Land Use/Land Cover Change And Driving Forces Analysis Lower Area Of Three Gorges Reservoir

Being one of the most important parts in the global change research, Land use / land cover change (LUCC) plays an influential role in the global environment change and sustainable development, and is included in the core items of IGBP (International Geosphere and Biosphere Programme). Thus land use / land cover change has been considered as a crucial and urgent research theme.Due to its sensitive and fragile environment, Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) has long been the focus of the world. In this paper the research chooses the Lower Area of Three Gorges Reservoir (LTGR) as the research area, which takes advantage of two sets of Landsat TM image data of 1992 and 2002. Based mainly on the technology of RS and GIS we extract the classification result of land use through object-oriented method. Focused on the LUCC, the paper illustrates the quantities, inner structure, dynamic degree, land use degree and regional diversity features of the land use/land cover changes in LTGR, and also analyzes the landscape pattern of this area. Furthermore, the primary and secondary reasons for the change of land use/land cover are pointed out. And some countermeasures are put forward to aim at the sustainable development of land resources. The conclusions are:1. The mainly land types in LTGR are cultivated land and woodland. The land for construction has obviously increased in ten years, which shows the highest dynamic degree in urban vegetation and construction land. The cultivated land has decreased for the reason that Three Gorges project construction occupied plenty of cultivated land. A wide stretch of forestland transform into shrubland.2. When analyzed county-by-county, great changes have taken place in XingShan country's construction land and reservoir, mainly because of the construction of the new county and the reservoir. And the dynamic degree is bigger than the other three counties. The land for construction in ZiGui country has also changed greatly for the Three Gorges Dam has great influence on the land use structure in this area.3. Through the analysis of land use situation in this area, the whole area's land use is in developing stage except ZiGui country, which is in adjusting stage. This also proves that the Three Gorges Project has greater influence on ZiGui country.4. When analyzing the landscape pattern of the whole area, we find an increase in diversity index and a decrease in dominance degree, which illuminates the proportional difference among the landscape types has decreased constantly and is expressed by the obvious diminishment of the dominant status of cultivate land and woodland. The decreasing equality index, increasing evenness degree of landscape type distribution and increasing fragmentation degree also illuminate that every...