Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
6.4
3.5
Journals
Land
Special Issues
Monitoring and Modelling Human–Environment Interactions in Urban–Rural Areas
share announcement

Monitoring and Modelling Human–Environment Interactions in Urban–Rural Areas

A Special Issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X) belonging to the section "Land Systems and Global Change".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 4494

Editors

Dr. Nan Jia

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. College of Public Administration, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
2. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
3. Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Interests: multiple shocks; inequality; urban–rural system resilience; food system resilience
Dr. Haimeng Liu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Interests: coupling mechanisms between urbanization and the ecological environment; urban system evolution and assessment; intelligent technologies and urban sustainable development; urban climate resilience; urban and regional planning and governance
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Zhimeng Jiang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR 999077, China
Interests: sustainable development; climate adaption; landscape optimization; geospatial modelling; human–environment interaction
Dr. Junyu Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty Campus Fryslân, University of Groningen, 8911 CE Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
Interests: sustainability transitions; socio-technical system; sustainable agriculture; policy and governance

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Human–environment interactions across urban–rural areas are becoming increasingly complex under rapid urbanization, climate pressures, and shifting socio-economic activities. These processes reshape land use, ecosystem services, ecological functions, and the flows of people, resources, and information between cities and their surrounding regions. Understanding these dynamics is crucial to promoting sustainable land management and ensuring balanced, resilient development. Yet research often remains fragmented, with limited integration of ecological, social, and spatial perspectives.

This Special Issue welcomes interdisciplinary manuscripts that advance understanding of urban–rural interactions through empirical, methodological, or theoretical contributions. Submissions using geospatial analysis, remote sensing, telecoupling/metacoupling frameworks, socio-ecological modelling, ecosystem service assessment, big-data analytics, or scenario simulation are particularly encouraged. We also invite case studies from underrepresented regions. By bringing together diverse approaches, this Special Issue aims to support sustainable, equitable, and resilient urban–rural system planning.

Themes of interest include the following:

  • Planning and management strategies for conserving natural and cultural heritage;
  • Impacts of land-use change on ecosystem services and ecological quality;
  • Climate-change effects on landscapes and associated socio-ecological risks;
  • GIS-based and spatial analytical approaches for sustainable land management;
  • Interactions among land use, disturbance events, and ecosystem resilience.

Dr. Nan Jia
Dr. Haimeng Liu
Dr. Zhimeng Jiang
Dr. Junyu Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • urban–rural interactions
  • human–environment systems
  • land-use change
  • telecoupling
  • ecosystem services
  • spatial analysis
  • socio-ecological resilience
  • urban sustainability
  • rural development
  • climate impacts

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (6 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

40 pages, 11477 KB  
Article
Urban Governance, Environmental Pressure, and Resident Well-Being: Spatial Patterns and Structured Associations Across Chinese Prefecture-Level Cities
by Qianhui Yuan, Fang Wan, Zhan Zhang and Zhenjie Niu
Land 2026, 15(8), 1519; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15081519 - 21 Aug 2026
Viewed by 258
Abstract
Urban well-being in China emerges from spatially uneven configurations of development intensity, environmental pressure, governance input, public-service capacity, land-use transformation, and urban–rural conditions. Using a balanced panel of 294 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2023 (5880 city–year observations), this study combines spatial [...] Read more.
Urban well-being in China emerges from spatially uneven configurations of development intensity, environmental pressure, governance input, public-service capacity, land-use transformation, and urban–rural conditions. Using a balanced panel of 294 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2023 (5880 city–year observations), this study combines spatial mapping, Local Moran’s I, Getis–Ord Gi*, and two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) models to examine how governance-related conditions and ecological and environmental pressure are associated with resident well-being. Prefecture-level cities are treated as urban–rural territorial governance units encompassing urban cores, peri-urban areas, and surrounding county-level jurisdictions. Spatial diagnostics reveal non-identical clustering of resource and environmental intensity (REI), government regulation and investment (GRI), ecological and environmental pressure (EEP), and resident well-being (RWB). REI is positively associated with EEP, and this association remains positive after excluding observations containing ordinary statistical completion. EEP is negatively associated with RWB in the full-sample TWFE and one-year-lagged specifications, but the association weakens in the 2014–2023 and restricted samples, indicating temporal and sample boundaries rather than a stable mediating mechanism. GRI shows contrasting cross-city and within-city patterns, consistent with a distinction between governance capacity and pressure-responsive adjustment. Dimension-level results further show that EEP is negatively associated with rural disposable income, whereas medical service capacity is positively associated with rural disposable income. Overall, the study provides a spatially grounded account of heterogeneous governance–environment–welfare relationships across Chinese prefecture-level territories. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Monitoring and Modelling Human–Environment Interactions in Urban–Rural Areas)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

27 pages, 2618 KB  
Article
Evaluating Community Resilience in Resettlement Contexts from a Social–Ecological Systems Perspective
by Luzi Tan, Shixiang Li and Fan Yang
Land 2026, 15(8), 1470; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15081470 - 14 Aug 2026
Viewed by 337
Abstract
Migrant resettlement communities in large-scale development regions face persistent pressures from environmental change, livelihood disruption, and social restructuring. Evaluating resilience in such communities requires a framework that captures both external stressors and internal adaptive capacity. This study asks whether differences in resilience between [...] Read more.
Migrant resettlement communities in large-scale development regions face persistent pressures from environmental change, livelihood disruption, and social restructuring. Evaluating resilience in such communities requires a framework that captures both external stressors and internal adaptive capacity. This study asks whether differences in resilience between resettlement communities are driven more by differences in external pressure exposure or by differences in internal development conditions. To address this question it applies a Pressure–State–Response (PSR) framework to assess community resilience in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA) of China. A four-level indicator system of 29 variables was developed across pressure, state, and response dimensions. Weights were determined by combining the Analytic Hierarchy Process with the entropy method; standardisation and entropy weights were computed across all 25 surveyed communities. Survey data statistical records, and remote sensing information were collected from 25 migrant resettlement communities. Three of these communities—CT, SQ, and GGB—were then selected by purposive maximum-variation sampling for detailed comparison. Results show that overall resilience ranked CT (0.646) > GGB (0.600) > SQ (0.483), with state resilience contributing the largest share to composite scores in all three communities. Obstacle-factor analysis revealed distinct constraint profiles: CT was primarily limited by ecological pressure, SQ by weak livelihood development, and GGB by limited industrial diversity and incomplete social integration. These findings indicate that resilience in resettlement communities depends more on internal development quality than on exposure levels alone; a Monte Carlo analysis confirmed that this ordering held in 99.9% of simulated draws. Differentiated governance strategies are needed rather than uniform approaches. The PSR-based framework and obstacle-factor diagnosis provide a practical tool for assessing and improving resilience in communities shaped by large-scale infrastructure development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Monitoring and Modelling Human–Environment Interactions in Urban–Rural Areas)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

23 pages, 17399 KB  
Article
Construction of a Coupling Framework for Production-Living-Ecology Function Interactions: A Case Study of the Guizhou-Guangxi Karst Region, Southwest China
by Jingxin Li, Ze Han, Zhaotong Zhang and Suju Li
Land 2026, 15(8), 1336; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15081336 - 24 Jul 2026
Viewed by 315
Abstract
Karst regions face acute conflicts among production, living, and ecology (PLE) functions under the constraints of rugged terrain and rocky desertification. Existing studies have separately examined driving factors, interaction directions and intensities, and nonlinear thresholds, while how these dimensions co-evolve across space and [...] Read more.
Karst regions face acute conflicts among production, living, and ecology (PLE) functions under the constraints of rugged terrain and rocky desertification. Existing studies have separately examined driving factors, interaction directions and intensities, and nonlinear thresholds, while how these dimensions co-evolve across space and time remains unclear. To address this gap, we used seven concentric buffers radiating from the built-up area as a spatial proxy for human activity intensity and constructed a framework within each buffer using Geodetector to identify core driving factors, Pearson correlation to quantify the direction and intensity of three pairwise interactions, and Pareto frontier analysis to capture nonlinear thresholds and tipping points. In the Guizhou-Guangxi karst region (2010–2019), the core drivers of production and ecology functions shifted from construction land through elevation to precipitation, while population consistently drove the living function. Along this gradient, the coupling relationships fluctuated in the core but improved in the periphery. Although trade-off intensities eased beyond 10 km, three Pareto frontier curves shifted from inverted-U patterns to monotonic trade-offs, indicating that this improvement was only quantitative while the interaction structure degraded. Tipping points disappeared in these curves, eroding the carrying-capacity buffers where win-win synergies remained attainable. Averaged correlation coefficients obscured this contrast between apparent improvement and structural degradation, and linear correlation analysis alone would not have detected it. These findings highlight the need for zone-specific management in karst regions, where monitoring based on Pareto-derived structural indicators can provide early warning of coupling degradation that averaged correlations mask. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Monitoring and Modelling Human–Environment Interactions in Urban–Rural Areas)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

34 pages, 36318 KB  
Article
Spatial Differentiation and Mechanisms of Spatial Mismatch Between Traditional Villages and Intangible Cultural Heritage: Collaborative Conservation Zoning and Strategies in Anhui Province, China
by Wenzhe Wang, Xiaorui Zhang, Yeyang Han and Chenhao Fu
Land 2026, 15(7), 1232; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15071232 - 8 Jul 2026
Viewed by 477
Abstract
Traditional villages and intangible cultural heritage (ICH) are interrelated components of rural heritage landscapes, linking material spatial carriers with living cultural practices. Yet their spatial matching, mismatch-formation mechanisms, and translation into collaborative conservation zoning remain insufficiently understood. Taking Anhui Province, China, a north–south [...] Read more.
Traditional villages and intangible cultural heritage (ICH) are interrelated components of rural heritage landscapes, linking material spatial carriers with living cultural practices. Yet their spatial matching, mismatch-formation mechanisms, and translation into collaborative conservation zoning remain insufficiently understood. Taking Anhui Province, China, a north–south transitional region, this study examines 836 traditional villages and 685 ICH items at or above the provincial level. We develop a stepwise spatial diagnostic framework that connects clustering identification, positional and quantity–structure mismatch diagnosis, corridor and multi-factor association interpretation, and strategy-oriented conservation zoning. The results show that traditional villages form a strong southern Anhui core (83.01%), whereas the officially attributed locations of listed ICH items are more widely distributed across southern, central, and northern Anhui (43.21%, 26.42%, and 30.36%). The provincial centroid mismatch distance reaches 160.15 km, and prefecture-level cities are classified into ICH-advantaged, traditional-village-advantaged, and relatively matched types. Huangshan further demonstrates that positional proximity does not necessarily imply quantity-structure matching. Mechanism analysis suggests two scale-dependent association patterns: an environmental preservation pattern for traditional villages and a social-transmission and institutional-attribution pattern for listed ICH items. Based on this provincial-scale diagnosis, the study delineates key, secondary, and general conservation zones as strategy-oriented diagnostic zones and proposes differentiated collaborative conservation strategy orientations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Monitoring and Modelling Human–Environment Interactions in Urban–Rural Areas)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

24 pages, 17537 KB  
Article
An Adaptive Transformer-Based Language-Model Framework for Assessing Urban Expansion
by Fang Wan, Zhan Zhang, Ru Wang, Daoyu Shu, Beile Ning, Jianya Gong and Xi Li
Land 2026, 15(3), 514; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15030514 - 23 Mar 2026
Viewed by 951
Abstract
Urban expansion is a key driver of land-use change and environmental pressure in rapidly urbanizing regions. Existing assessments of urban expansion often rely on predefined indicator systems and fixed weighting schemes, which limits their adaptability to evolving research priorities and regional contexts. This [...] Read more.
Urban expansion is a key driver of land-use change and environmental pressure in rapidly urbanizing regions. Existing assessments of urban expansion often rely on predefined indicator systems and fixed weighting schemes, which limits their adaptability to evolving research priorities and regional contexts. This study develops an adaptive framework for urban expansion assessment by integrating a transformer-based language model with multi-source spatial data. A BERT-based semantic extraction process is used to identify relevant indicators and derive their relative weights from the scientific literature, enabling the construction of a literature-driven Urban Expansion Index (UEI). The framework is applied to the Central Plains Mega-city Region (CPMR), China, to examine spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of urban expansion between 2010 and 2020. Results show that UEI is primarily driven by land-use expansion indicators, while socioeconomic, infrastructure, and environmental indicators jointly reflect the multidimensional nature of expansion processes. Spatial patterns reveal a persistent concentration of high expansion intensity in core cities, alongside heterogeneous environmental responses and gradual outward growth. Changes in UEI display weaker spatial coherence than static levels, indicating differentiated local expansion dynamics. Local spatial autocorrelation analysis further identifies shifting clusters of urban expansion intensity, suggesting a reorganization of expansion centers within the agglomeration over time. By linking transformer-based indicator extraction with spatial analysis, this study advances urban expansion assessment beyond outcome-oriented mapping toward a more adaptive and knowledge-informed approach. The proposed framework is transferable to other mega-city regions and provides a useful tool for supporting territorial spatial planning and sustainable urban development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Monitoring and Modelling Human–Environment Interactions in Urban–Rural Areas)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

31 pages, 2467 KB  
Article
Does Road Infrastructure Close or Widen the Urban–Rural Divide? Evidence from China’s Lanxi Urban Agglomeration
by Fan Yin, Yongsheng Qian, Junwei Zeng and Xu Wei
Land 2026, 15(3), 408; https://doi.org/10.3390/land15030408 - 2 Mar 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1128
Abstract
Transportation infrastructure is often viewed as a driver of regional convergence, yet its distributional consequences remain empirically unsettled. This study examines the direct and spatial spillover effects of road network density on urban–rural income inequality across 44 counties in the Lanxi (Lanzhou–Xining) Urban [...] Read more.
Transportation infrastructure is often viewed as a driver of regional convergence, yet its distributional consequences remain empirically unsettled. This study examines the direct and spatial spillover effects of road network density on urban–rural income inequality across 44 counties in the Lanxi (Lanzhou–Xining) Urban Agglomeration (2013–2022), a key development cluster in the upper reaches of the Yellow River Basin in Northwest China. By employing a Spatial Durbin Model with two-way fixed effects and three alternative spatial weight matrices (inverse geographic distance, economic distance, and an economic–geographic nested specification), we decompose total effects into direct and indirect components. The results indicate that the inequality effect of road density is specification-dependent: under the baseline geographic matrix, road density shows no robust inequality-reducing effect, while its spillover effect becomes significantly negative when spatial dependence is defined by economic similarity (p < 0.05). In contrast, local government health expenditure—a fiscal proxy for public service provision—exhibits a consistently negative association with urban–rural income inequality across all specifications, with statistically significant direct and total effects. These findings suggest that physical connectivity is a necessary but insufficient condition for inclusive growth; fiscal commitment to public services—particularly healthcare—appears to represent a key constraint for urban–rural convergence in topographically complex, ecologically sensitive regions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Monitoring and Modelling Human–Environment Interactions in Urban–Rural Areas)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-6
Back to TopTop