Fractal characteristics and spatial variation of county land use

Based on the remote sensing image interpretation data of land use of Ningjin county in 2008, using the county and township scale as the basic measuring and calculating unit, through the calculation of fractal dimension of cultivated land, garden and residential site which belong to this county and all its towns, the results can be get. The result shows that, within unitscale of county, the fractal structures which belong to different land groups do exist, the same as the obvious difference in fractal dimension value of different land groups; the characteristics of fractal structure of different land groups with unit-scale of township still can be clearly seen, and the measured results of typical land groups, such as cultivated field, garden and residential site, showed obvious spatial variation. The variety of fractal dimension values of different land groups and their spatial variation existed in different townships proves that the way of land use and its spatial structure was clearly affected by natural condition and economic development; it also shows that fractal characteristics and spatial variation can provide a good guidance on indicating the characteristics of land use when the measuring and calculating unit is similar to these areas such as county or towns, and it also can provide a quantitative description indicator for adjusting land-use structure, optimizing land-use allocation and programming land-use blueprint in areas where were smaller than county unit.