Abstract
In general, specific indicators of landscape sustainability are missing. To spatially evaluate landscape sustainability and its change in a rural landscape, the authors combined ecological and social components to develop an indicator system and a model based on information entropy. Four types of information entropy, namely, landscape service capability, landscape service demand, landscape vulnerability and landscape adaptation, were calculated using year-based information entropy to analyze the spatial-temporal differentiation of a rural ecosystem. Combined with the landscape composition and configuration indicators, the spatial and temporal differentiation of landscape sustainability was analyzed, and the effect of landscape structure on landscape sustainability was explored. Based on survey data from Mizhi County, Shaanxi Province, China from 2009 to 2014, the following results were obtained: (1) An analysis of entropy change could be used to evaluate landscape sustainability. (2) The carrying capacity of the complex ecosystem in the study area increased during the study period. (3) If the effect of landscape structure is not considered, then the landscape sustainability of the study area might be overestimated. Additionally, it was pointed out that the analysis of landscape sustainability through Boltzmann entropy also provides a new way to test and verify the research results in the future.
Highlights
Landscape sustainability has become a research focus in recent years [1,2,3,4]
Shaanxi Province experienced the most reforestation of any province in China during the first decade of the 21st century, and Mizhi County ranked among the first of 174 counties to carry out the Grain for Green (GFG) program
By considering the change in the entropy of each subsystem, the landscape sustainability evaluation index system that was constructed in this paper provides an effective method for better understanding the evolution and sustainability of the complex ecosystem of the landscape in the study area, and analyses of landscape sustainability in similar areas were performed
Summary
Landscape sustainability has become a research focus in recent years [1,2,3,4]. A growing number of studies have addressed the development of indicators to assess landscape sustainability [6,7]. Specific indicators of landscape sustainability are lacking [8,9]. The researchers in this field, tend to use ecological indicators to discuss landscape sustainability and tend to overlook social indicators. Few studies have combined ecological and social indicators to analyze landscape sustainability [10,11]. The relevant studies cannot show the interaction among subsystems and the possible direction of the evolution of the landscape
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