Abstract
Monitoring land-use/land-cover change (LULCC) and exploring its mechanisms are important processes in the environmental management of a lake watershed. The purpose of this study was to examine the spatiotemporal pattern of LULCC by using multi landscape metrics in the Lake Dianchi watershed, which is located in the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau of Southwest China. Landsat images from the years 1974, 1988, 1998, and 2008 were analyzed using geographical information system (GIS) techniques. The results reveal that land-use/land-cover has changed greatly in the watershed since 1974. This change in land use structure was embodied in the rapid increase of developed areas with a relative change rate of up to 324.4%. The increase in developed areas mainly occurred in agricultural land, especially near the shores of Lake Dianchi. The spatial pattern and structure of the change was influenced by the urban sprawl of the city of Kunming. The urban sprawl took on the typical expansion mode of cyclic structures and a jigsaw pattern and expanded to the shore of Lake Dianchi. Agricultural land changed little with respect to the structure but changed greatly in the spatial pattern. The landscape in the watershed showed a trend of fragmentation with a complex boundary. The dynamics of land-use/land-cover in the watershed correlate with land-use policies and economic development in China.
Highlights
Surface water is an essential component of the natural environment
The accuracy is sufficient to meet the monitoring needs of the Land-use/landcover change (LULCC) in the Intuitively, Lake Dianchi is surrounded by agricultural lands in the alluvial plains which adjacent to the north, east, and south of Lake Dianchi
Forests and wild grasslands are primarily located in mountainous areas around the alluvial plains
Summary
Polluted surface water has had a strong impact on human health and quality of life [3]. Land-use/landcover change (LULCC) is a dominant stressor in the water quality, ecosystem, and environmental deterioration of a watershed [4,5]. Many scholars have quantitatively assessed the effects of LULCC on the water quality [6,7,8] and ecological environment [9,10,11] of watersheds with respect to surface runoff, land erosion, non-point source pollution, and sewage from urban areas [3,12,13] using remote sensing, geographical information systems (GIS), modeling, and sample analysis approaches.
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