Sustainable Land-Use Allocation Model at a Watershed Level under Uncertainty.

Abstract

Land-use allocation models can effectively support sustainable land use. A large number of studies solve the problems of land-use planning by constructing models, such as mathematical models and spatial analysis models. However, these models fail to fully and comprehensively consider three uncertain factors of land-use systems: randomness, interval and fuzziness. 33Therefore, through the study of the watershed land-use system, this paper develops a land-use allocation model considering the regional land–society–economy–environment system under uncertain conditions. On the basis of this model, an interval fuzzy two-stage random land-use allocation model (IFTSP-LUAM) combining social, economic and ecological factors is proposed to provide sustainable development strategies at the basin level. In addition, the proposed IFTSP-LUAM takes into account the above three uncertainties and multistage, multiobjective, dynamic, systematic and complex characteristics of typical land-use planning systems. The results showed that the model considers more socioeconomic and ecological factors and can effectively reflect the quantitative relationship between the increase in economic benefits and the decrease in environmental costs of a land-use system. The model was applied to land-use planning of Nansihu River Basin in Shandong Province. The results provided a series of suitable land-use patterns and environmental emission scenarios under uncertain conditions, which can help the watershed environmental protection bureau and watershed land-use decision-makers to formulate appropriate land-use policies, so as to balance social and economic development and ecological protection. The simulation results can provide support for an in-depth analysis of land-use patterns and the trade-off between economic development and ecological environment protection.