Land Use Dynamics and Optimization from 2000 to 2020 in East Guangdong Province, China

Yong Lai,Wenjun Lin,Guangqing Huang,Jixin Lyu,Shaotao Lin,Shengzhong Chen

doi:10.3390/su13063473

Abstract

Anthropogenic land-use change is one of the main drivers of global environmental change. China has been on a fast track of land-use change since the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978. In view of the situation, this study aims to optimize land use and provide a way to effectively coordinate the development and ecological protection in China. We took East Guangdong (EGD), an underdeveloped but populous region, as a case study. We used land-use changes indexes to demonstrate the land-use dynamics in EGD from 2000 to 2020, then identified the hot spots for fast-growing areas of built-up land and simulated land use in 2030 using the future land-use simulation (FLUS) model. The results indicated that the cropland and the built-up land changed in a large proportion during the study period. Then we established the ecological security pattern (ESP) according to the minimal cumulative resistance model (MCRM) based on the natural and socioeconomic factors. Corridors, buffer zones, and the key nodes were extracted by the MCRM to maintain landscape connectivity and key ecological processes of the study area. Moreover, the study showed the way to identify the conflict zones between future built-up land expansion with the corridors and buffer zones, which will be critical areas of consideration for future land-use management. Finally, some relevant policy recommendations are proposed based on the research result.

Highlights

Humans are simultaneously confronting environmental problems on multiple fronts, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, water pollution, and loss of ecosystem services, and each of these is caused either directly or indirectly by land-use changes [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The ecological sources were obtained from the Chaozhou and Shantou city master plans
Using the land-use land cover products from GlobeLand30, we analyzed the land-use dynamics of the East Guangdong (EGD), including the cities of Chaozhou and Shantou, from 2000 to 2020

Summary

Introduction

Humans are simultaneously confronting environmental problems on multiple fronts, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, water pollution, and loss of ecosystem services, and each of these is caused either directly or indirectly by land-use changes [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The expansion of built-up land in urban and rural areas, agricultural intensification, energy, and material consumption are the primary drivers of land-use change. Most studies have focused on metropolitan areas [8,9,10], and other environmental targets of interest, such as the tropics [11,12], karsts [13], coastal zones [14], ecosystem services [5,15], climate change [16,17,18], etc. Rapid urban and rural expansion plays an important role in China’s land-use change over the past

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion