A Basin-Scale Framework for Identifying Hydro-Cultural Heritage Corridor Patterns and Guiding Graded Protection: Evidence from the Xiangjiang River Basin, China

Le résumé fourni par la source

Hydro-cultural heritage is shaped by strong hydrological dependence and historical accessibility. To address insufficient identification of river-basin heritage linkages and their weak translation into graded protection, this study develops an analytical framework integrating heritage-site evaluation, cultural source identification, resistance-surface construction, potential corridor extraction, network grading, and protection guidance, and applies it to the Xiangjiang River Basin, China. Heritage sites were evaluated by protection level, historical continuity, spatial proximity, and hydro-cultural relevance. Cultural source areas were identified using weighted kernel density analysis, potential corridors were extracted using the minimum cumulative resistance model, and the graded corridor network was examined using network-structure indices. The results show river-oriented clustering, localized nucleation, and belt-like extension. Eight primary and fourteen supplementary cultural source areas were identified. Potential corridors are concentrated along the Xiangjiang main stem and major tributaries. In the resistance-surface construction, distance to the water system received the highest AHP-derived resistance weight, while GeoDetector showed that it had the highest, although modest, single-factor explanatory power among the tested variables for corridor spatial differentiation. The corridor network exhibits a primary–secondary–tertiary graded structure. This study reveals the spatial continuity and hierarchy of hydro-cultural heritage corridors and provides a methodological reference for river-basin conservation.

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