Study On Land Use Change And Anthropogenic Mechanism In Henan Province, 1368-1953

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) has great influence on environmental evolution and sustainable economic development, which is an important part of global change and one of the main reasons for global climate change, and is affected by the interaction between physics and human factors at different time and space. Which has been a core project in the international global environmental change studies since 1990s, for the study on driving forces of LUCC can greatly help us to understand the essentials of land use change, and based on it, we can predict the developing trend of land use. Historical LUCC research as a part of LUCC, including data model and human driving forces. The research of LUCC on a regional scale is an important part of global LUCC research, which is a powerful approach to understanding the earth system and is necessary for deepening global change research. The outcomes of regional change research are great contributions to a better understanding of the Earth System as a whole, and the integrated experiment modeling and analysis are powerful tools for enhancing understanding of the earth system. Some key scientific issues in regional environmental change should be focused on.Detailed analysis on the spatial-temporal characteristics of land use intensity is not only the basis of the study on cultured land variation, but is also an important method for studying the variation processes of other land use types. China has abundant continuous historical documents with a large number of records describing LUCC information were undiscovered, which are highlighted proxy data for reconstruction of past LUCC, however, only recently, within the past 20 years, have large amounts of basic data been collected and exploited for the historical LUCC. Much effort has been put into reconstructing the historical LUCC over China using a variety of historical documents, especially data for all kinds land data reconstruction for the last 500 years, such as history books, local gazettes, archives of government, private works, and so on, thus making it possible to deepen the related research. Consequently, a lot of differences exist in the reconstructed land data time series when researchers use either the data from same sources or records from different documents. The main reason for the phenomenon is, that the impact of human factors on land statistics system is not very clear, which would, to some extent, restrict the rational development and utilization of land resources. Inconsiderate employment of the registered data as normal cultured statistics without correction will affect the reliability of the research and result in a deviation from the fact. This is because many researchers usually do not understand the character and function of the land data recorded in different types of documents. In fact, the source data available plays a key role in historical LUCC research. Although land data in historical document are classified into many categories, they have different characteristics and functions, so the quoted land data in related works are seldom right. To address this issue, it is necessary to conduct a detailed analysis of reconstructed land data series' using different historical documents and to discuss its different causes.This dissertation is based on the socio-economic data from 1368 to 1953, principal component analysis, the aspects of dynamic information gathering, and main driving forces and driving mechanism of the variations of LUCC in Henan Province. It discussed the historical document style, the value and meaning of land data in historical background, redescribed the actual changing trend and character of Chinese registered land, and analyzed the driving force of the policy relative to cultivated land and to cultivated land area change. According to the systematic data on land use that was analyzed, reverse deduction of the historical cultivated land area is relatively reliable, and found that the reconstructed land data series in the region has a completely consistent relative change range with land statistics data. So based on the proxy data derived from the historical documents, the centennial changes of spatial patterns of LUCC in Henan Province during the past 500 years are analyzed . Undoubtedly, data extracted from varied historical origins have different characteristics; therefore, different methods are adopted to quantify each category of primary records. It is showed that the registered land data in historical documents, which is land tax data, did not agree with the actual cultivated land controled in local government, however, the reconstructed cultured land area and modern land statistical data are rational in their spatial-temporal variations.Being a useful analytical tool for LUCC, Geographica Information System (GIS) has some advantages for county-scale patten analysis. In the disseretation , GIS-aided quantitative analyses are applied for LUCC in Henan Provice in Ming-Qing Dynasties, based on the standardized and unified data collected from numerable and valuable historical documents and various statistical reports, The conclusions may be distinguished as follows :The change of statistics registration system were in order to adapt the regional land data register, the relationship between register data and actual land area were obvous. which provided a new way to respond to LUCC for land data extracted and the statistical characteristics of land data in during Ming-Qing Dynasty can be traced and analyzed .The results show that the driving mechanism is quite different among different LUCC types in historical period. Under the favorable policy formulated by the central and local governments, the main driving forces of land use change had obvious effects in local regions .Generally, the variation of land use was driven by physical and human factors in the region, but the main driving force is human activities in small scale. The main driving forces in the change of land use type were immigration, planting the high yield crops, favourable cultivation policy and extensive cultivation, etc. The study will benefit the research about underlying surface changes of historical periods.