Study On Land Use Changes And Its Ecological Effects Of Tourism Area Along The Yellow River In Zhengzhou

In the new normal economy, the age of mass tourism has arrived. The reform and development of tourism land is of great significance to China’s tourism industry in that tourism land acts as a platform to present tourism resources. Scenic areas along the Yellow River, which are of ecological and cultural value for tourism development, are facing a contradiction between ecological protection and tourism development. Faced with the dilemma of development model transition in tourism, the above-mentioned scenic areas are in urgent need of a reasonable means of expression and a new model for development. To that end, the relationship between land use and ecological protection in tourist areas along the Yellow River should be handled well. On the Policy of Supporting Land Use for Developing Tourism(2015-10) is jointly issued by the Ministry of Land and Resources, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, National Tourism Administration underlines the arrangement of the application of tourism land use according to “the principle of the protection of resources and ecosystem” and “the principle of economical and intensive land use”. In this context, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the land use problem from case studies in tourist areas on the microscopic level.Based on the above-mentioned research background and relevant literature reviews on tourism, ecology and land use, this paper studies over the past 15 years and its ecological effects on the environment in order to evaluate the relationship between the development of the scenic areas along the Yellow River and the land use. In accordance with the geographical classic research paradigm of “pattern-process-mechanism”, this paper conducts a case study of the scenic areas along the Yellow River by means of RS and GIS. Above all, this paper focuses on the spatio-temporal land use change in the scenic areas along the Yellow River and its ecological effects on the environment with the application of literature review, social survey, and mathematical statistics method, and model simulation. With the analysis of the characteristics and mechanism of the land use change in the scenic areas along the Yellow River, this paper presents the dynamic track of land use and therefore predicts the spatio-temporal change in land use. In this way, this paper explores the inner mechanism of land use pattern and evaluates the risks facing ecological environment. With the combination of new-type urbanization and real situations, this paper aims to optimize the land use in thescenic areas along the Yellow River, develop land use pattern based on the real situations in in the scenic areas along the Yellow River, and restore the beauty of the Yellow River,thus contributing to the sustainable development of ecosystem in the scenic areas along the Yellow River. The following results have been obtained:(1)Characteristics of land use change in scenic areas along the Yellow River.This paper finds that over the past 15 years, land use has seen great changes in the ares in question. First,there are changes in the structure of land use. The changes can be summarized as“One-expand, three-decrease and five-increase”--- that is, the construction area in the tourist areas expands rapidly; arable land, waters, and land for other purposes gradually decreases;forest land, land for tours, urban construction, village land use and transportation land gradually increases proportionally. Second, land use change gains speed obviously. The areas in question are experiencing development in land use development, with degrees of changes at various levels. From the perspective of time series, the intensity of land use change in the earlier period is more dramatic than that in the later period. Transportation land use, forest land, land for towns and villages, and land for tours in particular are the type of land that went through greater change intensity. Third, spatial differentiation in land use change is evident.From the perspective of areas of land use, arable land retreat from across-the board area to the central area; woodland expands in belt areas; land for tours changes from central part to both the east and the west part, gradually forming the pattern of "one main part and two wings";waters change from band and network-like area to sporadic distribution; construction in towns and villages changes from sporadic distribution to "big concentration and small agglomeration". Fourth, there is obvious change in the function of land use. The development in tourism industry contributes to the change of the land use in the scenic areas from the single structure of farmland, woodlands, villages to comprehensive travel services-led diversification in land use. At the same time, agricultural land, land for construction of towns and villages have changed for tourism, with gradually changing lifestyle of local people from farmers to businessmen. from rural areas to the travel community transformation. Fifthly, the built-up area continued to increase, the expansion rate grows, spacial concentration gradually increases, with expansion to the east and southeast in the early period, and extensions to the west and northwest in the later period, which indicates the constant development and construction in the areas in question in light of profound social changes. over the past 15 years.(2)Land-use change in the scenic areas along the Yellow River in the future.This paperapplies Markov models to predict future changes in land use in the scenic areas in question and find that construction land will continue to increase and arable land will be slightly trimmed with constantly declining land area of woodlands and waters. To protect lands and waters will be high on the agenda.(3)Driving factors and mechanism of land use change in scenic areas along the Yellow River.This paper argues that land use change patterns are caused by government policies,increase in population, tourism economy, resource factors, urbanization, natural environments and many other internal and external factors. The spatial patterns of land use in the scenic areas in question have undergone the following three sessions slow evolution, rapid change and transformation and upgrading, hence completing tourism-guided urbanization process ranging from a resource-driven to market-driven transformation, to market-driven to policy-driven transformation.(4)Comprehensive evaluation of the ecological effects of land use change in tourist areas along the Yellow River.This paper combines the theories and methods of ecosystem service valuation, with the application of comprehensive evaluation model of land use from the two aspects of the ecological services value of response of land use in tourist areas and comprehensive evaluation. Overall, development and construction in the above-mentioned scenic areas and land use change have injected new vitality to economic and social development of the region, with increase in economic, social and general benefits year by year and yet inhibitory effects on the local ecological environment. Ecological environment in tourist areas along the Yellow River of Zhengzhou showed a declining trend during the period2000-2014, and continues in such a way. From now on, ecological environment protection should be further strengthened in the future.(5)Sustainable development of land use in tourist area.Ecological problems in the use of land are targeted. And measures on how to develop in a sustainable manner are proposed,such as “five functional area of land use”, “Eco-oriented Land Development”, and“eco-tourism”.The main contributions of this research are as follows.(1) From the perspective of theory in research, this paper further enriches the theoretical system of tourism land. This paper extracts and summarizes the basic theories of the concept, connotation, characteristics and classification of tourist areas and their land use by readjusting and dividing the land use classification system in tourist zones. Also, this paper summarizes the change and driving mechanism of the land use patterns in tourist areas, thus complementing the insufficiency ofthe existing tourism research.(2)In terms of research content, this paper studies the land use change and its ecological effects in tourist areas along the Yellow River in a timely manner.With the accelerated process of tourism development, man-land relationship disorders will occur along the Yellow River tourist area and outlying areas after a long history of harmony and stability. It is urgent to deal with the following issues, how to handle the relationship between tourism development and the evolution of land use, how to optimize the protection of the ecological environment along the Yellow River, and how to make the best use of space expression. The evolution of land use pattern will provide evidence for the tourism industry development against the background of how to make scientific and efficient use of land to promote urbanization and rational distribution of industry. Similar land use problems in tourist areas throughout the country and other problems with regard to ecological land use in tourist areas along the Yellow River can be solved with feasible and practical reference.(3)This paper focuses on the interaction between urban development and urban areas near tourist areas development. At different stages of the life cycle of tourist areas, tourism land use evolves with the tourism system. For large tourist area, inner land use contains not only the tourist sites, but also land for the purpose of agriculture, urbanization, waters, and other non-tourism areas. These non-tourism sites will undergo dynamic adjustment of land structure, mainly due to nearby cities and its development policy. Therefore, breakthroughs have to be made not only concerning adjustment of land structure owing to tourism development. It is of reality significance to integrate the adjustment of land structure to the urban area development as a whole.