Abstract
Establishing a procedure which divides geographic environment into
different spatial units with certain geographic homogeneity is the
perquisite of resource management, but it is a challenging task owing to
the complexity of geographic environment. Land-type research which aims
to map patterns and interactions of geographic components (e.g., climate
type, landform, soil type, and land cover etc.) lays foundation to
division of geographic environment. Although national standard of
land-type in China provided a framework for land survey, it weakened the
importance of human activity. Combining multi-source data and geospatial
analysis methods, this study identified agricultural land quality and
urban functional areas as proxies for land-use intensities and further
proposed a 1:100,000 hierarchical classification system that integrated
landform type, soil type, land-use type, and land-use intensity. Factors
in the classification system were represented by parameter layers. Using
this classification system, Changzhou City land was classified into 3
classes, 37 subclasses, and 137 land units. The land-type map and
analyses of human–land relationship could support current land-use
planning in China which needs a comprehensively knowledge of geographic
environment rather than just land-cover/land-use.