Changes of wetland landscape patterns in Dadu River catchment from 1985 to 2000, China

Abstract

Based on the interpretation and vector processing of remote sensing images in 1985 and 2000, the spatial changes of wetland landscape patterns in Dadu River catchment in the last two decades were studied using spatial analysis method. Supported by Apack software, the indices of wetland landscape pattern were calculated, and the information entropy (IE) was also introduced to show the changes of wetland landscape information. Results showed that wetland landscape in this region was characteristic of patch-corridor-matrix configuration and dominantly consisted of natural wetlands. Landscape patterns changed a little with low fragment and showed concentrated distribution with partial scattered distribution during the period from 1985 to 2000. The values of patch density and convergence index kept stable, and the values of diversity, evenness indices and IE showed a slight decrease, while dominance and fractal dimension indices were increased. All types of wetland landscapes had higher adjacency probabilities with grassland landscape in 1985 and 2000, and there was extremely weak hydrological link and large spatial gap among river, glacier, reservoir and pond wetlands due to low adjacency matrix values. Since their cumulative contribution exceeded 81% through the PCA analysis, the agriculture activities would be the main driving force to the landscape changes during the past 15 years.