Land-use zoning in fast developing coastal area with ACO model for scenario decision-making

Potential ecological environment risks have been emerged as the result of land-use change (e.g. urbanization) in coastal areas. Conflicts between urban growth and ecological conservation should be brought to the forefront especially in the fast developing coastal areas. An optimized landscape pattern for land-use planning could reduce the risk at the regional scale. The cell-based allocation of different land use into the geospace (i.e. land-use spatial zoning, LUSZ) to form optimal pattern with planning objectives and constrains could be viewed as a spatial optimization problem. This study aims to develop a framework incorporated with ant colony algorithm optimization (ACO) to solve LUSZ problem based on the planning guideline of China. Three planning scenarios (i.e. development focusing on urban growth, development considering ecological conversion, and coordinative development between growth and protection) were devised and analyzed with the study area of Doumen District. Comparative analysis with landscape metrics and suitability evaluation indicates that scenario of coordinative development is more available and plausible for land-use change management. This study provides a quantitative and feasible procedure to achieve optimal development pattern on given planning objectives. Moreover, it also demonstrates that cell-based spatial optimization model can generate optimal planning scenarios for decision-making.