Evaluation and Classification of Rural Multifunction at a Grid Scale: A Case Study of Miyun District, Beijing

Abstract

Rural areas are a natural, economic and social complex with multiple functions. Identifying rural multifunction scientifically is the basis for promoting efficient rural spatial planning and sustainable development strategy. In this paper, we calculated and characterized the rural production-living-ecological (PLE) functions at a grid scale of 300 × 300 m in Miyun District by establishing an evaluation index system. Several types of rural functional area were identified with the help of an ISO cluster unsupervised classification tool. Three main results were found as follows. (1) The values of the production, living, ecological functions and multifunction ranged from 0–0.101, 0–0.204, 0.009–0.241 and 0.009–0.302, respectively. Ecological function was dominant in this area. (2) The overall spatial patterns of production and living functions showed the characteristic of being “high in the south and low in the north”, and areas with high values were almost distributed around urban areas and the Miyun Reservoir. While for the ecological function and multifunction, they possessed the opposite characteristics to production and living functions, with high values concentrated in the mountainous areas in the northwest, northeast, east and south of Miyun District. (3) According to the clustering results, rural multifunction of Miyun District was divided into four types: ecological conservation, employment and residence, recreation and potential development, with the area proportions of 44.22%, 17.92%, 20.73% and 17.13%, respectively. Each functional type showed a characteristic of agglomeration. In the future, the study of rural multifunction at micro scales should be paid more attention to better understand the functional differences within the country. This research can provide a decision-making reference for demarcation of rural production-living-ecological space and compilation of spatial planning.