Plant landscape characteristics of mountain traditional villages under cultural ecology: a case study of Pilin village

Abstract

Abstract With the rapid increase in urbanization, the landscape appearance of traditional village plants under the intensification of human activities is transforming. The lack of knowledge about the characteristics and values of traditional village plant landscapes has led to the “urban parkification” of rural plant landscapes, which makes the style and cultural characteristics of the village gradually fade, there is a need to sort out the characteristics of traditional village plant landscapes to conserve them. From the perspective of cultural ecology, this paper analyzed the characteristics of the plant landscape and its influencing factors in the “production-living-ecological” spaces of traditional mountain villages, selecting Pilin Village in Gaopo Miao Township, Guiyang as a case study. The results showed that Pilin Village has a stepped landscape pattern of “forest-field-village-field-river”, the spatial distribution of the plant landscape was summarized as “natural forest land-surrounding village forest-terraces-garden-farmland”, and the planting structure reflected a different layout in the vertical direction. The plant landscape in the “production-living-ecological” spaces was rich, with obvious differences in the spaces’ characteristics, but they also intersected, showing a “mutual adaptation” relationship with the environment and social humanities. The formation and development of the plant landscape characteristics and style of Pilin Village are the concentrated reflections of multiple factors in the cultural ecosystem, which is a dynamic process of continuous integration and adaptation with the environment from a macroscopic pattern to microscopic construction, reflecting the wisdom of Chinese ethnic minorities’ living environment construction. Based on the analysis of the plant landscape characteristics of Pilin Village and its influencing factors, the need for plant landscape conservation and construction in traditional mountain villages under the background of rural revitalization was determined, and the study provides some reference for contemporary village plant landscape planning, biodiversity conservation, and rural habitat construction.