A Land Use/Land Cover Based Green Development Study for Different Functional Regions in the Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

Land use/land cover (LULC) change can strongly affect carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems. The rapid development of China’s economy has formed different functional regions. These functional regions profoundly affect land use patterns. Thus, assessing the carbon storage induced by LULC changes is significant for green development. Selecting the typical region of the Jiangsu Province as the study area, this study first examines the research associated with the regional functional characteristics and various high accuracy data and methods have been used to greatly improve the research accuracy. The results showed that from 1995 to 2015, approximately 10.26% of the entire land area had LULC type changes. Additionally, decreases in the built-up land expansion and ecological land were the main LULC change characteristics, which are mainly affected by socioeconomic development. The total carbon storage of the Jiangsu Province decreased by 714.03 × 104 t and the four regions all presented decreasing carbon storage levels. The economically developed regions presented a more obvious loss of carbon. The region with small LULC changes had a lower carbon loss. The land transfer of cultivated land to built-up land is the main transfer type causing the carbon storage loss. This study investigates the human-environmental interactions from the new perspective of functional zoning and, thus, it enriches the comparative analysis of carbon storage in functional regions and provides references for the green development of a developing country’s developed areas.

Estimating the Decoupling between Net Carbon Emissions and Construction Land and Its Driving Factors: Evidence from Shandong Province, China

“…With acceleration of urbanization of land, China’s structure, intensity, and efficiency of land use have changed. Feng and Guo et al studied LUCC and carbon emissions of cities and showed that the increase in construction land and the decrease in vegetation cover led to a significant decline in carbon storage [ 35 , 36 ]. Zhang et al confirmed that there was a two-way causal relationship between the quality of land urbanization and carbon emissions, and the former had a negative impact on carbon emissions in various provinces [ 37 ].…”

Efficiency Loss and Intensification Potential of Urban Industrial Land Use in Three Major Urban Agglomerations in China

“…Different methods have been used to measure and analyze the efficiency of UILU, such as indicator systems [11,12], data envelope analysis (DEA) [4,[13][14][15], and the directional distance function model [16,17]. Many researchers have also attempted to measure and evaluate the intensification of UILU, mainly using comprehensive indicator systems [18][19][20][21][22]. As a result, many proposals to improve efficiency and promote intensification have been made.…”