Quantifying and Analyzing the Responses of Habitat Quality to Land Use Change in Guangdong Province, China over the Past 40 Years

Hanwen Zhang and Yanqing Lang
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Hanwen Zhang: College of Landscape and Art, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang 330045, China
Yanqing Lang: Key Laboratory for Urban Habitat Environmental Science and Technology, School of Environment and Energy, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 6, 1-23

Abstract: Guangdong Province is an important ecological barrier and the primary pillar of economic development in China. Driven by high-speed urbanization and industrialization, unreasonable land use change in Guangdong Province has exacerbated habitat degradation and loss, seriously affecting habitat quality. Thus, taking Guangdong Province as the study area, this paper quantifies the response of habitat quality on land use change using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model and constructs a contribution index (CI). The following conclusions can be drawn from the results: (1) The habitat quality exhibits a spatial distribution pattern of low quality in plain areas and high quality in hilly and mountainous areas. (2) The annual average habitat quality gradually decreases from 1980 to 2020, with a total decrease of 0.0351 and a reduction rate of 4.83%; (3) The impact of land use change on habitat quality is mainly negative, and the habitat quality mainly decreases by the conversion of forest land to orchards, paddy field to urban land, and forest land to dry land, with CI values of −24.09, −11.67, and −8.04, respectively. Preventing the destruction of natural forests, increasing the diversity of plantation orchards, and rationalizing and mitigating the growth rate of construction land are key to maintaining and improving the habitat quality.

Keywords: land use change; habitat quality; habitat degradation; Guangdong Province (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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