Abstract
Wuhan, the central city in the middle reach of the Yangtze River of China, is famous for its lake resources. However, the city’s lake area decreased by 37.4% from 1991 to 2005. This study aims to analyze the relationships between lake area reduction and lakefront land use changes in Wuhan. In this paper, the connections between the spatial changes of lake areal extent and land use changes in the lakefront were established with mathematical models such as Moran’s I and spatial analysis models such as transition matrix. Regarding the impacts of lakefront land use changes on lake area in the urban and suburban districts of Wuhan City, it can be concluded that: (1) the loss rate of lake area would be increased if the proportions of lakefront land use changes transformed into developed or agricultural land from other land use categories became higher; (2) the higher spatial autocorrelation of lakefront land use classifications (Moran’s I > 0.25) could be an indicator for the loss rate of lake area in urban district of the city; and (3) the vector sum of lakefront land use changes was related to the displacement of lake center.
Highlights
The ρ can reflect how the loss rate of lake area is related to the increase of the land use change
The results suggested that: (1) both in urban and suburban districts of Wuhan, human activities such as building and farming could cause reduction of lake area and would be a threat to the lake ecosystem of the city; (2) if land use type did not change (e.g., ), they would hardly contribute to the loss rate of lake area in the city
This paper quantitatively analyzed the impacts of lakefront land use changes on lake area in Wuhan, China
Summary
Urban lakes are more vulnerable to urbanization and human activities than other natural lakes These impacts on urban lakes are mainly reflected in problems such as lake area decreasing and water pollution [8,9,10]. Remotely sensed images have been widely used to extract the lake surface [18] so that changes in lake area could be acquired from the images in different periods. In terms of land resources, human activities or urban development could be represented by land use and land cover change (LUCC). Some researchers have assessed the influences of land use changes on climate and analyzed the environmental problems caused by human activities, and optimized the spatial allocation of resources [25,26,27]
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