Modelling scenarios of land use change in northern China in the next 50 years

Abstract

Modelling scenarios of land use change and their impacts in typical regions are helpful to investigate the mechanism between land use and ecological systems and process the land use allocation under the ecological security. A system dynamics (SD) model with the aim to modelling scenarios of land use change and assessing ecological impact in northern China in the next 50 years is developed here. The accuracy assessment with the historic data from 1990 to 2001 indicated the SD model is robust. After the different “what-if” scenarios controlled by GDP, population, market, and technology advancement were built, the different scenarios of land use change in northern China from 2000 to 2050 were simulated with their ecological impact assessed. The result suggested that such factors as GDP, population, market and technology have a strong relationship with land use structural change in northern China. It also indicated that such measures as strict controlling of population increase, importing some food to keep the supply-demand balance in the region, and improving agricultural technology will be the guarantee of regional sustainable development with fast economic growth and the obvious land use structural improvement at the same time.