Ecological Indicators (Jun 2021)
Heterogeneous effects of climate change and human activities on annual landscape change in coastal cities of mainland China
Abstract
Landscape degradation and fragmentation has taken place across the coastal area of China over the past decades due to complex interactions between natural and anthropogenic processes, which results in various negative environmental and ecological consequences. Therefore, understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics and underlying determinants for landscape change is increasingly recognized as essential for land use planning and policy decision making towards socio-economic sustainable development. In this study, we aimed to examine the changing trends of annual landscape patterns along the Chinese coastal zones from 1992 to 2018. By means of quantile regression and grid-by-grid random forest regression, we then quantified the heterogeneous effects of responsible climate change and human activities on landscape patterns at the grid level. The results indicated that coastal areas across China in the whole landscape level has rapidly tended towards more fragmentated, declining aggregational, complex and irregular edge shaped landscape over the past 30 years. However, opposite evolution directions of landscape patterns were observed between urban fringe (less fragmentation and more aggregation) and remote areas far away from urban center (more fragmentation and less aggregation). High changing rate of landscape metrics generally occurred in areas adjacent to the center of major urban agglomeration. Averagely, more than 40% of significant fragmented landscape mainly caused by the growth of built-up lands. The contribution rate of urbanization also varied with changes in spatial positions and different quantiles. This study employed spatially explicit methodologies to explore the dynamic of coastal landscape and associated drivers, which filled the knowledge gaps related to landscape sustainability and coastal environmental planning and management from the perspective of time and space.
