Clustering Coastal Land Use Sequence Patterns along the Sea–Land Direction: A Case Study in the Coastal Zone of Bohai Bay and the Yellow River Delta, China

Yu Zhang,Shuchang Luo,Zhi Ding,Junjue Zhang,Xuguang Tang,Fenzhen Su

doi:10.3390/rs11172024

Abstract

Specific knowledge about the characteristics of coastal land use along the sea–land direction helps to better understand the spatial heterogeneity of coastal land use, which could offer scientific support for rational land management and the sustainable development of the coastal zone. However, the traditional methods including buffering or the regional method are hard to extract detailed spatial structure and location correlations of coastal land use along the sea–land direction. Therefore, we developed a model, called sequence–based clustering of coastal land use pattern (SCCLUP), to mine the coastal land use sequence patterns (CLUSPs) along the sea–land direction. As a case study in the major coastal zone of Bohai Bay and the Yellow River Delta from 1990 to 2010, we found that: (1) The land use showed a sequential distribution along the sea–land direction. And the land use closed to shoreline and inland boundary had relative stable sequential location along the sea–land direction. However, the middle land uses had dynamic sequential locations that led to multiple CLUSPs; (2) due to the increasing percent of construction land, the artificial level of CLUSPs was continuously increasing and new CLUSPs tended to distribute around port areas. Different CLUSPs with similar land use sequential relationships tended to have similar land use structure along the sea–land direction; (3) the land uses sequential location along the sea–land direction revealed the actual distance of land use to the shoreline and had a tight correlation with environmental factors (salinity, water, and landform). The land use with large increasing and wide adaptivity (like construction land) had a large impact on the changes of CLUSPs in the study area. Therefore, strong control should be provided for the excessive expansion of land use like construction land to limit the over changes in land use pattern along the sea–land direction. Additionally, the spatial heterogeneity of land use along the sea–land direction should be considered to a better understanding of anthropic impacts on the coastal zone.

Highlights

The coastal zone, which plays a key role in the Earth system, is a unique place surrounded by the ocean, atmosphere, and earth [1,2,3]
In the end, based on the powerful ability of the clustering to mine effective information from complex data, we developed a model called sequence-based clustering of coastal land use pattern (SCCLUP) to mine the major coastal land use sequence patterns (CLUSPs) that indicated the sequential location relationship between land-use types along the sea–land direction
In the preprocessing of data, the coastal zone is sampled into regular transect lines perpendicular to the shoreline, and the land-use features on the transect lines are numbered sequentially to indicate the land use spatial location along the sea–land direction

Summary

Introduction

The coastal zone, which plays a key role in the Earth system, is a unique place surrounded by the ocean, atmosphere, and earth [1,2,3]. Affected by physiographic factors, biogenic factors, and physiochemical factors, coastal land use (landscape) shows a regular spatial distribution pattern with increasing distance from the sea [6,7,8]. Climate change and anthropic disturbances have large impacts on the coastal landscape. The land uses spatial pattern along the sea–land direction may be changed [16] and the uncertainty of the land use gradient becomes further worse with a regional difference and dynamic factors (climate change and anthropic disturbance). How to distinguish the regular land use spatial pattern along the sea–land direction is the key precondition for research on the coastal land use gradient and help to understand the impacts from anthropic disturbance on the land spatial pattern along the sea–land direction. Knowledge about the impacts from anthropic disturbance could offer scientific support for rational land management and the sustainable development of the coastal zone

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion