Spatiotemporal variation of forest land and its driving factors in the agropastoral ecotone of northern China

Abstract

As an important natural resource, forest land plays a key role in the maintenance of ecological security. However, variations of forest land in the agropastoral ecotone of northern China (AENC) have attracted little attention. Taking the AENC as an example and based on remote-sensing images from 2000, 2010 to 2020, we explored the spatiotemporal variation of forest land and its driving factors using the land-use transfer matrix, spatial autocorrelation analysis and spatial error model. The results showed that from 2000 to 2020, the total area of forest land in the AENC increased from 75,547.52 to 77,359.96 km 2 and the changes were dominated by the transformations among forest land, grassland and cropland, which occurred mainly in areas with the elevation of 500-2000 m and slope of 15°-25°. There was obvious spatial agglomeration of forest land in the AENC from 2000 to 2020, with hot spots of forest land gathered in the southern marginal areas of the Yanshan Mountains and the low mountainous and hilly areas of the Loess Plateau. The sub-hot spots around hot spots moved southward, the sub-cold spots spread to the surrounding areas and the cold spots disappeared. The spatiotemporal variation of forest land resulted from the interactions of natural environment, socioeconomic and policy factors from 2000 to 2020. The variables of average annual precipitation, slope, terrain relief, ecological conversion program and afforestation policy for barren mountains affected the spatial pattern of forest land positively, while those of annual average temperature, slope and road network density influenced it negatively.

Spatial and Temporal Variations in the Ecological Vulnerability of Northern China

“…In recent years, China has systematically restored "mountains, fields, forests, lakes, and grasses," coordinated the balance between agricultural production and ecological brittleness in northern China, and took appropriate measures to curb the increase in ecological vulnerability. This is in line with the support of national policies for ecological construction and environmental protection [25].…”

Spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics and driving factors of ecological restoration in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China

“…响。参考已有研究 [28,29] (2) 模型选择 地理探测器广泛应用于探测地理现象空间分 异性及其驱动力 [30] 。本文运用地理探测器中的因 子探测和交互探测模块探究北方农牧交错带生态 退耕时空分异的驱动因素， 计算公式为 [33,34] ：…”

China’s Transport Land: Spatiotemporal Expansion Characteristics and Driving Mechanism

“…Since the 1990s, global-resource and environmental problems have progressively worsened. At present, land use change is a matter of concern to researchers [1,2] who have studied it from the perspectives of spatiotemporal patterns [3][4][5][6][7][8], driving factors [3,7,[9][10][11], and specific land types, including urban [12][13][14][15][16], industrial [17][18][19], agricultural [20][21][22][23], ecological [24][25][26], and transport land [27]. Overall, scholars have tended to focus on analyzing the expansion of urban and industrial land or changes in agricultural and ecological land while paying relatively little attention to the expansion of transport land.…”