Abstract:
Land consolidation and ecological restoration are often required to optimize the spatial pattern in rural civilization. In this study, a theoretical framework was constructed to clarify the relationship between the supply and demand of the "production-living-ecological" functions, land consolidation, and ecological restoration. A case study was taken from Wensu County in Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. Multi-source data was captured, such as the land use, soil, meteorology, and socio-economic data. A systematic evaluation was then performed on the supply and demand of the "production-living-ecological" functions. The comparative advantage index was also introduced to identify the advantage functions and matching relationship of the supply and demand of the "production-living-ecological" functions. Finally, a coupled model was established to refine the pattern of the regional land consolidation and ecological restoration. The results show that: 1) There was significant spatial heterogeneity in the supply and demand of the "production-living-ecological" functions. The supply of the production function was characterized by a high distribution in the south and a low distribution in the north. While the supply of the living function in the southeast and southwest regions was slightly higher than that in the northeast. And the supply of the ecological function was higher in the north than in the south. The demand for the production function decreased from the southwest to the northeast. A concentric-circle spatial attenuation was also observed in the demand for the living function. And the demand for the ecological function shared a higher distribution in the north than in the south. The supply and demand of the advantage functions also showed the spatial distribution of the "single-core dominance - double-core synergy". 2) The spatial distribution was unbalanced on the matching types of the supply and demand for the “production-living-ecological” functions. The northern mountainous areas were dominated by the full matching type of the supply and demand. Especially, there was a high degree of consistency between the supply and demand of the ecological functions. While the southern areas were mostly low-matching or mismatching types of supply and demand. There was strong pressure from rapid urbanization and the intensified agriculture on the national land resources. The preliminary patterns of the land consolidation and ecological restoration were obtained as the function consolidation optimization, supply function leading, demand function driven, and two-way function adaptation. 3) The natural background was combined with the socio-economic characteristics and land spatial planning. The preliminary patterns were optimized for land consolidation and ecological restoration. Six patterns were finally identified: consolidation of production function and modernization, ecological background optimization and monitoring, production-living resource intensive efficiency, production-ecological resource collaboration, living-ecological function resilience improvement, and "production-living-ecological" function integration pattern. This finding can enrich the pattern identification for the county-scale land consolidation and ecological restoration of land space. The technical support can also offer decision-making on the optimal layout of the land space and the quality of regional ecosystems.