Multi-scale spatiotemporal analysis and category identification for transformation of the rural human-environment system in the guizhou karst region

The Guizhou Karst Region in southwestern China is characterized by extreme ecological fragility and intense human-environment conflicts, thus presenting a critical case for understanding the transformation of the rural human-environment system (RHES). However, integrated assessments across nested administrative scales remain scarce, limiting the generation of context-sensitive sustainable development pathways. A novel multi-scale category identification framework that explicitly couples ecological functions with the municipal scale, living functions with the county scale, and production functions with the township scale is therefore developed, with the resulting cross-scale functional configurations for Guizhou's RHES identified from 2000 to 2020 using a hybrid objective-subjective weighting method and a dual-perspective protocol. Our findings are: (1) The static pattern in 2020 revealed a core-periphery structure with a central intensive core and constrained peripheries, in which superior ecological, living, and production functions concentrate in the central basins, sharply contrasting the degraded and topographically constrained peripheral areas. (2) Dynamic trajectories exhibit policy-associated fluctuations: the ecological function increased in all nine municipalities and the living function rose in all 88 counties over the study period, whereas township-level production diverged rather than converged. (3) The integration of static and dynamic perspectives delineates 27 static composite subtypes, further differentiated by three dynamic trajectory types, within a five-zone regional system, each of which is linked to tailored development pathways, ranging from ecology-priority restoration and tourism development to balanced wetland-agriculture integration and production-enhancing land consolidation. This study provides a replicable, scale-explicit framework for diagnosing RHES dynamics and guiding spatial planning in fragile karst landscapes and other ecologically vulnerable regions worldwide.