Zoning of rural residential land consolidation based on spatial autocorrelation of geographical spatial suitability index

Abstract: As an important way, rural residential land consolidation is needed seriously to raise the level of construction land saving and intensive use, to increase the effective area of cultivated land and to achieve the requisition-compensation balance of cultivated land. Consolidation zoning is scientifically and orderly conducive to rural residential land consolidation. Based on geographical spatial properties, in order to study differentiated consolidation directions and modes for regional rural residential land and improve consolidation efficiency, this paper took Beiyuan region of Linxia County in central Gansu Province as an example, administrative village as the study unit and rural residential land as the study object. An evaluation index system based on geographical spatial suitability of rural residential land consolidation was constructed from 4 aspects including geographical environment, spatial location, spatial distribution and spatial pattern based on literature analysis. The comprehensive value of geographical spatial suitability of the rural residential land consolidation was obtained by weighting sum of the standardized values of each selected factors. The comprehensive values were analyzed by using spatial autocorrelation analysis method to get spatial aggregation of geographical spatial suitability degree of the rural residential land consolidation. Differentiated consolidation directions and modes were proposed according to consolidation zoning achieved through combining the spatial aggregation and excessive consolidation area of administrative villages. The results showed that geographical spatial suitability values of rural residential land in Beiyuan Region were from 32.093 to 85.226. There were large differences among administrative villages in different regions and the evaluation index system could reflect the differences of geographical spatial properties of rural residential land in Beiyuan region. The global Moran's index of suitability was 0.66, the confidence level was higher than 99% (extremely significant at 0.01 level) and the geographical spatial suitability degree of the rural settlements consolidation showed significant positive spatial autocorrelation among administrative villages in Beiyuan region. The LISA showed that only significant high-high and low-low aggregation characteristics existed, which consisted with the result of global spatial autocorrelation analysis. It indicated that geographical spatial suitability values of rural residential land changed uniformly and high-low or low-high anomaly characteristics did not exist. The rural residential land in Beiyuan region was divided into 4 types of zoning, including preferential consolidation area, secondary consolidation area, merged consolidation area and selective consolidation area, and rural residential land areas of each zoning respectively were 350.16, 633.59, 320.64 and 531.84 hm2. Zoning results contained spatial aggregation characteristics, so rural residential land consolidation could generate scale effect to reduce consolidation cost and improve consolidation benefits. Zoning through overlaying LISA aggregation map and hierarchical map of standard excess area could distinguish the differences of the suitability and benefits of rural residential land consolidation in different regions. This paper can provide valuable information for practice activities of the rural residential land consolidation to improve the consolidation efficiency and benefits, and it can also provide a new feasible thought and method for study on rural residential land consolidation zoning.