Modeling Land Use Changes and their Impacts on Non-Point Source Pollution in a Southeast China Coastal Watershed

Xin Zhang, Lin Zhou and Yuqi Liu
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Xin Zhang: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Lin Zhou: College of Remote Sensing Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, Hubei, China
Yuqi Liu: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: Changes in landscape patterns in a river basin play a crucial role in the change on load of non-point source pollution. The spatial distribution of various land use types affects the transmission of non-point source pollutants on the basis of source-sink theory in landscape ecology. Jiulong River basin in southeast of China was selected as the study area in this paper. Aiming to analyze the correlation between changing landscape patterns and load of non-point source pollution in this area, traditional landscape metrics and the improved location-weighted landscape contrast index based on the minimum hydrological response unit (HRULCI) were applied in this study, in combination with remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) technique. The results of the landscape metrics showed the enhanced fragmentation extent and the decreasing polymerization degree of the overall landscape in the watershed. High values of HRULCI were concentrated in cultivated land, while low HRULCI values mostly appeared in forestland, indicating that cultivated land substantially enhanced non-point source pollution, while forestland inhibited the pollution process.

Keywords: non-point source pollution; landscape pattern; geographic factors; HRULCI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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