Impact of land use/land cover changes on ecosystem services in the Nenjiang River Basin, Northeast China

The Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) is a significant resource for five states within East Africa, which faces major land use land cover changes that threaten ecosystem integrity and ecosystem services derived from the basin’s resources. To assess land use land cover changes between 1985 and 2014, and subsequently determine the trends and drivers of these changes, we used a series of Landsat images and field data obtained from the LVB. Landsat image pre-processing and band combinations were done in ENVI 5.1. A supervised classification was applied on 118 Landsat scenes using the maximum likelihood classifier in ENVI 5.1. The overall accuracy of classified images was computed for the 2014 images using 124 reference data points collected through stratified random sampling. Computations of area under various land cover classes were calculated between the 1985 and 2014 images. We also correlated the area from natural vegetation classes to farmlands and settlements (urban areas) to explore relationships between land use land cover conversions among these classes. Based on our land cover classifications, we obtained overall accuracy of 71% and a moderate Kappa statistic of 0.56. Our results indicate that the LVB has undergone drastic changes in land use land cover, mainly driven by human activities that led to the conversion of forests, woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands to either farmlands or settlements. We conclude that information from this work is useful not only for basin-scale assessments and monitoring of land cover changes but also for targeting, prioritizing, and monitoring of small scale, community led efforts to restore degraded and fragmented areas in the basin. Such efforts could mitigate the loss of ecosystem services previously derived from large contiguous land covers which are no longer tenable to restore. We recommend adoption of a basin scale, operational, Earth observation-based, land use change monitoring framework. Such a framework can facilitate rapid and frequent assessments of gains and losses in specific land cover classes and thus focus strategic interventions in areas experiencing major losses, through mitigation and compensatory approaches.

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Assessing Impacts of Land Use/Land Cover Conversion on Changes in Ecosystem Services Value on the Loess Plateau, China

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12177128 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (17) ◽

pp. 7128

Author(s):

Wei Jiang ◽

Bojie Fu ◽

Yihe Lü

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Cover ◽

Loess Plateau ◽

Ecosystem Service ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

The Loess Plateau ◽

Average Value ◽

Value Changes

The Loess Plateau is not only a critical region that suffers from ecological threats but also a valuable region that provides various fundamental ecosystem services, including provisioning, regulating and cultural services to about 8% of the Chinese population. The specific natural environment and extensive human activities have led to substantial land use/land cover changes between 1990 and 2015, such as the decrease in cropland with the increase in forests and grasslands due to the implementation of the Grain for Green Program since 2000 and the expansion of built-up areas with economic development and population growth. However, the effects of these changes on ecosystem service values have not yet been considered. In this study, the approach based on a combination of land use/land cover proxies and benefit transfer is applied to assess ecosystem service value changes resulting from land use/land cover changes in the 1990–2000, 2000–2010 and 2010–2015 periods. The results reveal that the total value of ecosystem services has been reduced by $6.787 million from 1990 to 2000 and increased by $4.6 million from 2000 to 2015. The elasticity analysis shows that a 1% area conversion has induced average value changes of 1.03%, 0.38% and 0.05% in the three periods, respectively. Elasticity is developed as an indicator for locating unusual changes among different regions and identifying specific needs for ecosystem management.

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Impact of Land Use–Land Cover Changes on the Streamflow of the Kolab River Basin Using SWAT Model

Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources - Water Science and Technology Library ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-64202-0_28 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 319-331

Author(s):

Partha Sarathi Bhunia ◽

Kanhu Charan Patra

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Cover ◽

River Basin ◽

Swat Model ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Use Land Cover

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Land use/land cover change and ecosystem services in the Bagmati River Basin, Nepal

Environmental Monitoring and Assessment ◽

10.1007/s10661-021-09441-z ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 193 (10) ◽

Author(s):

Sushila Rijal ◽

Bhagawat Rimal ◽

Ram Prasad Acharya ◽

Nigel E. Stork

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Cover ◽

Land Cover Change ◽

River Basin ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Bagmati River

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Hydrological responses to human-induced land use/land cover changes in the Gidabo River basin, Ethiopia

Hydrological Sciences Journal ◽

10.1080/02626667.2021.1890328 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 66 (4) ◽

pp. 640-655

Author(s):

Henok Mekonnen Aragaw ◽

Manmohan Kumar Goel ◽

Surendra Kumar Mishra

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Cover ◽

River Basin ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Hydrological Responses

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Assessment of historical and future land‐use–land‐cover changes and their impact on valuation of ecosystem services in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Land Degradation and Development ◽

10.1002/ldr.3837 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Manish Shrestha ◽

Suwash Chandra Acharya

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Cover ◽

Kathmandu Valley ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Valuation Of Ecosystem Services

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Spatiotemporal Characteristic of Land Use/Land Cover Changes in the Middle and Lower Reaches of Shule River Basin Based on an Intensity Analysis

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su11051360 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 1360 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Fuwen Da ◽

Xingpeng Chen ◽

Jinghui Qi

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Cover ◽

River Basin ◽

Climatic Factors ◽

Natural Vegetation ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Land Use Land Cover ◽

Intensity Analysis ◽

High Coverage ◽

Construction Land

The vegetation response to climatic factors is a hot topic in global change research. With the Support of ArcGIS and ENVI software, six sets of Landsat remote sensing images of the middle and lower reaches of the Shule River Basin were interpreted. Eight types of land use and land covers were obtained and the spatiotemporal characteristics of the land use/land cover changes (LUCCs) were analyzed using an intensity analysis to provide a basis for decision-making on the sustainable development of the basin. In the past 29 years, the area of cropland, construction land and shrubland had a net increase, while high-coverage grassland (HCG), medium-coverage grassland (MCG), low-coverage grassland (LCG), wetland and non-vegetation land all presented a net decrease. The area of artificial vegetation (cropland) presented an expanding trend and increased by 1105.56 km2 in total, while the natural vegetation (grassland, shrubland, wetland) showed a shrinking tendency and decreased by 917.69 km2. The intensity analysis revealed that the rate of LUCC in the period of 2000~2006 and 2006~2010 was relatively higher, although the rate of LUCC in other periods was much lower. The change intensities of MCG and HCG were greatest, followed by LCG, shrubland and wetland. Construction land and cropland were in third place, while non-vegetation land was in last place. The pattern of regional LUCC was generally stable except for cropland loss and the gain/loss change of other land-use/land-cover types was always in an active state. For spatial distribution, few changes were observed in the old irrigated area within the oasis. The LUCC was mainly concentrated in the oasis fringe area, natural vegetation cover area and emigrant arrangement regions.

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