Research On Mountainous Settlement Niche And Its Model In The Upper Reaches Of Min River

The Upper Reaches of Min River is the ecological barrier of theUpper Yangtze River. So it has caught a lot of attentions both at homeand abroad for a long time and become the research focus. This thesiswas carried out under the support of the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (41071115)——Niche map and i mpact scale ofrural settlement in the Upper Reaches of Min River. It is verysignificant to study the mountainous settleme nt niche of the UpperReaches of Min River and analyze the situation of the recourses whichthe mountainous settle ments occupy. This will be useful to reveal theman-land relationship and can provide a new method for settlementspace planning.The concept of mountainous settlement niche was defined andstudied in this paper based on the traditional niche concepts and thecharacteristics of mountainous settlements. The main research resultsare as follows:(1) Based on the concept of mountainous settlement niche and theclassical niche breadth models, the mountainous settlement nichebreadth model was built. The index system of mountainous settleme ntniche was established after analyzing the i mpact factor of mountainoussettle ments.(2) The mountainous settle ment space niche was achieved with t heGIS and RS technology. After analysis with SPSS, so me regularitieswere found out: the vertical differentiation regularity of themountainous settlement niche existed in the Upper Reaches of Mi nRiver. The mountainou settlement niche geography radius distributedlognor mally between300m～498.2m. The mo untainous settle mentniche geography radius which was used to represent the mountainoussettlement space niche would be bigger as the altitude goes by.(3) Zagunao River Basin was chose as the study area to study themountainous settlement niche breadth in township scale. The results showed that the mountainous settle ment niches of the thirteen ruralsettlements in this area were small. That means the recourses there werenot used sufficiently. Furter more, the settlements there developedunbalanced. After studied the mountainous settlement niche breadth intownship scale, Shangxiameng Valley in this basin was chose to studythe mountainous settlement niche breadth in administrative villagescale. Twelve settlements’ mountainous settlement niche breadth i nShangxiameng Valley indicated that the mountainous settlement nichebreadth in this area could increase as the altitude goes by; whenaltitudes were1900m~2600m, the mountainous settlement niche stayed0.03~0.11, and it could reach0.12when altitudes were2700m~3100m.