Simulation of Structural Change in Land Use in Jiangxi Province Using the CGELUC Model

Abstract

Structural change in regional land use is both a cause and component of regional environmental change and a response to regional environmental change, and has therefore been a concern of the academic community. Structural changes in regional land use driven by socioeconomic factors have been a particular focus of research (Greenberg et al., 1998; Seto et al., 2000; Weinstoerffer and Girardin, 2000; Krausmann et al., 2003; Yue et al., 2005). Socioeconomic factors come from different socioeconomic sectors, and their impacts on structural changes in regional land use intertwine. Existing models and methods such as conversion of land use and its effects at small regional extent (CLUE-S) (Verburg et al., 2002), cellular automata (Stevens and Dragicevic, 2007; Dawn et al., 2008), and ABM (Fontaine and Rounsevell, 2009; Polhill, 2009) have provided a good foundation for the study of regional environmental change. However, there is no research that explores structural change in regional land use with the interactive and joint effects of the various socioeconomic factors from a whole system perspective (Haberl et al., 2001; Liu et al., 2002; Kerr et al., 2003; Haberl et al., 2003; Seto and Kaufmann, 2003).