Research On Land Cover Change And Driving Forces In Zhejiang Coastal Zone

As a special land cover the coastal zone becomes the hotspot in global change study for its unique geographical location and key role in the land-ocean interactions. Current research focus of LUCC has changed from the global scale to the regional scale, in order to explore the driving factors of LUCC through numerous researches on variant regions and different scales. As a typical example, Zhejiang coastal area possesses geographic consistency and socioeconomic consistency. Taking Zhejiang coastal zone as the research area, this paper analyzes the temporal-special change of its land cover from1900to2010, and identifies the influence degree by the geographic factors to the spatial distribution of the land cover. Meanwhile, the socio-economic driving factors are retrieved. This paper adopts various algorithms which derive results meaningful for our re-acknowledgement of the driving factors for the land cover change of this zone. The main contents and conclusions include:(1) The study of Zhejiang coastal land cover change between1990and2010. It is found that the land cover has changed significantly, mainly for "one increase and one decrease"-urban land increase and paddy field decrease. Tidal flat as a special land cover type in coastal zone reduced year by year.(2)The study of the spatio-temporal change in terms of land cover dynamic degree (LCDD), land development degree index (LDDI), structure index (SI), the gravity center model and transition matrix. It shows that the land cover dynamic degree of Zhejiang coastal zone gradually increases, while that of Hangzhou grows the fastest, and Jiaxing the slowest. The LDDI indicates that the development degree of Zhejiang coastal zone increases, which means a developing stage. Jiaxing shows the highest LDDI, while Hangzhou has the greatest change of LDDI. The land cover structure shows that the land cover randomness of Zhejiang coastal zone in2000is the highest and the structure is the worst, and the orderliness and constructive gradually increase for the following years. The single land cover type becomes more and more prominent. The study of the gravity center model shows that the urban-land’s gravity and the tidal flat gravity migrate to southeast, and accordingly, paddy fields migrate to the northwest. The land cover transition matrix shows that the main categories transitions are from paddy fields to urban land and from dry land to urban land. Transition type of the urban land is mainly"from others", not "to others".(3) The analysis of the influence of the physical geography factors to the spatial distribution of land cover. The result shows that the land cover types greatly influenced by the slope include tidal flat, urban land, waters and paddy fields. The land cover types greatly influenced by urban radiation, tidal flat, urban land and paddy fields. The land cover types greatly influenced by transportation convenience are urban land, paddy fields and dry land.(4) The analysis of the socio-economic driving factors to the land cover change in t terms of the grey correlation and canonical correlation. The study shows that the main socioeconomic drivers are the primary industry, the natural growth rate of population and the non-agriculture population.