Spatial Sustainability of Agricultural Rural Settlements: An Analysis of Rural Spatial Patterns and Influencing Factors in Three Northeastern Provinces of China

With accelerating urbanization and agricultural modernization, the scale, structure, and land use conditions of rural settlements in China’s three northeastern provinces (TNPs) have changed dramatically, impacting regional food production and sustainable rural development. Based on multitemporal land use datasets and socioeconomic statistics, we used spatial pattern analysis, machine learning models, and the Shapley additive explanation (SHAP) method to investigate the spatial evolutionary characteristics and driving factors of rural settlements in China’s TNPs from 1980 to 2020. The results show that (1) the spatial evolution of rural settlements followed a four-stage “expansion–stabilization–re-expansion–restabilization” trend; arable land conversion was the primary source of expansion, with limited conversion from forests, grasslands, and water bodies. (2) Rural settlements demonstrated marked agglomeration, with the spatial distribution evolving from “single-center clustering” to “multiregional contiguous clustering”. Rural settlements in the Sanjiang Plain evolved into large patch clusters, while those in the lower Liaohe River Basin became small patch clusters. (3) Rural settlements at low elevations and near roads and waterways presented a large-scale, agglomerative distribution, while settlements at high elevations and far from rivers and roads showed a small-scale, high-agglomeration pattern. (4) The rural population, total power of agricultural machinery, total grain output, and primary industry value added predominantly drove settlement spatial expansion, with an “initial suppression, then promotion” trend, while the urbanization rate and GDP per capita had a negative impact, with the opposite trend. The interaction effects among high-contributing factors transitioned from suppressive to promoting. Our results provide theoretical insights for spatial planning and sustainable development in agricultural rural settlements.