REVIEW AND PROSPECTS OF LAND USE ZONING RESEARCH

Land use zoning can be described as a system engineering that observes and works over terrain syntheses from the point of view of region and probes into the history,characteristic,transformation and trend of land use.The major purpose of land use zoning is to understand the potential of land product ability and to improve the structure of land ecosystem,and to find reasonable directions and quantities of land use in domestic economic sections.In this paper,the division of land utilization was reviewed.The necessity and significance of divisions and principles for the division,were given in this paper,together with the method and technique and influencial factors.The paper is of reference value for the investigation into land utilization status,scientific and rational division,macroscopic decision on land development and utilization.We also gave a brief review on the development of land use zoning research in China and abroad.The existing problems in methodology and practice of land use zoning system were summarized,and the future research directions were pointed out in this paper.The tendency of land use zoning research can be generalized as the followings:1) further study will divert from natural elements to natural-humanistic elements;2) from large-scale to various spatial scales;3) from traditional zoning methodology to new technology and compositive methodology;4) from static zoning to dynamic zoning which includes multi-element and multi-process.New concepts and trend of land use zoning for further study was then introduced.