Research On Land Use/Land Cover Changes In Yinchuan City Based On RS And GIS

Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC) is a major cause for global environmental change. Case study in typical regions is an important way to understand the global environmental changes and sustainable development research. Under the background of rapid urbanization, land use changes research plays an important role in the land use and development reasonably.After reviewing land use change (LUCC) research progresses, the Yinchuan, the capital city of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, was subject to pilot to carry out the case study. The Landsat TMimages in the 1989,2000,2008 and 2010 were selected and visual interpreting was applied to setup the land use dataset. In the meantimes, the economic statistics and other information were used to study the tempo-spatial characteristics and the driving factors of land use changes. Finally, the LCM module in IDRISI software was applied to predict the future change of land use. The main conclusions are as follows:(1)In past 20 years, landuse in Yinchuan has changed obviously which could be found in the significant increases in cropland and built-up land and yet in the decreases in the waterbody, woodland, non-utilited land and grassland. The riversbed has kept stabel comparatively.(2) From 1989 to 2010, the comprehensive land-use index in Yinchuan showing an upward trend was lesser that 300 (reference to the upper limit of 400) and according to the rates and quantities of land use index, developing phase was observed in landuse during study period.(3) By PCA (the principal component analysis) of economic dataset, the driving forces of landuse changes in Yinchuan were identified:â‘ the factors dominating in cropland changes included economic development, urbanization and industrialization, population growth, the agriculture technology application;â‘¡nstituted in agri-techniques extension, infrastructure investment, as well as other factor mentioned above, would drive urban sprawl;â‘¢the preference policies and city planning also play an important roal.(4) By driving LCM mode in IDRISI software, landuse in 2010 was simulated based on 2000-2008 landuse transformation matrix and the Kappa coefficient between simulated and interpreted landuse map reaches 0.90. The accuracy was accepted. Also, the same matrix was employed and the baseline was set to 2010 to predict landuse in 2015 and 2020 in Yinchuan. The results of projection showed in the coming ten years, the build-up land would increase gradually, the area of cropland keep stable and non-utilited land shrink significantly.