Research on the evaluation method of rural hollowing based on RS and GIS technology: a case study of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region in China

With the acceleration of urbanization in China, most rural areas formed a widespread phenomenon, i.e., destitute village, labor population loss, land abandonment and rural hollowing. And it formed a unique hollow village problem in China finally. The governance of hollow village was the objective need of the development of economic and social development in rural area for Chinese government, and the research on the evaluation method of rural hollowing was the premise and basis of the hollow village governance. In this paper, several evaluation methods were used to evaluate the rural hollowing based on the survey data, land use data, social and economic development data. And these evaluation indexes were the transition of homesteads, the development intensity of rural residential areas, the per capita housing construction area, the residential population proportion in rural area, and the average annual electricity consumption, which can reflect the rural hollowing degree from the land, population, and economy point of view, respectively. After that, spatial analysis method of GIS was used to analyze the evaluation result for each index. Based on spatial raster data generated by Kriging interpolation, we carried out re-classification of all the results. Using the fuzzy clustering method, the rural hollowing degree in Ningxia area was reclassified based on the two spatial scales of county and village. The results showed that the rural hollowing pattern in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region had a spatial distribution characteristics that the rural hollowing degree was obvious high in the middle of the study area but was low around the study area. On a county scale, the specific performances of the serious rural hollowing were the higher degree of extensive land use, and the lower level of rural economic development and population transfer concentration. On a village scale, the main performances of the rural hollowing were the rural population loss and idle land. The evaluation method of rural hollowing constructed in this paper can effectively carry out a comprehensive degree zoning of rural hollowing, which can make orderly decision support plans of hollow village governance for the government.