Suitability Evaluation for Spatial Expansion and Identification of Land Use Conflicts in Mountainous Country Villages and Towns: Take for Example Suining County

Suining County of Shaoyang City, Hunan Province, was used as a suitability evaluation system from two aspects of natural and human factors including 12 indicators. The analytic hierarchy process and multi-factor weighted evaluation model were adopted to carry out the evaluation of the suitability of the spatial expansion of villages and towns for county-level. On this basis, the propensity intensity of three types of land use for villages and towns, agriculture, and ecology was calculated. Then, the high, middle and low grades were classified by the natural break point method, and the land use conflict recognition matrix was listed. Finally, the results of land use conflict identification were obtained. The results showed that: Suining County has significant differences in the suitability of spatial expansion of villages and towns, and the spatial distribution characteristics of different levels were quite different. The areas of the most suitable area, more suitable area, basic suitable area, less suitable area and unsuitable area for spatial expansion of villages and towns were respectively 183.67 km2, 699.04 km2, 1072.281 km2, 1006.79 km2 and 576.47 km2. The suitability of spatial expansion of each township was obviously different. The predominant land use areas of villages and towns were mainly distributed in Zhaishi Miao and Dong Township and Changpu Town in the south, and Shuikou Township and Jinwutang in the north Towns, etc. Dominant agricultural land areas were mainly distributed in the northeast of Tangjiafang, Huangtu Mine, Hongyan and other towns. The dominant ecological land area was relatively large, and the distribution was relatively scattered. The types of areas with obvious potential land use conflicts were the general conflict areas and intensified conflict areas, among which the general conflict areas were the largest, accounting for nearly half of the total area, and the intense conflict areas were the smallest. The areas of intense conflicts between villages and towns and agriculture, and the areas with intense conflicts between ecology and agriculture were all relatively small.