Land Use and Land Cover Change in the Qinghai Lake Region of the Tibetan Plateau and Its Impact on Ecosystem Services

Jian Gong, Jingye Li, Jianxin Yang, Shicheng Li and Wenwu Tang
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Jian Gong: Department of Land Resource Management, School of Public Administration, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 388 Lumo Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China
Jingye Li: Department of Land Resource Management, School of Public Administration, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 388 Lumo Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China
Jianxin Yang: Department of Land Resource Management, School of Public Administration, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 388 Lumo Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China
Shicheng Li: Department of Land Resource Management, School of Public Administration, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 388 Lumo Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China
Wenwu Tang: Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC 28223, USA

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-21

Abstract: Exploration of land use and land cover change (LULCC) and its impacts on ecosystem services in Tibetan plateau is valuable for landscape and environmental conservation. In this study, we conduct spatial analysis on empirical land use and land cover data in the Qinghai Lake region for 1990, 2000, and 2010 and simulate land cover patterns for 2020. We then evaluate the impacts of LULCC on ecosystem service value (ESV), and analyze the sensitivity of ESV to LULCC to identify the ecologically sensitive area. Our results indicate that, from 1990 to 2010, the area of forest and grassland increased while the area of unused land decreased. Simulation results suggest that the area of grassland and forest will continue to increase and the area of cropland and unused land will decrease for 2010–2020. The ESV in the study area increased from 694.50 billion Yuan in 1990 to 714.28 billion Yuan in 2000, and to 696.72 billion Yuan in 2020. Hydrology regulation and waste treatment are the top two ecosystem services in this region. The towns surrounding the Qinghai Lake have high ESVs, especially in the north of the Qinghai Lake. The towns with high ESV sensitivity to LULCC are located in the northwest, while the towns in the north of the Qinghai Lake experienced substantial increase in sensitivity index from 2000–2010 to 2010–2020, especially for three regulation services and aesthetic landscape provision services.

Keywords: land use and land cover change; ecosystem service; Markov-Cellular Automata; value assessment; sensitive analysis; Tibetan Plateau (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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