Monitoring land use change at a small watershed scale on the Loess Plateau, China: applications of landscape metrics, remote sensing and GIS

Rapid land use change has taken place in many arid and semi-arid regions of China including the Loess Plateau. In this study, changes in land use and landscape fragmentation in the small Shanghuang watershed on the Loess Plateau were investigated by the combined use of remote sensing, GIS and landscape metrics. Land use classes were mapped and analyzed from a time series of maps and remotely sensed images that were ground truthed in 2008. Analyses of the data showed that land use had undergone substantial changes in this small watershed from 1982 to 2008, and these changes could be divided into three phases according to the change in the landscape matrix whereby the dominant land use was grassland (1982-1990), cropland (1990-2002) and forestland (2002-2008). During each phase, conversions between different land use types took place frequently, especially among cropland, orchards, grassland and forestland. Landscape fragmentation increased from 1982 to 1990 and then decreased from 1990 to 2008 as indicated by four landscape metrics. These changes in land use and landscape fragmentation in this small watershed were mainly controlled by human factors (land management, construction, population pressure, and government policy) rather than natural factors.