Landscape dynamics and driving factors in Da’an County of Jilin Province in Northeast China during 1956–2000

The landscape pattern of Da’an County, Northeast China has undergone significant changes since the 1950s as a result of climatic change and human activities. The aim of this paper is to quantitatively study landscape pattern and its spatial dynamics of Da’an County at the landscape level over the ne...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Chinese geographical science 2008-06, Vol.18 (2), p.137-145
Main Authors: Wang, Zongming, Zhang, Yubo, Zhang, Bai, Song, Kaishan, Guo, Zhixing, Liu, Dianwei, Li, Fang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Anthropogenic factors
Climate change
Earth and Environmental Science
Geography
Grasslands
Heterogeneity
Land use
Landscape ecology
Topographic mapping
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The landscape pattern of Da’an County, Northeast China has undergone significant changes since the 1950s as a result of climatic change and human activities. The aim of this paper is to quantitatively study landscape pattern and its spatial dynamics of Da’an County at the landscape level over the nearly 50-year span. Patch dynamics were examined according to land use and land cover change processes built from a series of images, as well as topographic maps, and temporal patterns built from landscape pattern metrics. The transition matrix of landscape patch types and changes of various landscape metrics were applied. The results showed that, from 1956 to 2000, the landscape within the study area had undertaken a complicated evolution in landscape structure and composition. The outstanding characteristic is that saline-alkali land increased and grassland decreased. As some smaller patches amalgamated, the heterogeneity of patch decreased. All those changes were the synthetic result of both climatic and anthropogenic influences, but the predominant factor was different in different parts. In the southern part of the study area, the landscape pattern changes resulted from the modification of climate obviously, while in the northern part, the landscape pattern changes were mainly caused by human activities, such as the conversion between farmland and saline-alkali land. This phenomenon showed that human activities played more important role in the north than in the south of Da’an County.
ISSN:1002-0063
1993-064X
DOI:10.1007/s11769-008-0137-y