An Analysis of Land-Use Change and Grassland Degradation from a Policy Perspective in Inner Mongolia, China, 1990–2015

Yunfeng Hu,Batu Nacun

doi:10.3390/su10114048

Abstract

Land-use and land-cover changes have important effects on ecology, human systems, the environment, and policy at both global and regional scales. Thus, they are closely related to human activities. The extraction of more details about land-use change and grassland degradation is necessary to achieve future sustainable development in Inner Mongolia. The current study presents the patterns and processes of land-use changes over space and time, while also analyzing grassland degradation that is based on an analysis of land-use changes using a transition matrix, the Markov chain model and Moran’s I index, and a combination of long-time-scale remote sensing data as the data source. The major results indicate the following. (1) In 1990–2015, 13% (123,445 km2) of the total study area, including eight land-use types, changed. Woodland increased the most and moderate grassland decreased the most. (2) Grassland degradation, which occupied 2.8% of the total area of Inner Mongolia, was the major land-use conversion process before 2000, while, after 2000, 8.7% of the total area was restored; however, grassland degradation may still be the major ecological issue in Inner Mongolia. (3) Environmental protection policies show a close relationship with land-use conversion.

Highlights

Global land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) has been reported to exert important effects on the environment at both global and regional scales [1,2,3]
It is caused by human activities which are linked with different land-use conversion processes, such as deforestation, agricultural land expansion, built-up land expansion, and vegetation degradation [11]
Grassland degradation refers to the struggle to grow grassland structure, grassland species, and grassland products that are caused by overgrazing, cultivated land reclamation, climate change, policy change, rapid conversion of land-use types and fuel and herbs for medicine, and destruction by rodents, etc. [15,74,75,76]

Summary

Introduction

Global land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) has been reported to exert important effects on the environment at both global and regional scales [1,2,3]. LUCC refers to changes in the biophysical attributes of the Earth’s surface and the application of these attributes for human purposes [4,5] It exerts significant effects on regional environments and ecosystems, even on climate change [6]. Many previous studies have shown that LUCC has close relationships with land degradation [4], biodiversity losses [7], climate change [8], natural hazards [9], and soil erosion [10], as well as threatening food security [11] Worldwide, it is caused by human activities which are linked with different land-use conversion processes, such as deforestation, agricultural land expansion, built-up land expansion, and vegetation degradation [11]. It is necessary to evaluate the history of LUCC to provide significant information for future decision-making and sustainable development [12,13]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion