Abstract:

On the basis of reviewing related literatures at home and abroad about land use zoning,through the construction of the regional land use divisional comprehensive evaluation index system, by using SPSS software and principal component analysis which is one of the multivariate statistical methods, we made a comprehensive evaluation of land use extent taking counties and cities as units in Jiangsu Province. The comprehensive evaluation index system of the regional land use is built up by selecting 25 indexes from the following six fields of regional land use: structures, inputs, outputs, ecology, dynamics and potential. On the grounds of the comprehensive scores of land use, meanwhile with the combination of space expression of MAPinfo graphical software, the results indicate that the land use extent presents notable urban-rural difference and north-south regional unbalance.At the same time, the synthetic level of landuse is relatively high in economically developed regions and there is a gradually decreasing tendency from south to north in Jiangsu Province, the geographical features of gradient differences are significant. According to the analysis of land use comprehensive level in counties and cities of Jiangsu Province, and considering integrated natural conditions, characteristics of land use and continuity of regionalization units in space position, with the principle that the natural conditions should be consistent with the characteristics of the land use within regionalization units, therefore we can divide the land use extent into three first-order land use zones: Jiang Nan area, Yangtze-Huaihe area and Huaibei area. Based on the principles of physical geographic features and adjacent distance, it can be further divided into seven secondary land use zones: the sub-area around Taihu Lake, Ning-Zhen hilly sub-area, Jianghuai sub-area along the Yangtze River, Jianghuai coastal sub-area, Lixia River plain sub-area, Huaibei coastal sub-area and old Yellow River course sub-area.

Key words: land use degree, principal component analysis, Jiangsu Province