Incorporating the Number of Patches into an Integrated Land Use Optimization Framework: Toward Sustainable Land Use Configurations in Urbanizing Basins

Land use optimization is essential for balancing the economic development, ecological protection, and sustainable management of regional landscapes. However, most existing frameworks focus primarily on land use area allocation while neglecting spatial pattern metrics, leading to fragmented landscapes and reduced ecological benefits. In this study, we propose a new multi-objective optimization framework that incorporates land use patch number as an explicit objective, providing a more direct way to make a trade-off between economic development, ecological protection, and landscape sustainability. Using Jinan’s Xiaoqing River Basin as a case study, we compare four scenarios, natural development, economic priority, ecological priority, and sustainable development, under both the traditional optimization framework (multi-objective allocation based on area and post-evaluation of spatial pattern based on land use simulation) and the proposed optimization framework. The results show that while the two frameworks yield similar levels of overall economic and ecological benefits, the traditional framework produces highly fragmented ecological land and overly aggregated construction land. In contrast, the new framework effectively reduces cropland and grassland fragmentation and enhances ecological land cohesion, generating more natural and sustainable landscape configurations. These findings highlight the importance of integrating spatial pattern objectives into land use optimization, providing a more comprehensive and spatially explicit approach to land use optimization, offering scientific support for rational land allocation and sustainable development within the urban river basin.