Sustainable Protection Strategies for Traditional Villages Based on a Socio-Ecological Systems Spatial Pattern Evaluation: A Case Study from Jinjiang River Basin in China

Traditional villages have reached milestones in developing a living culture, politics, economy, and society, among other aspects, while acting as important carriers of agricultural culture formed by long-term interactions between humans and nature. Unfortunately, traditional villages could disappear with the advent of urbanization. Therefore, this study enhances the accuracy of traditional village classification protection work by examining traditional villages in the Jinjiang River Basin in Quanzhou, China. A spatial pattern is extracted for the socio-ecological systems (SES) prototype of traditional villages, and an SES classification protection system is constructed based on a prototype analysis. Given the evaluation results, a K-means cluster analysis is applied to establish the SES sustainability levels for six types of traditional villages. After adjusting the types according to the principles of sustainability, equilibrium, and individual cases, six SES system types are identified: SES decay and shrinkage (Type 1), SES fusion and development (Type 2), SES ecological decline (Type 3), SES social decline (Type 4), SES ecological conservation (Type 5), and SES extensive development (Type 6). This system provides a quantitative analysis method to classify and protect concentrated and contiguous traditional villages. It also helps facilitate a better understanding of local rural society, economy, and culture, especially a deeper understanding of the interactions between humans and the rural environment.