“Locality–Adaptation” Research of Hydropower Resettlement Communities in the Jinsha River Basin: A Case Study of Ludila Hydropower Station

Objective Within human – environment systems, river basins constitute the earliest geographical units of human activity and currently represent the most critical zones of strained human – environment interactions. Facing the prominent and complex contradictions in basin-scale human – environment relationships, the evolution and coupling mechanisms of human – water dynamics have emerged as pivotal research issue. With technological advancements, early humans continuously shaped the earth’s surface through hydraulic facilities such as canals, dams, and embankments, directly intervening in human – water relationships. Since the modern era, large-scale hydraulic and hydropower projects have significantly enhanced the capacity of basin settlements to utilize water resources and hydropower, strengthened resilience against water-related disasters, generated extensive socio-economic and ecological benefits, and altered the productive – ecological coupling relationships of settlements. In this process, the uniqueness of hydropower resettlement lies in the radical restructuring of human – water relationships — transformations that not only reconfigure physical spaces but also fragment basin-rooted local knowledge networks. This research evaluates the compound impacts of hydraulic and hydropower projects on basin-scale human – environment systems, focusing on the adaptive challenges faced by hydropower resettlers under abrupt environmental changes. By constructing a “locality – adaptation” conservation framework, the research reveals how resettlers rebalance local elements through adaptive strategies such as selective preservation, innovative transformation, and memory-driven reconstruction in newly constructed environments.

Methods As a typical scenario of abrupt changes in social – ecological systems, the environmental shocks experienced by relocated settlements provide a natural experimental setting for studying human habitat adaptability. This research takes the resettlement communities of the Ludila Hydropower Station along the Jinsha River as the research object, and develops a linkage analysis method that integrates macroscopic land cover evolution with microscopic architectural spatial adjustments. By connecting the drastic environmental effects at the basin level with human behavioral responses at the settlement level, the research visually demonstrates how hydropower projects trigger residential space reconstruction through land resource constraints.At the basin scale, the Patch-level Land Use Simulation Model (PLUS) is employed to analyze land use adaptation changes in the basin during two phases: 2005–2010 (pre-resettlement period) and 2015–2020 (post-resettlement period). At the settlement scale, the Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Mask R-CNN) deep learning model is utilized to identify architectural spatial features, categorizing three typical building types: traditional pitched-roof buildings, uniformly planned flat-roof buildings, and color steel plate-modified structures. Through multi-source data fusion (including remote sensing, demographic statistics, and compensation records) and field investigations, the research quantitatively analyzes the “locality – adaptation” reconstruction process of resettlement communities across the three spatial dimensions of living, production, and cultural spaces.

Results 1) Land cover evolution: Water storage of hydropower station inundates 37.12 km² of land (including 21.61 km² of high-quality cultivated land), resulting in a loss of 43.68% of settlement production space. 2) Adjustment of architectural space: 65.8% of dwellings in the original villages are traditional timber-earth buildings with a tile roof, which adapt to the climate environment of concentrated rainfall and sufficient sunshine in the Jinsha River Basin. 48.7% of the resettlement sites adopt unified flat roof planning, and 51.3% realize functional optimization through self-construction or renovation, with the average renovation area reaching 230.9 m². 3) Transformation of livelihood system: The annual compensation mechanism only restores 15.79% of the cultivated land allocation before resettlement, and the proportion of compensation income drops from 82.71% in the initial stage of relocation to 33.15% after long-term resettlement, driving the adjustment of crop structure to high value-added cash crops. 4) Cultural space reconstruction: In the context of the disappearance of traditional water transport functions, the three cultural relics reconstructed in different places show a symbolic turn. Among them, Taoyuan Longwang Temple fully retains the original worship function (retention rate is 100%) and forms a functional complement with the new water supply system of Dalongtan Reservoir (replacing the function of 90% of the inundated irrigation area). The local maintenance of cultural space essentially depends on the dual continuation of the functional bearing and symbolic meaning of the relationship between human and water.

Conclusion The hydropower settlement forms a systematic response mechanism in the “production – living – culture” dimensions through the adaptive reconstruction of local elements. The living space is translated into climate adaptability by unified planning and construction, and the building renovation rate reaches 73.3%; reservoir inundation results in the loss of 43.68% of high-quality cultivated land, driving the migration of farming space to the middle-high altitude area (the slope demand for forest land development increases by 26.96%), and forming a spatial replacement mechanism of “inundation loss – slope compensation”; the cultural space retains locality through function transformation and symbols of water culture reconstruction. While revealing the rigid constraints of engineering intervention on the natural environment, the research systematically explains the dynamic balance process between the damage of the natural environment and the adjustment of the human system by analyzing the adaptive restructurction of place-based knowledge among resettlement communities achieved by the resettlement communities through spatial practice, and provides a practical paradigm for the sustainable development of the relationship between human and water in the changing environment.