Land Spatial Patterns Research Articles

Projections of Future Land Use in Bangladesh under the Background of Baseline, Ecological Protection and Economic Development

Land is one of the important input resources in a highly populous and land-scarce country such as Bangladesh. When different factors change (such as, geophysical, proximity, socioeconomic and climatic), there are dramatic changes in the spatial pattern of land uses. Thus, shedding light on the dynamics of land use and land cover changes has great importance for finding the changing pattern of land use in Bangladesh. In the present study, we predicted the land use and land cover changes from 2010 to 2030 under baseline, ecological protection priority and economic growth scenarios in Bangladesh. On this basis, we applied a previously developed Dynamics of Land Systems (DLS) model to simulate the changes in land uses according to the driving mechanisms. The findings indicate that cultivated land declines and built-up area expansion is common under all three scenarios. However, the future land use demand shows differences under different scenarios. The results under the ecological protection priority scenario shows that forest area and grassland will increase more, while under economic growth scenario, built-up area will expand dramatically in the future. The present research results furnish meaningful decision-making information for planners to conserve and/or exploit land resources in Bangladesh in a more sustainable manner.

Spatially differentiated trends in urbanization, agricultural land abandonment and reclamation, and woodland recovery in Northern China.

Uncovering magnitude, trend, and spatial pattern of land cover/land use changes (LCLUC) is crucial for understanding mechanisms of LCLUC and assisting land use planning and conservation. China has been undergoing unprecedented economic growth, massive rural-to-urban migration, and large-scale policy-driven ecological restoration, and therefore encountering enormous LCLUC in recent decades. However, comprehensive understandings of spatiotemporal LCLUC dynamics and underlying mechanisms are still lacking. Based on classification of annual LCLU maps from MODIS satellite imagery, we proposed a land change detection method to capture significant land change hotspots over Northern China during 2001–2013, and further analyzed temporal trends and spatial patterns of LCLUC. We found rapid decline of agricultural land near urban was predominantly caused by urban expansion. The process was especially strong in North China Plain with 14,057 km2 of urban gain and −21,017 km2 of agricultural land loss. To offset the loss of agricultural land, Northeast China Plain and Xinjiang were reclaimed. Substantial recovery of forests (49,908 km2) and closed shrubland (60,854 km2) occurred in mountainous regions due to abandoned infertile farmland, secondary succession, and governmental conservation policies. The spatial patterns and trends of LCLUC in Northern China provide information to support effective environmental policies towards sustainable development.

Integrating Spatial and Attribute Characteristics of Extended Voronoi Diagrams in Spatial Patterning Research: A Case Study of Wuhan City in China

Rapid urbanization has caused numerous problems, and the urban spatial structure has been a hot topic in sustainable development management. Urban spatial structure is affected by a series of factors. Thus, the research model should synthetically consider the spatial and non-spatial relationship of every element. Here, we propose an extended Voronoi diagram for exploring the urban land spatial pattern. In essence, we first used a principal component analysis method to construct attribute evaluation indicators and obtained the attribute distance for each indicator. Second, we integrated spatial and attribute distances to extend the comparison distance for Voronoi diagrams, and then, we constructed the Voronoi aggregative homogeneous map of the study area. Finally, we make a spatial autocorrelation analysis by using GeoDA and SPSS software. Results show that: (1) the residential land cover aggregation is not significant, but spatial diffusion is obvious; (2) the commercial land cover aggregation is considerable; and (3) the spatial agglomeration degree of the industrial land cover is increased and mainly located in urban fringes. According to the neo-Marxist theory, we briefly analyzed the driving forces for shaping the urban spatial structure. To summarize, our approach yields important insights into the urban spatial structure characterized by attribute similarity with geospatial proximity, which contributes to a better understanding of the urban growth mechanism. In addition, it explicitly identifies ongoing urban transformations, potentially supporting the planning for sustainable urban land use and protection.

Scenario Analysis for Water Resources in Response to Land Use Change in the Middle and Upper Reaches of the Heihe River Basin

Water availability is at the core of sustainable socioeconomic development and ecological conservation along with global climate and land use changes, especially in the areas that experience water problems. This study investigated the impacts of land use change on surface runoff and water yield with scenario-based land use change in the upper and middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin, the second largest inland river basin in the arid region of northwestern China. Firstly, three land use structure scenarios were established, with different water utilization ratio levels (low-level, middle-level and high-level water utilization ratios). Then the spatial pattern of land uses was simulated with the Dynamic of Land System (DLS). Thereafter, the simulated land use data were used as the input data to drive the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, keeping other input data unchanged to isolate the land use change impacts on surface runoff and water yield. The results showed that the forestland and grassland will expand along with the increase in water utilization ratio. The quick-response surface runoff would decrease significantly due to forest and grassland expansion, which may cause an overall decreasing trend of the water yield. This indicated the unreasonable allocation of water resources may exert negative impacts on the water yield even if the water utilization ratio is increased; therefore, water resources should be reasonably allocated for different land use demand, which is critical for sustainable development. The results of this study will be informative to decision makers for sustainable water resource and land management when facing land use change and an increasing demand for water resources in the Heihe River Basin.

Urban land market and land-use changes in post-reform China: A case study of Beijing

China launched an ambitious urban land-use reform to improve land-use efficiency, raise funds for infrastructure construction, and facilitate foreign investment in the late 1980s. Few studies have systematically evaluated the effects of the market mechanisms on land-use changes in Chinese cities. This paper takes the city of Beijing as a case study to quantify the magnitude of land-use changes and model it in relation to spatial and market drivers through time and across the metropolitan region. The analysis uses unique district-level land survey data from 1992, 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2008, as well as land granting records. Analysis reveals that, since the urban land market was established in 1992, the spatial pattern of land uses has changed dramatically in Beijing, land price has exerted a significantly influence on land-use conversion, and the municipal recognition of an open market for land assets has set the spatial–temporal pattern of land uses on a course that sharply differs from past trends in Beijing.

Projection of the Spatially Explicit Land Use/Cover Changes in China, 2010–2100

Land use/cover change (LUCC) is an important part of the global environmental change. This study predicted the future structure of land use/cover on the basis of the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) and an econometric model with the socioeconomic factors as the driving forces. The future spatial pattern of land use/cover in China was simulated with the Dynamics of Land System (DLS) under the Business as Usual scenario, Rapid Economic Growth scenario and Cooperate Environmental Sustainability scenario. The simulation results showed that the land use/land cover in China will change continually due to the human activities and climate change, and the spatial pattern of land use/cover will also change as time goes by. Besides, the spatial pattern of land cover in China under the three scenarios is consistent on the whole, but with some regional differences. Built-up area will increase rapidly under the three scenarios, while most land cover types will show a decreasing trend to different degrees under different scenarios. The simulation results can provide an underlying land surface data and reference to the methodology research on the prediction of LUCC.

Evaluation of potential of multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) for surface coal mining affected area mapping in different world forest ecosystems

Surface coal mining (SCM) has undergone dramatic changes in the last 30years. Large-scale SCM practices are at the center of an environmental and legal controversy that has spawned lawsuits and major environmental investigations. SCM techniques extract multiple coal seams by removing an area of many square kilometers and creating serious environmental problems. Information about mining activities location is essential for environmental applications, specifically the temporal and spatial patterns of land cover/land use change (LCLUC). Advancements in satellite imagery analysis provide possibilities to investigate new approaches for LCLUC detection caused by SCM globally. However there is no study that analyzes the changes produced for SCM at a global scale. Our work examines three areas of coal extraction in the world: Spain, United States of America (USA), and Australia. We used Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) applied to Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data to map SCM affected area. Endmember spectra of vegetation, soil, and impervious surfaces were collected from the Landsat TM image with the help of a fine resolution orthophotographs and the pixel purity index (PPI). Reference endmembers from an Airborne Visible-Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) spectral library were utilized as well. An unsupervised classifier was applied to the fraction images to obtain an estimation of active SCM affected area. Classification accuracy was reported using error matrixes and κ statistic using active SCM affected area perimeters digitized from fine resolution orthophotographs as reference data. In addition, we compared the accuracy of the MESMA based estimation to estimates using Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA), and a spectral index traditionally used as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) testing statistical significance using a Ζ-test of their κ statistics. Results showed a significant improvement in the accuracy of the SCM affected area using MESMA with an average increase of the κ statistic of 31%. We conclude that MESMA-based approach is effective in mapping SCM active affected area.

Spatiotemporal Pattern Analysis of Rapid Urban Expansion Using GIS and Remote Sensing

Rapidly growing urban areas tend to reveal distinctive spatial and temporal variations of land use/land cover in a locally urbanized environment. In this article, the author analyzes urban growth phenomena at a local scale by employing Geographic Information Systems, remotely sensed image data from 1984, 1994, and 2004, and landscape shape index. Since spatial patterns of land use/land cover changes in small urban areas are not fully examined by the current GIS-based modeling studies or simulation applications, the major objective of this research is to identify and examine the spatial and temporal dynamics of land use changes of urban growth at a local scale. Analytical results demonstrate that sizes, locations, and shapes of new developments are spatio-temporally associated with their landscape variations and major transportation arteries. The key findings from this study contribute to GIS-based urban growth modeling studies and urban planning practices for local communities.

Structure and spatial pattern of land uses patches in the Zagros Mountains region in the west of Iran

Karami A, Sefidi K, Feghhi J. 2014. Structure and spatial pattern of land uses patches in the Zagros Mountains region in the west of Iran. Biodiversitas 15: 53-59. Landscape ecology as a new interdisciplinary science, concepts, theories and methods provides for evaluation and management of land. Quantification of landscape patterns has key role in the interpretation and modeling of spatial and chronically variation of land uses. This study carried out in the Zagros vegetative region in the west of Iran to quantify structure and spatial pattern of land uses and forest fragmentation in the Zagros Mountains region. The mosaic analysis method was used for quantifying landscape metrics. Totally 2783 land use patches were recorded in the study area. The most of the patches were agricultural area and the lowest number of patches recorded for rivers. Diversity indices analysis showed agricultural land use has highest diversity in comparing with other land uses. Rangeland use has distributed in the central region of the study area. Despite the high density agriculture and rangeland a lot of potentials there are two conversions this land as a sustainable ecosystem (forests, agriculture integrated, and rangelands), that can be by applying as an appropriate method in management and control policies and converting artificial land uses to the natural or semi natural land uses according to the advantages of such land uses in view of sustainability. We conclude that fragmentation of natural land uses such forest and rangelands should be reducing and maintain large patches of natural vegetation to sustainable land management in this region.