# Landscape Ecology Analysis of Traditional Villages: A Case Study of Ganjiang River Basin
## 4 Discussion  
A Favorable Development Environment Makes Traditional Villages More Sustainable, and Areas with a Larger Base of Villages Do Not Give Rise to More Traditional Villages  
Villages often tend to conform to mainstream society in their modes of production and living under the impact of social development, losing their original cultural traditions. Traditional villages are the products of the continuation of village cultural material over thousands of years. Identifying the main reasons for the emergence of traditional villages from a landscape ecology perspective is a key research focus of this paper. The average elevation, average slope, and average terrain undulation around the villages reflect the flatness of the land surrounding the villages; flat land is more suitable for agricultural production and village expansion, providing a better transportation environment. The proportion of cultivated land, forest land, construction land, and water area around traditional villages represents the overall landscape environment of the villages; the area of cultivated land, forest land, and water reflects the agricultural production conditions of the villages and the area of construction land reflects the scale and volume of the villages. The distance to river channels reflects the ability of villages for water transportation and irrigation [49; 50]. The research results of environmental elements of traditional villages using the geographical detector indicate that the combined effect of land use type area, distance to rivers, and topography has a stronger impact on the continuation of traditional villages. A suitable natural environment and convenient transportation are the foundations of regional development [51]. This result also indirectly indicates that a single element cannot be the driving force for the continuation of traditional villages. The continuation and development of traditional villages must be the result of the combined effects of multiple suitable environmental factors. The research finds that traditional villages and ordinary villages have distinctly different spatial distribution characteristics. The southern and northwestern parts of the basin are the most concentrated areas of ordinary village distribution, while the distribution of traditional villages is mainly concentrated in the central part of the basin. The central basin's Jitai Plain has flat terrain, convenient transportation, and sufficient irrigation water sources, making it suitable for agricultural production and village development and more  
Figure 13: Spatial distribution of traditional village landscape types: types A1-F represent the kernel density analysis of the spatial distribution of village types A1-F.  
likely to produce larger-sized villages. For a traditional village to continue for a thousand years and still exist today, a larger size and stable social structure are quite important. Our research results indicate that the central part of the basin, with its suitable development environment, has a higher number of traditional villages with a more concentrated distribution. From the perspective of village landscape types, the villages concentrated in the central region are mainly of the Plain Cultivated Land Mixed Type (A1), Plain Forest Land Mixed Type (B1), Plain Construction Land Type (C), and Plain Cultivated Land Type (D). These types of villages have larger cultivated land areas compared to other types, and the surrounding terrain is relatively flat. These favorable development environments are important factors for the continuation of traditional villages. In the southern and northwestern parts of the basin, due to large terrain undulations, land that is difficult to develop, and inconvenient transportation, there is a lack of suitable development conditions. A small area of land suitable for development at high altitudes often has many villages, which, due to limited development space and inconvenient transportation between them, present a dense spatial distribution.