Integrating the Landscape Vulnerability into Developing Liveable Rural Places: A Framework for Rural Landscape Vulnerability Evaluation from Human-natural Perspective

According to the formation of urban-rural structure in the process of global urbanization, rural area plays an important role in supporting the healthy, liveable environment in cities and villages. The rural landscape is a complex concept that is pluralistic enough to allow for a comprehensive understanding, which reflects the relationship of human-natural system in villages, as a visual indicator to determine whether the village is liveable. With the dual pressure of ecological environment change and rapid urbanization, the rural landscape had obvious problems, which visually represented in over-exploitation of rural land, excessive waste of energy, abandonment of barren land, destruction of habitat environment, which lead to the degradation or even disappearance of rural landscape, and assimilation of rural civilization. In order to identify the rural landscape problems and reveal its formation mechanism, this study introduces vulnerability research paradigm, assesses and analyzes the rural landscape vulnerability in response to external or interference disturbances. In 1990s, landscape vulnerability has been proposed to analysis probability of ecological landscape destruction, as a functional landscape attribute. With the deepening of research, landscape vulnerability has a wider significance, and emphasizes the important role of human-natural environment. Generally, landscape vulnerability research has become a frontier scientific issue in interpreting the relationship between human and land systems, exploring the operating mechanism of landscape systems under the disturbance of natural environment changes and human activities. This paper aims to propose a specific framework to analyze the vulnerability indicators of rural landscape, to reflect the vulnerability of rural human-natural systems and explore the driving factors, and to propose corresponding planning strategies to cope with the vulnerability and shaping liveable places. The conceptual framework for rural landscape vulnerability research based on a review of both theoretical and empirical literature related to landscape vulnerability and human-natural systems. In order to quantitively evaluate the rural landscape vulnerability, this paper draw lessons from the relative mature human-natural system vulnerability evaluation method, which adopts the multi-index mathematical and physical analysis method. In this paper, we preliminary investigated the 28 villages in Jixian County, China, which contains diversified rural settlement conditions, and finally focused on the 12 typical villages. Based on the vulnerability components of exposure, sensitivity and adaptation, this paper will construct the evaluation index of rural landscape vulnerability, and use the comprehensive index method to calculate the vulnerability threshold of 12 typical villages, and explore the driving core factors combining Factor Analysis and Principal Component Analysis. Further, the framework will propose a way to communicate with practitioners and policy makers on reducing or coping with landscape vulnerability. It can thus serve as a tool for targeting the implementation of policies and practices aimed at improving the liveable rural settlements environment in villages. The following conclusion are expected drawn from this research:  This paper will propose a framework for rural landscape vulnerability from the perspective of human-natural system, which contains the research procedures of quantitatively and comprehensively exploring the landscape vulnerability driving factors in different villages.  This paper will analyze the generation mechanism of rural landscape vulnerability from the perspective of human-natural system, construct the evaluation index and evaluation method, and calculate the vulnerability threshold of 12 typical villages to further explore the driving factors of different villages.  This paper will propose rural planning strategies and policies to cope with the landscape vulnerability, which are graded and classified to different villages, aiming to develop liveable rural places.