Identifying drivers of landscape changes for ecological management of Tantoushan Island, China

Abstract

Coastal zones, including a large number of sea islands, have experienced profound and often lasting landscape changes over the past half century. Understanding the drivers and ecological effects of these changes is a prerequisite for large-scale integrated coastal zone management (ICZM). In this study, landscape patterns of Tantoushan Island, China, for 1966, 2004, and 2012 were produced through landscape identification and classification of multi-resource remote sensing KH-7 homochromatic, QuickBird multispectral, and WorldView-2 multispectral imageries, and contemporaneous historical data. Analysis of landscape changes and drivers has shown drastic changes from 1966 to 2012, caused by afforestation, changes in exploitation methods, human-induced fire and diseases, as well as natural succession. Here, a simple weighted sum of CN values representing the runoff potential of specific landscape types from the TR-55 runoff prediction model was calculated to reflect the runoff potentials of the three different periods. The results suggest a marked fluctuation in runoff potential of Tantoushan Island from 1966 to 2012, despite an afforestation program since 1949 to optimize the vegetation structure of the island. Measures such as ecological restoration of bare land and improvement of afforestation tree species should be adopted to improve the management of Tantoushan Island.