Contrasting Trends of Forest Coverage between the Inland and Coastal Urban Groups of China over the Past Decades

China is building forest urban groups through reforestation and afforestation. However, the fast process of urbanization inevitably conflicts with multiple vegetated areas around cities. Hence, it is critical to evaluate the changes in regional vegetation cover and its spatial pattern due to complex...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2019-08, Vol.11 (16), p.4451
Main Authors: Zhu, Qingsong, Jin, Jiaxin, Wang, Pengxiang, Ji, Yingying, Xiao, Yuanyuan, Guo, Fengsheng, Deng, Changsheng, Qu, Lisha
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Afforestation
Agricultural land
Anthropogenic factors
Cities
Climate change
Coastal zone
Forest management
Forests
Grasslands
Human influences
Landscape
Landscape ecology
Reforestation
Regions
Remote sensing
Sustainability
Urban areas
Urbanization
Vegetation
Vegetation cover
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Summary:China is building forest urban groups through reforestation and afforestation. However, the fast process of urbanization inevitably conflicts with multiple vegetated areas around cities. Hence, it is critical to evaluate the changes in regional vegetation cover and its spatial pattern due to complex natural and anthropogenic factors. Nevertheless, systematic studies to quantify and compare the development of forest urban agglomerations were rarely reported. Based on a remote sensing landcover dataset from 1992 to 2015, this study investigated forest cover changes and the impacts on landscape pattern in several urban groups, and tried to explore their differences between the inland and coastal regions of China. The results showed that over the past 24 years, the forest coverage in the coastal urban agglomerations declined (103 km2/year) while it increased (26 km2/year) in the inland urban agglomerations. There was a certain conflict between forest and cropland for the coastal urban agglomerations where the forest area converted to cropland accounted for 61.9% of the total forest loss. The increase in forests coverage in inland urban agglomerations mainly came from grassland which nearly accounted for 66.47% of the total increase. The landscape diversity has also changed in areas where forests have changed significantly (e.g., Shanghai, Changzhi, and Jincheng).
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su11164451