Landscape Pattern Changes in the Xingkai Lake Area, Northeast China.

Xiaohui Liu,Guanglei Hou,Guihua Dong,Ming Jiang,Yuan Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph16203820

Abstract

Understanding landscape change is important for ecologically sustainable development. In this paper, we assessed the spatiotemporal variations of landscape pattern in the Xingkai Lake area using remote sensing data from 1982, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015. Landscape patterns of marshlands, paddy fields, dry farmlands, and their combinations were analyzed at class and landscape levels. We examined the stability of landscape types through principal component analysis based on class level indices for landscape types. The results indicated that marshland areas decreased significantly by 33.87% but paddy fields increased by 1.84 times from 1982 to 2015. The largest conversion of dry farmlands to paddy fields was 90.88 km2 during the period 2010–2015. In contrast, the largest conversion of paddy fields to dry farmlands was 86.03 km2 during the period 2000–2005. The difference in relative change revealed that dry farmlands had experienced a greater relative change than paddy fields since 2000. The interspersion and juxtaposition index decreased, while the number of patches grew. This showed that landscape fragmentation was increasing and the landscape pattern was becoming dispersed. Marshlands were more stable than paddy fields and dry farmlands across all time periods, except for the year 2005.

Highlights

The increasing exploitation of natural resources has led to an excessive depletion of resources and has changed the environment [1]
We aimed to analyze the transformation of marshlands into paddy fields or dry farmlands, or the relationships between paddy fields and dry farmlands along a time series in our study
Our analysis showed that the marshlands decreased by 33.87% and dry farmlands decreased by 64.72% from 1982 to 2015, but paddy fields increased by 1.84 times during this period (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

The increasing exploitation of natural resources has led to an excessive depletion of resources and has changed the environment [1]. This unfolding ecological crisis can directly affect landscape pattern changes [2]. The rapid transformation in land use from land development directly affects landscape patterns [3,4]. The interaction between land use change and landscape pattern change is a focus of environmental change research because of the rapid land transformation [5]. Wetland ecosystems have experienced the most rapid decline among different ecosystems in the world [8].

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion