Spatial planning zoning based on land-type mapping: a case study in Changzhou City, Eastern China

ABSTRACT In China, land-use policy-making relies on spatial planning zoning based on land suitability assessments. Given the complexity of land resources, there is no universally agreed suitability assessment index system. Land-type research, which aims to map interactions among environmental components (e.g. landform, soil type, and land cover, etc.) can identify units with certain homogeneity of land characteristics, providing a unified framework for land suitability assessments. Combining multi-source data and geospatial analysis methods, we identified the agricultural land quality and urban functional areas as proxies for land-use intensities, and proposed a 1:100,000 hierarchical classification system, which integrated landform, soil type, land-use type, and land-use intensity. The land in Changzhou City was classified into 3 classes, 37 subclasses, and 137 land units. Comprehensive knowledge about the characteristics of land units further generated a qualitative land suitability analysis and village-scale spatial planning zones based on expert knowledge without an auxiliary suitability assessment index system.