. (3) In central area the rural land expansion took up 4.47% of the country's total while it expanded a little rapidly during the first five years (6.64%) although it slowed down in the latter five years. Rural land expansion slowed down in the eastern part of North China in the 1990s. (4) Rural land expanded slowly in the first five years (14.5% of the country's total) while it increased in the latter five years in western area (increased to 56.26%). Rural land increased more rapidly in the Sichuan Basin. During the first five years, it was slower than the coastal area. With the economic development and the loose control on cropland of the western area, the rural land expanded more rapidly.