Suitability evaluation of land space development based on land resources: A case study of Yichang City in Hubei Province

The suitability evaluation of the land space development is the base of the territory development plan,the city and county are the basic units to implement the main function zoning,and the suitability evaluation of land space development at the city and county level can provide effective support for the more refined management of land resources and space. In this study,the authors built the indicator system with the nature factors and social economy to evaluate the suitability of agricultural production and urban construction processes in Yichang City. Five category areas are distinguished according to the evaluation results. The results show that the land area suitable for agricultural production reaches 3412 km²,while 7143 km² of land area is not suitable. Only 748 km² land area is suitable for urban construction. The results indicate that the suitable area is mainly distributed in the east area of Yichang City,whereas the western montane area is not suitable and hard for land space development. The results of the suitability evaluation are in good agreement with the present land utilization,but there are some discrepancies between the results and planning data. The suitable area for agricultural production is 132 km² larger than the reserved cultivated land. The present cultivated land distributed in the suitable and comparatively suitable areas for agricultural production accounts for 73.98% of the total cultivated land area. The suitable area for urban constructions is 611 km² less than the bottom line of construction land. The current construction land distributed in the urban construction suitable and comparatively suitable areas accounts for 73.98% of the total construction land area. Compared with the remote sense image,the accuracies of the evaluation results including agricultural production and urban construction area were analyzed,and the result shows that the accuracy of suitable area evaluation reaches 100%,while the evaluate accuracies of the unsuitable area for agricultural production and urban construction are 93% and 100%,respectively.