Scenario-Based Analysis of Land Use Competition and Sustainable Land Development in Zhangye of the Heihe River Basin, China

Yuping Bai, Zhe Zhao, Chuyao Weng, Wenxuan Wang and Yecui Hu
Additional contact information
Yuping Bai: School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China
Zhe Zhao: School of Economics, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110136, China
Chuyao Weng: School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China
Wenxuan Wang: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Yecui Hu: School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 19, 1-20

Abstract: Rapid economic growth has a significant impact on land use change, which would threaten the natural ecology. Zhangye city of the Heihe River Basin, China is an ecologically vulnerable region where land use changes significantly due to socioeconomic development and population increases. The study employed a computable general equilibrium of land use change (CGELUC) model to simulate land use change and then used a dynamic land system (DLS) model to spatialize land use change during 2015–2030 under three development scenarios in Zhangye city. The three development scenarios are the baseline scenario (BAU), the resource consumption scenario (RCS) and the green development scenario (GDS). We found that economic growth would lead to land demand increases in high value-added industries and decreases in low value-added industries. The cultivated land would decrease while the built-up area would increase. By 2030, the cultivated land will decrease by 8.16%, 10.89% and 4.16%, respectively, under BAU, RCS and GDS, while the built-up area will increase by 8.61%, 10.39% and 4.75%, respectively. The expansion of built-up area under RCS presents spatial characteristics of centralized distribution, while spatial characteristics of uniform discrete distributions are presented under GDS. The expansion of ecological land under GDS would be considerable, especially in the north of Sunan County and Gaotai County, and around the natural reserve of Ganzhou County. This paper provides a scientific reference for coordinating economic development and ecological protection in the rapidly developing urbanized areas in western China.

Keywords: land use competition; scenario simulation; CGELUC model; DLS model; Zhangye city (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/19/10501/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/19/10501/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:19:p:10501-:d:650895

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().