Analysis Of The Land Use Change/Cover Over Past Thirty Years In Chengdu And Its Ecological Footprint

The Land Use / Land Cover Change (LUCC) leads to the exploitation of natural resources and changes of the environment which influence the Sustainable development of human by interactive balance to the population, resource, environment and the economic development. China's economic development over the past 30 years has drawn the world's attention, but in the rapid process of industrialization and urbanization, the land resources, especially the arable land resources uncommonly declined, shaking the foundation of sustainable development.In the last 30 years, with the rapid development of the national economy, great changes have taken place in Chengdu and its surround towns. The demands to natural resources caused by the rapid expansion of economy and society increase sharply, and the urban development is faced with a huge population, resources and environmental pressure which strengthen the contradiction between people and land, seriously restricting the sustainable development of society. It makes great sense to analyze and summary the characteristic and the causes of the change of Land Use in Chengdu city. In this article, the remote sensing images in the year of 1978, 1992, 2000 and 2009 of Chengdu are used to extract the information and monitor the change of the Land Use with the help of technologies, such as Remote Sensing image processing, GIS and mathematical statistics. Afterwards, based on the analysis result of the Land Use drive mechanism in Chengdu, the ecological footprint method, which is a popular mean to evaluate the ecological security, is adopted to determine whether Chengdu's development comes within the bearing capacity of the ecological system and whether it is sustainable.Some results and innovations have achieved as follows:(1) This article extracted the Land Use information of the recent 30 years in Chengdu, and set up Land Use spatial database of various periods based on previous work.(2) Comparing and analyzing those data, it is shown that in different time the Land Use changes have different distinguishing feature. Totally, the area of construction land in Chengdu rolled up and the area of the inner city increased remarkably. In the mean while, the area of arable land declined unusually.(3) The coactions of the factors which include the specific natural environment of Chengdu, the authority policy, the population, the economic development, etc influence the Land Use change of Chengdu immensely. Those factors were the main driving force of the Land Use Chang of Chengdu over the past 30 years.(4) This article evaluated the ecological footprint of construction land in Chengdu in recent thirty years using the ecological footprint method. It is found that ecological footprint of construction land has been increasing. It was increasing at the fastest speed during the 2000-2009 periods, comparing with 1992-2000 period, 1992-2000 period, and 2000-2009 period.This article analyzes characteristics of the Land Use Change/Cover, driving forces and its ecological footprint in Chengdu over past thirty years. Chengdu is an especially big city. Its Land Use Change/Cover not only has the mutual characteristics of rapidly developed city, and also has its special characteristics. It makes great sense to make Land use more standard, ease the contradiction between human and land, and make policy about land use and protection.