Land use/land cover change in Yellow River Delta, China during fast development period

Abstract

Terrestrial eco-system in coastal zones is unstable and land-use and Land-cover of its land resource are crucial for its sustainability. Therefore it is necessary to understand distribution of land use/cover changes in those tender areas. This paper was to analyze changes of land use/cover in Yellow River Delta in China during recent ten years, which was its fast development period, by remote sensing monitoring. Two Landsat TM images in October of 1995 and 2004 were processed using ERDAS software and supervised classification method in study for the land use and land cover of those two years. The two land use/cover maps were overlaid to discover the changes. It was showed that lots of land use/cover changes in the Yellow River Delta had taken place in past ten years. Because abundant sand that carried by river water filled up at estuary of the Yellow River, new land increased fleetly. The rates that foreshore were turned into fishery land was high for aquaculture with salt water had been developed quickly. Another important effect of human activity was that part of waste land and grassland had been cultivated for crops. With industry and economy development, land for urbanization had been outspreaded. Although fast exploitation had been carried out in Yellow River Delta going though those years, some human activities on land use were inharmonious for sustainable development of land resource in this area. This must be pay attention to by local government and people.