Landscape ecological effect analysis of land use change in Datong City using remote sensing

Abstract

By using a series of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite data, land use change and its landscape ecological effect are analyzed quantitatively in Datong City, Shanxi Province of China. After correlative data processing and interpreting, land use information is extracted in 1988, 1995, 2000 and 2005. Then, the paper mainly focuses on the spatio-temporal analysis of land use change and its landscape ecological influence in study area. Some representative indices are chosen for analysis such as patch density, edge density, shape index, diversity index and so on. The results of land use change information show that with time varying, the area of all the six land use types had been changing all the time and the size of change area is not the same during dissimilar periods. Both decreasing and increasing exit. And the changes in 1988–2000 period were much more drastic than the period from 2000 to 2005. The calculating outcomes of the landscape ecological indices effectively reflect the changes of landscape ecological structure and heterogeneity both at the class and landscape levels. All these analysis and ecological effect index values show land use change has great impact upon the landscape ecological environment and its stabilization in study region. And the landscape ecological effects and problems indicated meanwhile include habitat quality declining, edge effect problem, land degradation, landscape elements simplification and the like. Therefore, reasonable and effective land utilization measures have to be taken or adjusted to improve the landscape ecological environment conditions.