Abstract
Land use/cover change (LUCC) is becoming one of the most important and interesting problems in the study of global environmental change. Identifying the spatiotemporal behavior and associated driving forces behind changes in land use is crucial for the regional sustainable utilization of land resources. In this study, we consider the four municipalities of China (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing) and compare their spatiotemporal changes in land use from 1990 to 2015 by employing intensity analysis and barycenter migration models. We then discuss their driving forces. The results show that the largest reduction and increase variations were mainly concentrated in arable and construction land, respectively. The decrement and increment were the largest in Shanghai, followed by Beijing and Tianjin, and the least in Chongqing. Furthermore, the results of the barycenter migration model indicate that in addition to Beijing, the migration distances of construction land were longer than those of arable land in three other cities. Moreover, the application of intensity analysis revealed that the rate of land use change was also the greatest in Shanghai and the slowest in Chongqing during the whole study period, with all of their arable land being mainly transformed into construction land. The driving force analysis results suggest that the spatial and temporal patterns of land use change were the results of the socio-economic development, national policies, and major events. In other words, where there was a high rate of economic and population growth, the intensity of land use change was relatively large.
Highlights
Land use/cover change (LUCC) has been recognized as an important part of global climate change and global environmental change research [1,2]
The areas of arable land, water, and construction land were larger in Shanghai, with water mainly distributed in the north of Shanghai and the construction land in the middle
It was clear that the construction land expanded and arable land decreased over the study period in Shanghai
Summary
Land use/cover change (LUCC) has been recognized as an important part of global climate change and global environmental change research [1,2]. As the most direct signal of the impact of human activities on the Earth’s surface and the natural ecosystem, it is the link between human socio-economic activities and ecological processes [3] This process is closely related to the terrestrial surface material cycle and life process, affecting biosphere–atmosphere interactions, biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, and the sustainable utilization of resources and the environment [4]. The International Geosphere–Biosphere Program (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) proposed a detailed LUCC research plan in 1995, which focused on land use/land cover dynamics research at regional and global scales [9]. The formulation of this plan established the direction for research into LUCC throughout the world. It plays an important role in the study of global climate change, the carbon cycle, food security, biodiversity, etc. [11,12,13]
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