Spatiotemporal Patterns of Forest in the Transnational Area of Changbai Mountain from 1977 to 2015: A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese and DPRK Sub-Regions

Abstract

Abstract:The transnational area of Changbai Mountain (TACM) is crucial to sustainable development in Northeast Asia owing to its abundant forest, which helps in maintaining biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services. However, the spatiotemporal patterns of forest in the TACM have been poorly understood across the whole region. The objectives of this study were to quantify the spatiotemporal patterns of forest in the TACM from 1977 to 2015, investigate the causes of forest dynamics, and assess the impacts of forest dynamics on habitat quality. To do this, we first extracted the forest in the TACM from Landsat images acquired in 1977, 1988, 1999, 2007, and 2015 using visual interpretation. Then, we analyzed the spatiotemporal patterns of forest in the TACM from 1977 to 2015 using landscape metrics and compared the dynamics of forest between the area in China and the area in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). After that, we investigated the driving forces of forest dynamics and the impacts of forest dynamics on habitat quality. We found that the TACM experienced a noticeable forest decrease-from 1.57 million ha in 1977 to 1.48 million ha in 2015, a decline of 5.78%-and underwent a forest fragmentation process. In particular, the sub-region in the DPRK had a much larger decrease (17.75%) than the sub-region in China (2.86%). We found that timber harvesting, urban expansion, agricultural reclamation, and typhoon disasters were the main driving forces behind forest decreases in the TACM. Specifically, agricultural reclamation was the most important factor in the DPRK sub-region, while urban expansion was the dominant factor in the Chinese sub-region. Furthermore, such forest loss and fragmentation has resulted in declines in habitat quality across both sides of the TACM. Thus, we suggest that more effective forest management with cooperation between China and DPRK is needed to maintain and improve forest coverage in the TACM.

Comparative Analysis of Urban Heat Island Intensities in Chinese, Russian, and DPRK Regions across the Transnational Urban Agglomeration of the Tumen River in Northeast Asia

“…The method of Tao et al [36] was used to extract regional urban land from Landsat images taken in 2016 (please refer to Text A1 in the Appendix A for details). Here, the urban land denotes the urban built-up area, i.e., the portion that is dominated (more than 50% in cover) by non-vegetated, human-constructed elements, such as roads, buildings, runways, and industrial facilities [37].…”

“…Thus, we extracted urban land from the Landsat data in 2016 through visual interpretation. First, we developed interpretation criteria for each land use/cover type based on combination of Landsat bands, the sampling points from field survey data [36]. These land use/cover types included coniferous forest, broadleaf forest, mixed forest, alpine birch forest, grassland, paddy field, dry farmland, water, marshland, bare land, urban land, and alpine tundra.…”

Effects of Urban Expansion on Forest Loss and Fragmentation in Six Megaregions, China

“…This is because forest loss and fragmentation have adverse impacts on a variety of ecological process and functions, such as deterioration of wildlife habitat quality [13] and threating biodiversity [14][15][16]. Understanding such impacts requires the quantification of forest loss and fragmentation associated with urban expansion [10,17,18].…”

“…Remote sensing has long been used to quantify changes in forested land [17][18][19][20], as it can explicitly reveal its change in space in a recurrent and consistent way [21]. Changes in spatial pattern of forested land have been typically studied by combining remote sensing data with landscape metrics [22].…”

“…The second type of studies focuses on the spatiotemporal pattern of urban expansion along an urban-rural gradient and how such patterns affect the changes (both gain and loss) in forested land, e.g., [10,[26][27][28]. The third type of studies explicitly addresses the spatial patterns of forested land and its change associated with urbanization, [17,18,29,30]. In addition to change in the area of forested land, these studies focus on the spatial distribution of forests, with particular emphasis on forest fragmentation caused by urban expansion.…”