[Temporal and spatial evolution of regional cultural landscape under the influence of construction land expansion: A case study of Hanjiang delta in Guangdong, China.].

Cultural landscapes are the products of combination of natural and human factors with constant change in response to human behavior. Exploring the impacts of construction land expansion on cultural landscapes is the key to understand the formal connotations and value characteristics of human activities interfering with cultural landscapes. In this study, we first classified the cultural landscape of the Hanjiang Delta and then used the landscape index to quantitatively describe the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of the cultural landscape from 1980 to 2018. Finally, we analyzed the spatial effect between construction land expansion and the cultural landscape with a spatial panel econometric model. The results showed that a total of seven cultural landscape types were identified at the regional level. From 1980 to 2000, the cultural landscape pattern in the study area changed substantially, with increasing fragmentation, deepening irregularity, and increasing diversity. The proportion of regional construction land increased from 14.8% to 29.9%. The year 2000 was the cut-off point for the rate of construction land expansion, and the chronological characteristics of cultural landscape change coincided with it. There was a spatial dependency between the expansion of construction land and the change of cultural landscape. With the expansion of construction land, the sprawl town landscape in sand dike became the dominant type, and the paddy scattered historical villages, the wetland agglomeration town landscape, and the paddy wetland landscape in net river lowland faced extinction. Construction land expansion affected the local landscape pattern and had spatial spillover effects on neighboring areas. For a particular landscape type, the expansion of construction land led to a general increase in the degree of patch integration and an enhanced landscape agglomeration effect. For different types, this led to a decrease in inter-landscape sprawl, an increase in patch irregularity, and enhanced fragmentation. This study could provide a reference for the human history inheritance and ecological pattern optimization in the Hanjiang Delta.