Spatiotemporal Urban Land Use Changes in the Changzhutan Region of Hunan Province in China

The Changzhutan region in the north-central part of Hunan Province in China has experienced a rapid urbanization in the past few decades that has led to substantial changes in its environment. In 2007, the National Development and Reform Commission of China designated the metropolitan district of Changsha City, Zhuzhou City, and Xiangtan City of this region as the fourth National Demonstration Area where economic development should be implemented in harmony with resource-saving and environment-friendly land use practices. The research, focus of this article will be on quantifying the spatial pattern of urban land use change which not only can provide an assessments and predictions of future environmental effects, but also will serve as a scientific basis for the development of urban sustainability. This paper integrates historical Landsat TM imagery, geographical information system (GIS) and socioeconomic data to determine the spatiotemporal urban land use dynamics and conversion of land use in response to the rapid urbanization of a select group of cities in China from 1990 to 2007. The approach is based on Principle Component Analysis to determine and model the relationship between the socioeconomic factors and land use/cover change (LUCC) for identifying the driving forces. The results indicate that land cover of the Changzhutan region mainly consists of forestland and cropland which accounted for about 93% of the total land area. During the 1990-2007 study period, the urban areas and water bodies increased by 46,297 ha and 775 ha, respectively, while forestland, cropland, and grassland decreased appreciably by 22,580 ha, 21,808 ha, and 5618 ha, respectively. Moreover, the urban land area during the 2000-2007 period increased by five times as much as that during the 1990-2000 period. The land use dynamic degree of Changsha City is the largest one followed by that for Xiangtan and Zhuzhou Cities. During this study period, the land use comprehensive intensity index increased and followed the sequence Xiangtan > Changsha > Zhuzhou. The changes were attributed to economic development, population growth, infrastructure improvements and construction, and land use policies. To address the negative or eco-environmental deleterious effects of these changes, landscape ecology plan, population growth control, and the development of an ecological friendly agriculture were suggested.

Ecological Risk Assessment of Shan Xin Mining Area Based on Remote Sensing and Geography Information System Technology

In this paper, introducing new remote sensing and geographic information technology to solve the problem of data collection and analysis, this makes the study of ecological risk assessment very quick and accurate. Taking the Shan Xin mining area of the tin mine in Lengshuijiang of Hunan Province as the research object, using the remote sensing image data of three periods in 2005, 2010 and 2015, the remote sensing image is classified carefully and the landscape classification map of the mining area is obtained. The ecological risk index is introduced and the ecological risk values are sampled and interpolated on the ArcGIS platform. The ecological risk spatial distribution map based on the landscape pattern index was obtained. The ecological risk was divided into 5 levels by using the Jenks natural classification method, and each ecological risk grade area was counted. The research results show that: from year 2005 to year 2010, landscape ecological risk trend of the mining area is growing up;the trend rising area of landscape ecological risk is mainly in the southwest and northeast of the Shan Xin mining field;the area of higher and high ecological risk is increasing year by year;and the trend of dispersed development in space is obvious;the development trend of ecological risk in the mining area is rapidly increasing;in 2010 - 2015, the higher and high ecological risk area decrease slightly with the increasing of area of grassland and residential low vulnerability of landscape types;the ecological risk area showed a slow decreasing trend. The research results provide an objective reference for decision making of ecological environment governance.

Changes in Spatiotemporal Land Use Patterns in Selected Hydrogeomorphic Areas of China and the USA

Differences exist in land use/cover pattern and its change between the P. R. China and the USA. In order to describe those differences, land use changes in representative regions were quantitatively analyzed and compared. Xiamen City, Changzhutan region and Liupan Mountains regions were selected to represent three different hydrogeomorphic areas of eastern, central, and western China, respectively, while the Goodwin Creek Experimental Watershed (GCEW) located in the north-central part of Mississippi in the bluff hills just east of the Mississippi River floodplain was chosen in the USA. By integrating historical Landsat TM imagery and geographical information system data, the spatiotemporal land use dynamics and conversion of land use in China and the USA between 1980 and 2010 were explored and compared. Results indicated an urban sprawl in eastern and central China, which encroached upon large amount of cropland, forest land and grassland. On the other hand, western China reclaimed cropland from grassland, forest land, which led to severe soil erosion between 1990 and 2000. Goodwin Creek Watershed of the USA converted 73.3% of the lost cropland into forest land, pasture and idle land, which accounted for about 90% in 2010. Further, counter-urbanization occurs in the GCEW due to favorable eco-environment for living. Compared with the land dynamic degree of the GCEW, eastern China is greater than it;western China is smaller than it while central China is almost equal to it. And the land use intensity index of GCEW is smaller than that of China all these years. Eastern China advocated ecological civilization in 2007 to meet the serious challenges of sustainable development. Western China started the Return of Land from Farming to Forestry and Grassland Project in 2000. The Changzhutan region in central China is served as the resource-saving and environment-friendly community in 2007, which will be favorable for the sustainable land utilization and protection of ecology. From the eco-environmental view, China might use the experience of USA for future reference.

Hierarchical Merging &Generalization Method of Three-Dimension City Model Group Based on the Theory of Spatial Visual Cognition

In order to simplify the three-dimensional building group model, this paper proposes a clustering generalization method based on visual cognitive theory. The method uses road elements to roughly divide scenes, and then uses spatial cognitive elements such as direction, area, height and their topological constraints to classify them precisely, so as to make them conform to the urban morphological characteristics. Delaunay triangulation network and boundary tracking synthesis algorithm are used to merge and summarize the models, and the models are stored hierarchically. The proposed algorithm should be verified experimentally with a typical urban complex model. The experimental results show that the efficiency of the method used in this paper is at least 20% higher than that of previous one, and with the growth of test data, the higher efficiency is improved. The classification results conform to human cognitive habits, and the generalization levels of different models can be relatively unified by adaptive control of each threshold in the clustering generalization process.