Abstract
Human activities involving nature have various environmental impacts. The assessment of the spatial and temporal evolution of human activity intensity (HAI) and its driving forces is significant for determining the effects of human activities on regional ecological environments and regulating such activities. This research quantified the HAI of China, assessed its spatiotemporal characteristics, and analyzed its influencing factors based on the land use data and panel data of 31 provinces in mainland China. The results indicate that the HAI in China is increasing, with the average value increasing from 15.83% in 1980 to 20.04% in 2018, and the HAI was relatively serious in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta in this period. The spatial differences in the HAI in China show a pattern of being strong in the east and weak in the west, and the spatial center of gravity of China’s HAI has gradually moved west, changing from a central enhancement mode to a point-like “core” enhancement mode. The dominant factors affecting spatial differences in HAI are economic and industrial levels. Labor, population, and capital factors also strongly impact HAI, and energy consumption and pollution emissions have little impact. These results deepen the understanding of the underlying mechanism of the environmental impact of human activities and provide a scientific basis for land-use-related decision making and eco-environment construction.
Highlights
Human activity is a series of actions imposed on the ecosystem by human beings for their own development needs and is a relatively broad concept that includes humans’exploitation of land resources, use of natural resources, and environmental protection activities [1]
Where HAI is the value of human activity intensity; Sj is the area of equivalent construction land; Si is the area of the ith land use type in the study area; S is the total area of the study area; and n is the number of land use types; Ci is the coefficient of construction land equivalent converted by the ith land use type, which are time-invariant
The results indicate that the highest annual average HAI concentration in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region in the three major economic growth poles reached 32.18% in 2010, and the HAI situations in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region and Yangtze River Delta were the most serious
Summary
Exploitation of land resources, use of natural resources, and environmental protection activities [1] The impact of such human activity on ecosystems is best reflected by land use type. This impact is further reflected in the industrialization and urbanization of each country. An increasing number of studies confirm that continued urbanization and industrialization mean that human demand for land resources is increasing [3,4]. In this context, the increasing ability of humans to transform nature has brought enormous pressure to the ecosystem, making the originally fragile ecological environment deteriorate continuously [5,6]. If human activities are not effectively controlled, there will be a serious threat to global ecological
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