The Evolution Of Rural Human Settlement Vulnerability And The Rural Transformation In The Semi-arid Region Of The Loess Plateau

In the process of urbanization and industrialization in the past 30 years,the spatial imbalance and instability of urban and rural development have been highlighted due to the differences in natural basis and unequal develop opportunities.Different from urban areas or coastal plain areas,rural areas in Western China have achieved certain achievement in economic construction,and have improved significantly in residents' living and production conditions.However,due to natural ecological constraints such as topography and landform constraints,addiction to land resource,and fragile ecological environment,west rural areas are weak in agricultural industrialization,scale and mechanization,and backwardness in the development of the secondary and tertiary industries,so their every economic construction relies heavily on the support of national finance,for their weak self-development ability.On the other hand,the impact of urbanization on rural traditional villages has led to the continuous loss of human capital and development capital in rural areas.Rural areas have gradually declined,and need to be transformed and revitalized.The author argues that the key tasks of rural revitalization at the present stage are stimulating the economy and improving the human settlement.The construction of human settlement,is the breakthrough point of rural revitalization,and provides support for rural economic development and rural transformation.On the other hand,the rural revitalization and rural transformation put forward higher requirements for the level of rural human settlement construction,further leading the rural human settlement construction.To meet the needs of rural revitalization strategy,guided by the theory of human-land system and science of human settlement,from the perspective of vulnerability,following the researching logic line of "evaluation framework construction-identification of evolution stage-analysis of temporal-spatial process-analysis of transition mechanism",this paper provides a systematic study of the evolution of rural human settlement(RHS)vulnerability and rural transformation,which takes Jiaxian county,Yulin city,Shaanxi province as the case area.First,this study constructs an analysis framework of the RHS vulnerability and ruraltransformation,propose a scale-integrated representation factors system of RHS vulnerability,establishing the rules of scenario definition and threshold value of the RHS vulnerability.Second,the paper puts forward the index system of RHS vulnerability at the county scale,and use it to describe the time evolution trajectory of the vulnerability values of the comprehensive system,subsystems and factors of the RHS from 1980 to 2016.Based on the rules of scenario definition,the paper divides the evolution stages of RHS vulnerability.In this paper 52 interviews with key figures and 2 interviews with industry departments were used to verify the types of scenarios by the qualitative method of "ground-truthing",and the characteristics of vulnerability scenarios in different stages were analyzed Third,The research scale drops to the village scale,the paper puts forward the index system of RHS vulnerability at village scale.Based on the results of the stage division on the county scale,using 65 sample villages and 451 household survey questions,the paper measures the vulnerability values of the human settlement at village level through the ranking method close to the ideal solution,and depicts the spatial and temporal pattern of integrated system and subsystem vulnerability based on ArcGIS platform.Here we diagnose the functional subsystem/factor of the RHS vulnerability using contribution model and obstacle model,and analyze the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of vulnerability contribution subsystem/factor and resistance subsystem/factor.Fourth,up-forward the research scale to geomorphic area,this paper calculates and summarize the vulnerability evolution process of the functional subsystem/factor of the RHS in the northern sandstorm area,the southwest loess hilly and gully area,and the southeast soil-rock mountain area along the Yellow River.At the same time,summarizes the transformation process of the advantages and disadvantages of the RHS in the three types of geomorphic areas.Five,this paper combines qualitative and quantitative methods,based on 451 household questionnaires and 113 interviews with key figures.From the perspective of "livelihood-land-space structure" transformation and the evolution of RHS,this paper discusses the process of rural transformation in three typical geomorphic areas since 1980.At last,this paper sorts out the evolution pathway of the RHS vulnerability and the rural transformation,and identifies and refines the primary factor for the evolution.Inthe end,the paper illustrates the mechanism of the evolution of RHS vulnerability and rural transformation.The main conclusions of the study are as follows:(1)Based on the rules of scenario and threshold definition,the RHS vulnerability in the case area experience four stages,hovering between the stubborn vulnerability,uncontrollable vulnerability system scenario.The characteristics of vulnerability in different stages are extracted as follows: In stage ?(1980~1995),the human settlement system was in stubborn vulnerability scenario,characterized by ecological deterioration,primitive housing,extreme lack of infrastructure and public service,etc.In stage ?(1996~2005),the system broke through the threshold and entered the uncontrollable vulnerability scenario,which characterized by the continuous drought disaster,plummeting birth rate,severe gender imbalance,lagging social security,and urban-rural dualization.After that,the rural human settlement system rebounded to the stubborn vulnerability scenario and experienced a short but dangerous stage ?(2006~2009),which characterized by the excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides,loss of population,closure of public and commercial outlets,and heavy dependence on the Jujube cultivation economy.In stage ?(2010~2016),the RHS entered an uncontrollable vulnerability system scenario,characterized by frequent rain waterlogging disaster,collapse of jujube economy,and extreme fragility of human system.(2)At the county scale,the vulnerability of the comprehensive system of RHS has been significantly reduced but remains at the middle vulnerability level.The fluctuation range of natural subsystem vulnerability increases,and the rain waterlogging disaster becomes the main disturbance factor.Since the beginning of the 21 st century,the vulnerability of residential subsystem has been alleviated,especially the improvement of household appliances,but the rebound of the vulnerability of the support subsystem has been intensified,especially the vulnerability of rural primary education rose to an extreme.In recent ten years,the vulnerability of social subsystem has been gradually reduced,and the vulnerability values of the four factors have been reduced to different extents.The human subsystem has moved towards the severe vulnerability level,and only the vulnerability values of population burdenfactors has been reduced.At the village scale,The pattern of vulnerability of comprehensive system,natural system,dwelling system and social system are gradually reduced from the global coverage of high vulnerability to a pattern dominated by low vulnerability distribution,the pattern of human system vulnerability gradually deteriorated from the overall distribution of low vulnerability to the pattern dominated by high vulnerability.The spatial pattern of support system vulnerability is unstable,and the low vulnerability is concentrated in the sample villages along the traffic trunk lines and in the administrative center.(3)This paper diagnoses the functional subsystem/factor of the RHS,and presents the spatial and temporal distribution of the contribution subsystem/factor and resistance subsystem/factor of the RHS vulnerability.Results indicate that,the most widely distributed contribution subsystem of rural human settlement vulnerability is transformed from dwelling system to support system,but the resistance subsystem is transformed from human system to dwelling system.In addition,The advantages and disadvantages of the functional subsystem/factor in the northern sandstorm area,the soil-rock mountain area along the Yellow River in the southeast and the hilly and gully area in the southwest have also undergone a staged transformation.Their transformation process has both similarities and differences.(4)From 1980 to 2017,the RHS in the case area always takes inadequate garbage disposal as a disadvantage and the relative convenience of living water as an advantage.In the historical period,the disadvantages of RHS mainly include the significant ratio of land cultivation,the low education level of the population,poor communication conditions,and the low income level of farmers.The advantages include the small amount of fertilizer application,the sufficient rural population,good accessibility to primary schools,and the small gap between the rich and the poor.At present,the disadvantages of rural human settlement include poor water quality of rivers and canals,depressed rural population,large gap between the rich and the poor,fragile housing structure and crowded housing,the advantages of rural human settlement include less disturbance from wind disasters,low dependency ratio,robust rural roads and better public security.(5)From the perspective of "livelihood-land-space structure",this paper analyzes therural transformation process under the changes of RHS in three types of geomorphic areas.(1)In the northern sandstorm area,the proportion of non-agricultural activities has continued to rise.The proportion of jujube cultivation livelihood activities experienced a sharp increase to a sharp decline.The livelihood activities in the southwest hilly and gully regions have shifted from traditional farming and animal husbandry to jujube and fruit livelihood,and then to non-agricultural livelihood.In the soil-stone mountain area along the southeast Yellow River,Livelihood activities have experienced a shift to jujube livelihood activities as the dominant,and finally to non-agricultural livelihood activities as the dominant process.In addition,for three types of geomorphic area,the bread-deficient structure shows a process of narrowing distribution to expanding distribution,while the bread-comprehensive structure shows the opposite,and the diversity index of livelihood increased and then decreased.(2)The three types of geomorphic areas showed a process of large conversion from cultivated land to woodland,and then maintained a stable pattern.The proportion of abandoned arable land increased significantly after a small increase in the process.(3)Commercial service and public service sites experience the process of covering and withdrawing from village units,which is essentially the increase of service radius of the service sites.Rural residential buildings experienced a continuous changing process from large-scale dispersed distribution to centralized mass.The axis of the traffic road extends to every village,then to the radial structure of every household,and then the scale of social communication breaks through from village to county.The administrative units of villages and towns experienced a slight adjustment to a large adjustment and a significant increase in radius.(6)This paper discusses the mechanism of evolution of RHS vulnerability and rural transformation,and constructs the mechanism.The analysis points out that climate change,market change and urbanization impact not only directly lead to the changes of RHS vulnerability,but also indirectly promote the evolution of RHS vulnerability and rural transformation by influencing government policies and farmers' behaviors.The evolution of the RHS vulnerability then promotes the process of rural transformation.The change of RHS and the process of rural transformation feed back to the disturbance system,or formdisturbance sources or intervene disturbance factors.The behaviors of the national government and farmers then respond rapidly,and form coping strategies according to the state of rural human settlement.As a "double-edged sword",coping strategies further intervene in the evolution of RHS and rural transformation system.