Landscape Monitoring and Dynamic Evolution of Wetland Resources in Beijing

Abstract

It is very significant for urban development and urban wetland protection. Wetland, considered as the natural ecosystem and landscape style, has great resource potentiality and environmental function. For a long time, the change of wetland landscape pattern has been affected by human activity, and has changed the existing wetland function, and exerted influence on wetland environment. In this paper, the capital city of Beijing is for the study of wetland areas, and we used Markov Model to analysis the dynamic change and the trend evolution. Supported by RS and GIS technology, combined the achievements in previous researches and numerous field investigations, we used Landsat-TM images of 1978, 1974, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2005 as the information source. Several landscape indices were used to evaluate the changes of landscape pattern. The results showed that Beijing wetlands recourses degraded significantly in the past three decade, the area had dropped by 54.0%, from 68491.63 hm2 in 1978 to 31416.31 hm2 in 2005; The patches of wetlands tended to be irregular, and the degree of fragmentation was increasing, thus the wetlands would be easy to cause regression, and its function was difficult to exert; The transition probability matrices at two primary states (1996 and 2005) were established. Then, the development and the future tendency of wetland landscape patterns are simulated and forecasted with Markov process. Most of the natural wetlands areas would be increasing and urban area decreasing, which showed urbanization process has great impact on wetland landscape pattern.