Dynamic Monitoring Of Land Use Change On Tibetan Plateau

The study of land use change on Tibetan Plateau has become one of the hottest spots in recent years due to its unique geographical environment and alpine ecological systems. Although Tibetan plateau has abundant land resources, the development of agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry was imbalanced, resulting in large area of barren land, serious consuming and wasting of resources, as well as lower development potential and backward economic level, because of the past extensive management and irrational exploitation. Under the background of global climate change and increasing human being’s activities, the study of land use types, characteristics, variations and developing trends on Tibetan Plateau has important and far-reaching significance on promoting the region’s sustainable development. Therefore, in this paper, the dynamic of land use/cover change were studied systematically on Tibetan Plateau from 2001 to 2013 using remote sensing and GIS technologies and land evaluation approaches. The results showed that:(1)The area of water, forestland and grassland on Tibetan Plateau had an increasing trend from 2001 to 2013, with the rates of 9.53%,8.46% and 4.18%, respectively. The trend of unused land area continued declining, with a decreasing area of 78647.75 km2 which was accounted for 9.03% of unused land area in 2001. Farmland area decreased firstly and then increased during the period of 2001 and 2013. Urban construction land area was essentially unchanged.(2)In the thirteen years during 2001 to 2013 on Tibetan Plateau, the conversions between grassland and unused land, grassland and forestland, grassland and farmland were the main types, with the conversion proportions all above 65%. The conversion ratios for others land types were relatively small.(3)From the speed of land changes, the farmland changed fastest, with the dynamic change degree of 2.23%. Followed by water, unused land and forestland, which dynamic change degree were 0.7334%,0.6950% and 0.6511%, respectively. The change speeds for others land use types were slower. Overall, the extent of integrated land utilization was low, with the rate of 0.8894%.(4)From the results of land use exploitation degree and land use consumption degree, the change extent of farmland was the biggest, with the exploitation rate of 5.7720% and the consumption rate of 7.0218%. The change extent of forestland, water, grassland and unused land were relatively slow, the annual exploitation rate and consumption rate were all less than 1.38%.(5)From the prediction result of Markov model, we can see that land use types on Tibetan Plateau vary at different degrees from 2013 to 2065. Forestland and grassland have an interannual increasing trend, of which forestland increases 2.19%, grassland increases 4.35%. Unused land has a significant decreasing trend, with the rate of 6.91%, while water has a slowly increasing trend, with the rate of 0.34%. The area of farmland is increasing steadily until 2052, after that it stabilizing at around 0.37%.(6)There were many problems in the process of land use on Tibetan Plateau, such as seriously degenerating grassland, insufficient utilization of forestland and unused land, and low economic benefit of agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry. In the future, this region’s land using work it should pay attention to improve pastoralists’ scientific and cultural education, to advocate protection of forestland and grassland, to exploit unused land reasonably, to optimize the land use mode of production, and to realize the coordination development of economic construction and ecological protection.