Investigating the Impact of Human Activity on Land Use/Cover Change in China’s Lijiang River Basin from the Perspective of Flow and Type of Population

Abstract

Exploring how human activity impacts land use/cover change (LUCC) is a hot research topic in the field of geography and sustainability management. Researchers have primarily used socioeconomic variables to measure human activity. However, the human activity indexes mainly based on socioeconomic variables have a spatial resolution that is coarser than traditional LUCC datasets, which hinders a deep and comprehensive analysis. In view of these problems, we selected China's Lijiang River Basin as our study area and proposed the use of GPS trajectory data for analyzing the impact of human activity on LUCC from two perspectives: (1) Type of population: we used the kernel density estimation method to extract the spatial distribution of activity intensity of local residents and tourists, investigated their correlation with the LUCC result, and found these two populations have different impacts on each land cover; (2) Flow of population: we used the Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm and a network analysis method to build a flow network of population from raw trajectories, conducted regression analysis with LUCC, and found that the flow of population is an important factor driving LUCC and is sometimes a more important factor than the static distribution of the population. Experimental results validated that the proposed method can be used to uncover the impact mechanism of human activity on LUCC at fine-grained scales and provide more accurate planning and instructions for sustainability management.

Application of SWAT Model with CMADS Data to Estimate Hydrological Elements and Parameter Uncertainty Based on SUFI-2 Algorithm in the Lijiang River Basin, China

“…The annual average precipitation is about 1800 mm, and the annual average temperature is about 18 • C [31,32]. The terrain is high in the north and low in the south, and the water system in the river basin is fan-shaped.…”

A Review of Remote Sensing for Environmental Monitoring in China

“…Another type of method is to construct a human activity impact index based on the industrial, agricultural, tourism, traffic land classes and so on, and further to evaluate the impact of human activities on nature reserves [58,59]. In addition, some scholars tried the integrated use of remote sensing and location-aware data to analyze the impacts of human activity on the ecological status of nature reserves, which showed the possibility of evaluating human-land interaction at a fine-grained scale [1]. The ecological footprint model is also an effective way to evaluate the ecological change and its spatial distribution [60].…”

“…It is closely related to the sustainable development of society and economy. Since the Industrial Revolution, the intensity of the human use of natural resources has continuously increased with the rapid growth of populations, and in particular, the overexploitation of resources leading to the deterioration of the environment, has become greater and greater [1]. For example, the consumption of fossil fuels and the deforestation of forest resources accelerate global climate warming, and further lead to the extinction of biological species at an unprecedented rate.…”

Analysis of the Dynamic Urban Expansion Based on Multi-Sourced Data from 1998 to 2013: A Case Study of Jiangsu Province

“…Human activity largely affects the urban land-use situation and mainly consists of population increase, population migration, and economic development [47]. The eastern coastal developed regions, like Jiangsu province, were facing huge population pressure, reflected by population growth and the ratio of urban and rural population.…”