Dynamic changes of land use and landscape pattern of traditional Li settlements in Hainan

The traditional Li settlement is the carrier of Li culture and history. In order to understand the dynamic changes of the land use and landscape pattern in the traditional Li settlement area， in the report， the cultural heritage nomination sites of Hainan， Hongshui Village， Echa Village， Baicha Village， and Chubao Village， which are included in the World Heritage Tentative List of “Hainan Tropical Rainforests and Traditional Settlements of the Li Ethnic Groups”， were selected as the research objects， and the China Land Cover Dataset was used to analyze the changes of the inland use structure and landscape pattern from 1991 to 2021. The results indicated that during 1991 and 2021， under the influence of cash crop cultivation， the land use area of Baicha Village and Echa Village changed significantly， with an increase in the proportion of the agricultural land area and a decrease in the proportion of the forested land area， with the most obvious change in Echa village， where the proportion of the agricultural land area increased from 15.91% to 49.the 16%， and the proportion of forested land area decreased from 83.12% to 49.47%. The use area of the different land in Chubao Village and Hongshui Village were relatively stable， the land area with use changes did not exceed 2%. Influenced by the changes of the forest land use mode and the agricultural land use mode， the landscape separation index of Baicha Village increased from 0.013 to 0.191， and the landscape separation index of Echa Village increased from 0.305 to 0.702. Additionally， the landscape shape index， Simpson uniformity index， and Shannon-Wiener diversity index increased significantly. The complexity and landscape diversity of the landscape spatial structure， the patch shape complexity，and the landscape diversity all increased. In contrast， there were small changes of the landscape pattern of Hongshui Village and Chubao Village. The changes of the land use pattern in the four traditional Li settlements have altered the production and living space of these villages， which bring the disappearance risk of the traditional farming culture. Our findings are valuable for understanding the production and life changes of the Li， and guiding the development and conservation of the traditional Li culture， settlement landscapes and farming culture.