Study On The Changes Of The Land Utilization In Eastern Qinghai Province As Well As The Driving Force

In recent years, with the accelerating urbanization process in China, people are facing many problems in the development of the land resources. Nowadays, how to reasonably utilize the limited land resources to achieve regional sustainable development has become a major issue for many scholars. Funded by the tutor’s soft scientific project of Qinghai Science and Technology Department named Study on the Bearing Capacity of the Urban Agglomerations in Eastern Qinghai Province,this paper studied the eastern region of Qinghai province and conducted supervised classification for the landsat remote-sensing images of the land utilization there in2000, 2005 and 2013 to collect the classified data on land utilization with Arcgis,ENVI and Erdas. Based on the data, this paper studied the change rule of the land utilization in the eastern Qinghai province during 2000 to 2013 from the aspects of the amount of the land, land utilization extent, utilization structure and regional differences, and then made a quantitative and qualitative analysis on the driving forces causing the changes of land utilization. Finally it concluded the problems in all kinds of land utilization in eastern Qinghai Province and proposed the corresponding suggestions. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1) From 2000 to 2013, grassland, forest land and cultivated land were the major land-use types in the urban agglomerations in eastern Qinghai Province. The major change tendency for the land use is that the area of grassland, cultivated land and unutilized land is decreasing while the area of the construction land, forest land and water is increasing. From 2000 to 2005, the area of forestry land increased mostly, reaching to 6.61%. From 2005 to 2013, the area of construction land increased mostly, reaching to 55.3%. Generally, the land utilization in the study area has the greast change in its proportion and scale.(2) The further analysis on conversion of all kinds of land-use types in the eastern Qinghai province has shown that from 2000 to 2013, the cultivated land was mainly converted to construction land and forestry land. The unutilized land was converted to forestry land and cultivated land. The converted construction land held the largest area, amounting to 25878.22 hm2 and that of converted cultivated land reaching to 107263.96 hm2. It showed that the construction land took up thecultivated land. The comprehensive land use index in eastern Qinghai Province increased continuously, rising by 27.16 from 195.54 in 2000 to 222.27 in 2013. The change rate of land utilization exceeded 0, indicating the land utilization in the study area was in its development period, the land utilization degree was in a medium level and the unutilized land was of a certain development potential.(3)Since the urban agglomerations are located in Huangshui Valley, topographic and geomorphic features as well as water resources have become the basic restrictive factors for the agglomeration’s expansion. The population growth and economic development provide the internal impetus to the development of the urban agglomerations. Besides, the policies and systems direct the development of the city agglomerations and the structure of all kinds of land utilization. Through further quantitative analysis with principal component analysis model(PCA model), it shows that the urbanization development level and economic development level are the driving factor for the changes of land utilization in the study area.(4) During the process of the sustainable land utilization in eastern Qinghai Province,there mainly exist such problems as salient contradiction between the supply and demand of construction land and insufficient land reserve resources. The said problems can be solved through preparing reasonable and scientific land utilization planning and development planning, restricting land utilization structure and projecting industrial layout.