Dynamic Simulation of Land Use Change of the Upper and Middle Streams of the Luan River, Northern China

Abstract

Climatic, socio-economic, geophysical, and human activity factors, among others, influence land use patterns. However, these driving factors also have different relationships with each other. Combining machine learning methods and statistical models is a good way to simulate the dominant land use types. The Luan River basin is located in a farming-pastoral transitional zone and is an important ecological barrier between Beijing and Tianjin. In this study, we predicted future land use and land cover changes from 2010 to 2020 in the Luan River’s upper and middle reaches under three scenarios—the natural scenario, the ecological scenario, and the sustainable scenario. The results indicate that cultivated land will decrease while the forested areas will increase quantitatively in the future. Built-up areas would increase quickly in the natural scenario, and augmented expansion of forest would be the main features of land use changes in both the ecological scenario and the sustainable scenario. Regarding the spatial pattern, different land use patterns will be aggregated and patches will become larger. Our findings for the scenario analysis of land use changes can provide a reference case for sustainable land use planning and management in the upper and middle Luan River basin.