Evolution and its driving forces of rural settlements along the roadsides in the northeast of Jianghan Plain, China

With the unprecedented rate of urbanization and industrialization in China, the spatial pattern of rural settlements has undergone tremendous change. The spatiotemporal characteristics of rural settlements in various regions have been explored. However, the distribution evolution of rural settlements along the roadsides has been overlooked. To address this issue, we first used remote sensing images to extract and quantify the evolution of rural settlements’ spatial distribution along the roadsides from 1987 to 2020 in the northeast of Jianghan Plain, China. Then we employed the time series landscape metrics and the GIS buffer analysis to investigate the typical distribution evolution pattern of rural settlements from aspects of scale and density. Lastly, the driving factors of this evolution pattern were assessed using the Pearson correlation coefficient. Our results indicated that the spatial distribution showed the recent evolution path-Villages on the Roadsides (VoR). That is, rural settlements tended to change from clustering around farmlands or water sources to distributing along the roadsides. The rural settlements near national roads were more concentrated and denser, and their scale was more extensive than those near provincial and county roads. Additionally, provincial roads attracted more residents, making them the largest area and the most fragmented patches. Furthermore, there are strong positive correlations between the total area of rural settlements and peasant's income, the change in demands of agricultural production and daily life, and the road investments, respectively, indicating the significant impact of these factors on the evolution of the spatial pattern of rural settlements. This study may shed light on China's rural planning and revitalization.