Development and Prospect of Rural Landscape Character Assessment in China

In recent years, landscape character assessment (LCA) has become an effective tool for identifying and classifying rural landscape features. To better understand how LAC provides decision-making support for rural landscape planning and conservation, this research systematically reviews the characteristics and shortcomings of 49 published empirical studies on rural LCA in China in three core assessment links, i.e., indicator selection, method use and result application. The Chi-square test shows that the spatial pattern characteristic indicators are the most widely used decisive indicators, the proportion of humanistic and aesthetic characteristic indicators is significant in southern China, and the utilization of functional characteristic indicators decreases with time. The penetration of digital technology in each link, and the emphasis on multi-spatial scale and change of time are the trends of methods used in studies, which put forward new requirements for contemporary landscape planners in China. There is a large gap between the existing assessment results and the practice of landscape planning. It is an effective way to improve the application level of evaluations to generate the achievements of rural LCA in accordance with the relevant practice types on the corresponding research scales.