Evaluation on suitability of rural residential land in Three Gorges Reservoir region

The Three Gorges Reservoir region is a typical ecological sensitive area. Wushan county in Chongqing is situated in the central area of Three Gorge district. Its poor soil, extremely fragile ecological environment and stagnate economics are the major obstacles during development. Based on ArcGIS10 and cost weighted distance method, seven indexes involving the natural factors, economic factors, social factors and environment factors that affected the location of rural residential were chosen to evaluate suitability of rural residential land in this research. The result of suitability evaluation of rural residential land in Wushan county was graded into four classes, optimal, suitable, basically suitable and unsuitable rural residential land, accounting for 9.52%, 50.87%, 34.58%, 5.03% of total area of rural residential land respectively. Researches on rural residential land suitability, optimal land resources exploitation and utilization according to root physical factors and reality economy development conditions are the key countermeasures to solve the ecological environment problems. Suitability evaluation of rural residential land in this region is not only favorable to land resources exploitation and utilization, but also beneficial to land conservation and regional sustainable development.