Scenarios Simulation of Spatio-Temporal Land Use Changes for Exploring Sustainable Management Strategies

Yu Zhang, Pengcheng Wang, Tianwei Wang, Chongfa Cai, Zhaoxia Li and Mingjun Teng
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Yu Zhang: College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences/Hubei Engineering Technology Research Center for Forestry Information, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Pengcheng Wang: College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences/Hubei Engineering Technology Research Center for Forestry Information, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Tianwei Wang: College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Chongfa Cai: College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Zhaoxia Li: College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Mingjun Teng: College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences/Hubei Engineering Technology Research Center for Forestry Information, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-17

Abstract: Land use and land cover change have received considerable attention from global researchers in recent decades. The conflicts between different development strategies for land uses have become a problem that urgently needs to be solved, especially in those regions with a fragile ecological environment. The development of scenario simulations is essential in order to highlight possible alternative pathways for the future under the backgrounds of urbanization, economic growth and ecological protection. This study simulated land use changes for Tekes in 2020 with the Conversion of Land Use and its Effects at Small regional extent (CLUE-S) model under a ‘business as usual’ scenario, cropland protection scenario, ecological security scenario, and artificial modification scenario. The results indicated that the spatial patterns of the land use types were explained well by the environment variables, and the selected models had a satisfactory accuracy in this study. The requirements and the patterns were quite different owing to the variation of the major objectives of the four scenarios. In addition to the constraint rules of the land use transformation, the hot point for land use change was its spatial coherency. Areas near to an existing land use type were more likely to transform to that type than those farther away. The increased cropland and urban land were mainly located around the current cropland and urban land while forests and grassland were more likely to occur in places with flat terrain and good hydrological conditions. The results could contribute to better insight into the relationships between land use changes and their driving factors and provide a scientific basis for regional management strategies and sustainable land use development.

Keywords: scenario simulation; land use change; Tekes County; CLUE-S model; management strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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