Dynamic Analysis Of Anhui Forest Landscape Pattern And Forest Fragmentation Based On The Globcover Data

With the acceleration of urbanization, the growth of population and economic development,and the growing human impacts on the nature, forest landscape patterns have been alteredapparently, posing an direct threat to forest security. Urban sprawl and agricultural developmenthave subdivided large tracts of forest vegetation with high structural integrity and relativelyindependence into a large number of discrete and isolated patches, implying a striking conflictbetween forest landscape security and economic development. For this reason, Globcoverdatasets derived from MERIS observation in combination with landscape mosaic model andforest fragmentation model were applied to create a suit of spatially explicit maps related toforest landscape dynamics and forest fragmentation to evaluate the status and trends of forestlandscapes in Anhui province in the current work, These derived maps have provided valuableimplications or references for regional sustainable forest management and biodiversityconservation strategies development. Anhui Province is located in the strategic hub of nationaleconomic development strategy and acts as the conjunction belt of several major economicentities. In recent years, there is an increasing trend of Anhui Province merging into the YangtzeRiver Delta economic circle, with highly frequent changes in land use patterns in Anhuiprovince, so choosing Anhui Province as the research target is highly typical and representative.Forest landscape mosaic model and forest fragmentation model based analyses were madein the paper to assess the dynamics of forest landscape patterns in Anhui province. Specifically,Globcover2005and2009, with a spatial resolution of300meters were first aggregated intourban, agricultural and natural land use classes, then the three classes were fed to the landscapemosaic model to calculate their respective areal proportions in a fixed window size of5×5pixels, then to classify the central pixel of the window as one of the19mosaics according to thedecision rules specified by the model based on their areal proportions. On the other hand, theoriginal Globcover data were reclassified into forest, nonforest(anthropogenic and naturaldisturbances) and missing values, which were fed to the forest fragmentation model to createforest fragmentation patterns and forest disturbance patterns by producing a suite of maps at thewindow size of5×5pixels explicitly showing the spatial locations and status of interior,perforated, edge, patch, transitional, undetermined, anthropogenic disturbances and naturaldisturbances components. The results showed that: during2005to2009, in the Anhui Province,overall, the forest landscape pattern was relatively stable, there was a gradual loss of forest landcover, agricultural landscape mosaic showed a rapid growth, urban mosaic type almostremained unchanged and almost no other types shifted to this mosaic type, Anhui urbanlandscape mosaic type stable and slightly volatile;2005to2009, Anhui interior and patch offorest area increased, at the same time, perforated, edge, transitional of forest area reduced. Theinterior and perforated components dominated, showed that Anhui have a lower forestfragmentation from2005to2009, this is also consistent with the changes of the landscape mosaic type. The reason for these results may be due to Anhui vigorously carry out the work ofafforestation, reforestation, forest management and protection, on the other hand, at the processof urbanization in Anhui Province, the government focusing on forest protection and the landuse planning is reasonable.