Remote sensing evaluation of Chinese mainland's comprehensive natural resources carrying capacity and its spatial-temporal variation characteristics

Abstract

With the rapid economy development and population growth, China is facing a pressure on the high demand in natural resources. However, most of the natural resource carrying capacity (NRCC) studies considered only on a single natural element, and the data sources showed some limitations. The traditional assessment approach is difficult to provide a comprehensive level of natural resources rapidly for China. Therefore, this study aims to develop a multiple factors NRCC assessment framework by using both remote sensing (RS) satellite data and Geographic Information System (GIS) and to explain the distribution characteristics and spatial-temporal variation characteristics of NRCC from multiple perspectives. The impacts of natural and anthropogenic factors on NRCC in mainland China from 2003 to 2019 were analyzed. The results show that most of the provinces are on an upward trend in the NRCC changes and is significantly higher in the eastern part than in the western part of mainland China. The areas with rapid and significant changes are mainly distributed at the junction of Shaanxi and Shanxi. The overall coefficient of variation of the study area is 0.09, with stable changes, but the stability is worse in the unused land distribution area. The analysis of influencing factors showed that precipitation and temperature were positively correlated with NRCC. The positive correlation was stronger in the regions of bad NRCC, unused land, and grassland. The NRCC values decreased significantly with the increasing elevation. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between NRCC and human activity pressure from the provincial analysis. This study provides a relatively complete framework for regional natural resource evaluation, which is conducive to promoting sustainable development in mainland China and can effectively evaluate the results of natural resources conservation work and provide effective suggestions for the next step of restoration work.