Human Activities Introduced Degenerations of Wetlands (1975–2013) across the Sanjiang Plain North of the Wandashan Mountain, China

Jing Xie, Yeran Sun, Xiao Liu, Zhi Ding and Ming Lu
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Jing Xie: School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Yeran Sun: Department of Geography, College of Science, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK
Xiao Liu: School of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China
Zhi Ding: Chongqing Jinfo Mountain Karst Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, School of Geographical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
Ming Lu: Qian Xuesen Laboratory of Space Technology, Beijing 100094, China

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: Human-induced dramatic loss and fragmentation of wetlands need further understanding through historical backtracking analysis at a geographical landscape scale. In this study, we investigated time-series wetlands maps from 1975, 1983, 1989, 2000, 2006, and 2013 derived from Landsat images based on the object-oriented classification of wetlands across the Sanjiang Plain north of the Wandashan Mountains. The spatial and temporal changes in the wetlands that occurred at different time periods and the Euclidean distances between artificial land-use types and natural land-cover areas were evaluated for their impact. Our results showed that wetland was the dominant landscape in 1975; however, arable land became the main land coverage in 2013 owing to severe changes in agricultural development over the past decades. The closer to arable land, the greater the wetland loss during the entire investigated period; agriculture activities were the dominant driving force for the degradation of wetlands based on landscape changes; secondary was the rapid expansion in building land use (i.e., human settlement, transportation, and establishment of irrigation canals). More specifically, the rapid loss of wetland areas over 1975–2000 was mainly owing to extensive agricultural reclamation. The mitigated loss of wetland areas over 2000–2013 was because of the protection and restored implementation of wetlands under governmental policies. The wetlands of the study area suffered severe human disturbance, and our analysis may help explain the loss process of wetlands, but more effective management and administration is still needed to address the issues around the balance between agricultural production and wetland protection for further sustainable development.

Keywords: wetlands; human activities; land use land cover; object-oriented classification; Sanjiang Plain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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