| The study on land use/land cover change (LUCC) has become one of the frontiers of modern ecology as it not only plays an important role in global environmental change, but also has an important significance for the land management and sustainable development in a region. To realize the sustainable utilization of land resource, it is crucial for us to analyze the characteristics of temporal and spatial changes of land use, to understand the change process and mechanism of land use, and to improve the land use manner and to guarantee the realization of the strategic decisions of our country by adjusting the economic activities of human society.In this paper, based on the principle of the landscape ecology, the spatial patterns and dynamic changes of land use in Shanxi Province from 1995 to 2000 were investigated according to the remote sensing image data and using the RS and GIS techniques. The results are as follows:(1) Based on land use data in 2000 at 1:100000 scale, the land cover patterns of the province were analyzed in terms of both overall land cover and vegetation cover. The results showed that the farmland (39.16%), grassland (29.25%) and forest land (27.90%) dominated the overall landscape in this region; the value of overall landscape diversity index was small (1.234), but both of the values of fragmentation index and the mean patch shape index were large. The plain dry farmland was the dominant type of farmland landscape and it distributed in a continuous pattern. The total area of the other types of farmlands was larger than the plain dry farm land alone, but their quality is poor. The integrity of forestland was well maintained, but the fragmentation index (1.33) and the mean patch shape index (2.13) of open forestland were relatively large. The grassland with a low degree of coverage dominated the grassland landscape.(2) The analysis of the spatial pattern of landscape patches showed that the farmland patches with a large area were scattered mainly in the great basins, and the forest land mostly distributed in the mountain areas in the province, but the grassland had been seriously damaged in the north part of the province, which was considered to be appropriate for grassland. Thus the policy on returning cultivated land to grassland should be implemented rapidly in this area(3) Using the mathematical model and transition matrix, the overall tendency and basic characteristics of land use change from 1995 to 2000 in the study area were analyzed. The results showed that the grassland area decreased dramatically (20.00%) but the proportion of high-density grassland increased; the forestland area increased dramatically (18.85%); the construction area increased with a relatively high speed; and farmland area showed a tendency of increase. The regional environment was improved to a certain degree as a whole, and the land use manner had taken a step in the direction of sustainable development during the five years, but the water area decreased rapidly, which should be paid much attention.(4) Based on human impact indexes, it was found that the human impact index in the region increased from 26.93% in 1995 to 29.29% in 2000, which indicated that human activity had an increasingly great influence on the land use in this region as a whole. The main driving factors of land use/land cover change such as population, policy, economic development and urbanization were also analyzed. |
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