The Distribution of Rural Settlements in Relation to Land Form Factors in Low Hilly Land on the Loess Plateau

Basic landform factors in the natural environment have a fundamental impact on the spatial distribution of rural residential areas. A deep study of these factors is of great significance when understanding their distribution and balancing urban and rural development. Here, we focus on Qilihe district, Lanzhou and using ArcGIS9.3 analyze and classify nine topographic factors including elevation, slope, aspect, terrain undulation, surface roughness, slope of aspect, slope of slope, surface incise depth and variance coefficient in elevation. We adopted distribution index and information entropy to analyze the relationship between the distribution of rural settlements and landform factors. The results show that advantageous terrain habitats for rural settlements are characterized by an elevation of 1 500～1 750m and 1 750～2 000m; slope of 0～5°, 5～10° and 10～15°; aspect of W, S and SW; terrain undulation 0～50 m and 50～100m; surface roughness 1～1.1; slope of slope of 0～5°; slope of aspect of 10～15° and 15～20°; surface incise depth of 0～10 m and variance coefficient in elevation of 0～0.003.