Abstract
Regional land use transitions driven by the adaptive reconciliation of existing land use conflict with socioeconomic development can lead to positive economic effects as well as new land use conflict. Although research on land use transition has progressed considerably, limited studies have explored the spatiotemporal dynamic pattern of land use conflict during the land use transition period. Previous evaluation approaches on land use conflict that mainly focus on status or potential conflict lack conflict intensity evaluation during the land use transition process. A new spatially explicit evaluation framework of land use conflict that directly examines three aspects of conflict, namely, ecological and agricultural (EAC), agricultural and construction (ACC), and ecological and construction (ECC) land conflicts based on ecological quality and agricultural suitability, is proposed in this study. The spatiotemporal dynamic pattern and driving factors of land use conflict in the Yangtze River Economic Belt of China in the period of 2000–2018 are evaluated. The results indicated that comprehensive land use conflict (CLUC) intensity slightly decreased by 9.91% and its barycenter showed a trend toward the west during 2000–2018. ACC is the most drastic conflict among the three aspects of conflict. The mean intensity of ACC reduced remarkably by 38.26%, while EAC increased by 33.15% and ECC increased by 28.28% during the research periods. The barycenter of EAC moved toward the east while the barycenter of ACC and ECC moved toward the west. The changes in the intensity and spreading pattern of land use conflict indices demonstrated the changes in the pattern of territorial space development. Total population, population density, per capita GDP, number of mobile phone users, and road density were strong drivers that influenced the land use conflict of territorial space. Multiple policy recommendations including improving territorial space planning and governance ability, and improving land use efficiency, were proposed to manage and resolve the land use conflict of territorial space. The results and conclusions of this study will help improve future regional land use policies and reduce land use conflict.
Highlights
Land use transitions are largely driven by different land use types representing the benefits of different departments conflicting in space and will lead to a new balance of regional land use morphology patterns [16,17].On the other hand, land use transitions may trigger new land use conflicts during transformations between different land use types and allocation of land resources due to policy and institutional failures [14,18]
The ecological land is the largest region that accounts for more than 66% of the territorial area. This finding indicates the satisfactory environmental background of Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) that benefits from its suitable latitude and humid climate
Land use conflict is an important problem in land use transitions and territorial space development
Summary
Land use and land cover change (LUCC) is an important research topic that tackles the changing human–nature relation and a core project of IGBP (International Geosphere Biosphere Programme)and crossover research of IHDP LUCC and the trade-off between different land use types has formed serious land use conflicts represented by environmental damage, including habitat loss, biotic diversity decline, climate change, and soil degradation [4,7,8], as well as social problems, such as the vulnerability of places and people to climatic and economic or sociopolitical perturbations [9,10,11,12]. Exploring the spatiotemporal characteristics of land use conflicts is an important research topic to enhance the understanding of the human–nature relation and provide critical insights into the dynamics of land use transitions
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