Macroecological factors shape local-scale spatial patterns in agriculturalist settlements.

ABSTRACT: Macro-scale patterns of human systems ranging from population distribution to linguistic diversity have attracted recent attention, giving rise to the suggestion that macroecological rules shape the assembly of human societies. However, in which aspects the geography of our own species is shaped by macroecological factors remains poorly understood. Here, we provide a first demonstration that macroecological factors shape strong local-scale spatial patterns in human settlement systems, through an analysis of spatial patterns in agriculturalist settlements in eastern mainland China based on high-resolution Google Earth images. We used spatial point pattern analysis to show that settlement spatial patterns are characterized by over-dispersion at fine spatial scales (0.05-1.4 km), consistent w

SUBMITTER: Tao T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5698655 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature