Land-use change analysis in Shenmu County in the Leoss Plateau of China using rernote sensing and GIS

-Land-use change is a critical issue to land planning and environmental management through its influence on biodiversity, water and radiation budgets, carbon cycling, and livelihoods. Land-use change analysis is very important for land planning and environment management in the Loess Plateau of China. The combined use of satellite remote sensing and geographical information systems (GIS) has become one of the important tools to study land-use change because they are more convenient and less time consuming compared to actual field studies. The human activities have significantly changed the distribution and allocation of land resources in Shenmu County over the last 14 years due to rehabilitation measures. In this paper, firstly we collected data of land use from TM using supervised classification method with image remote sensing software ERDAS. Then calculated the transition matrix of land use with the GIS software-ArcGIS; at last, analyzed the changes of landscape metrics using the landscape structure analysis program FRAGSTATS. The objectives of the present study were to determine land-use transition rates among land-use types in Shenmu County over 14 years from 1986-2000 and to quantify the changes of various landscape metrics. The results show the remarkable decrease in barren land mainly was due to conversion to grassland. Significant changes in agricultural landscape occurred within the area. The landscape has become more continuous, clumpy and homogeneous. The critical situation of severe desertification in the area has been gradually improved through the measures to combat it.