Assessing the impact of multiple drivers of land sensitivity to desertification in a Mediterranean country

Experiencing climate changes and increased human pressure, Mediterranean regions are considered representative hotspots of desertification. However, relatively few studies have been devoted to quantify the individual impact of different factors shaping land sensitivity to desertification in these contexts. Our study contributes to this deserving (positive and normative) issue with a diachronic analysis of the impact of multiple drivers of desertification risk on six indicators of land sensitivity based on the Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) approach. Indicators (average and maximum ESA score, coefficient of variation and normalized range in the ESA scores, share of ‘fragile’ and ‘critical’ areas in total landscape) were calculated in 777 rural districts of Italy at three time points (early-1960s, early-1990s, and early-2010s). Multivariate models were used to determine the impact of 12 predictors (climate, soil, vegetation, and land management quality) on each indicator of land sensitivity. Results of the analysis identified two non-redundant dimensions respectively associated with the average level of land sensitivity and its intrinsic variability across space. Impacts of climate and vegetation qualities on the level of land sensitivity were high, decreasing over time, and more intense respectively in Northern and Southern Italy. Impacts of soil and land management qualities were moderate, increasing over time, and involving almost all the country's area. Our study emphasizes the role of context-based measures promoting sustainable land management. The ‘local’ dimension proved to be crucial in any strategy of risk mitigation undertaken at disaggregated spatial scales.     

Spatio-temporal analyses of cropland degradation in the irrigated lowlands of Uzbekistan using remote-sensing and logistic regression modeling

Advancing land degradation in the irrigated areas of Central Asia hinders sustainable development of this predominantly agricultural region. To support decisions on mitigating cropland degradation, this study combines linear trend analysis and spatial logistic regression modeling to expose a land degradation trend in the Khorezm region, Uzbekistan, and to analyze the causes. Time series of the 250-m MODIS NDVI, summed over the growing seasons of 2000–2010, were used to derive areas with an apparent negative vegetation trend; this was interpreted as an indicator of land degradation. About one third (161,000 ha) of the region’s area experienced negative trends of different magnitude. The vegetation decline was particularly evident on the low-fertility lands bordering on the natural sandy desert, suggesting that these areas should be prioritized in mitigation planning. The results of logistic modeling indicate that the spatial pattern of the observed trend is mainly associated with the level of the groundwater table (odds?=?330 %), land-use intensity (odds?=?103 %), low soil quality (odds?=?49 %), slope (odds?=?29 %), and salinity of the groundwater (odds?=?26 %). Areas, threatened by land degradation, were mapped by fitting the estimated model parameters to available data. The elaborated approach, combining remote-sensing and GIS, can form the basis for developing a common tool for monitoring land degradation trends in irrigated croplands of Central Asia.     

Land Use Changes in Regional Economic Theory

Land use and land cover changes are a major source of environmental degradation and therefore a serious issue in sustainable development studies and in the integrated assessment of environmental problems. In an attempt to understand part of the complexity of land use change we here aim to explore the ways in which economists deals with the land use issue. We argue that space is one of the forgotten items in economics. Economists often seem to ignore high-resolution spatial dynamics either because they are not considered as an important feature of the problem or out of habit. It seems as though there is a trade-off between spatial resolution and human behaviour in current applications. Certain types of models are capable of capturing the spatial complexity of urban and regional areas, for instance, by using cellular automata. Other types of land use models clearly have shortcomings where it concerns spatial detail. Dynamic modelling approaches do not guarantee a high spatial resolution.We propose to give more attention to agent based modelling as this type of modelling provides a specific connection between processes on micro level and macro-level spatial structures.     

2000—2019年常州市MODIS气溶胶光学厚度时空变化特征研究

利用2000—2019年TERRA和AQUA相结合的气溶胶光学厚度(AOD)产品数据,从时间和空间角度分析了常州市AOD的变化特征。结果显示：(1)2012—2019年常州市PM_2.5与AOD年均值的相关系数为0.898,表明AOD产品适用于常州市气溶胶污染年际变化研究。(2)2000—2019年常州市AOD年均值范围为0.463～0.688,平均值为0.627。其中,2000—2007年常州市AOD年均值整体呈上升趋势,2011—2019年呈下降趋势。常州市AOD的月变化趋势呈倒“U”形,特征最高值出现在6月,最低值出现在12月。常州市AOD有明显的季节变化特征,夏季最高,冬季最低。(3)常州市AOD高值主要分布在西部的溧阳市金坛区,北部的新北区也存在少量高值分布。(4)通过Moran指数发现,常州市Moran指数均大于零,表明各年份AOD均呈集聚状态。2000—2010年常州市AOD的空间集聚程度较高,2010年以后的空间集聚效应逐渐减弱。空间热点分析表明,2011—2019年常州市AOD高值集聚区域相比2000—2010年有所减少,冷点集聚区域有所增加,AO...     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Evaluation for sustainable land use in mountain areas of Northwestern Yunnan Province, China

As an important component of sustainable development in mountain areas, evaluation for sustainable land use is always one of the hotpots of researches on sustainable development. Traditional evaluation for sustainable land use mainly focuses on the sustainability of land use model and biological production on temporal scale, and overlooks the effects of land use patterns on the sustainability, while landscape ecology can be a good help to realize the spatial analysis of sustainable land use. In this study, a synthetic evaluation indexes system for sustainable land use was constructed through the application of landscape metrics. Taking Yongsheng County of Yunnan Province, China as a case study, a series of quantitative evaluation were conducted in 1996, 1999 and 2001, to monitor the temporal dynamics of regional land use sustainability. Two indicators, contributing amount of indexes, and obstacle amount of indexes, were also set up to ascertain the significance of all the evaluation indexes to the evaluation results. The results showed that, in the study phases, the land use sustainability of the whole county had been low with a stable but great spatial difference, and great changes took place in regional land use system in 1999 with the deviation from the aim of sustainable land use. It also showed that, the most important indexes contributing for the land use sustainability in the study period, were the indexes of population density and land use degree, followed by the index of landscape diversity and cropping index. And the most important indexes counteracting the land use sustainability were the indexes of per unit area total production value of industry and agriculture, per unit area yield of cereal crops, landscape fragmentation, followed by the indexes of per unit area yield of economic crops and fertilizer consume per unit area.     

基于多时相遥感数据的典型区生态格局变化分析

利用1985、2000、2013年遥感影像提取的土地覆盖数据,通过景观格局指数、动态度计算、转移矩阵等,分析1985—2013年我国典型地区各类型生态系统景观格局及其动态变化特征、生态系统相互转化时空变化特征等,揭示1985—2013年生态环境格局变化的特点和规律:一级分类生态系统综合变化率,赣江、闽江、白龙江和岷江上游流域分别为4.7%、3.9%、3.3%和1.7%,生态系统变化强度1985—2000年较缓,2000—2013年更剧烈。1985—2013年典型区生态系统的主要转化方向具有持续性和双向性特征,岷江、白龙江和赣江上游流域退耕还林还草政策效果明显,出现较高比例的耕地转为森林和草地;面积占67.4%生态系统类型变化与耕地生态系统和人工表面生态系统变化有关;生态系统变化具有明显的区域差异,生态变化主要表现为沿主要河流谷地的线状延伸,主要城镇居民点附近生态系统类型变化较为突出,人类活动是典型地区生态系统类型格局变化的主要驱动力;典型区尤其是敏感区应加大退耕还林还草政策,减少人类经济活动,降低洪水泥石流灾害发生的概率和程度。     

Land degradation assessment by geo-spatially modeling different soil erodibility equations in a semi-arid catchment

Land degradation by soil erosion is one of the most serious problems and environmental issues in many ecosystems of arid and semi-arid regions. Especially, the disturbed areas have greater soil detachability and transportability capacity. Evaluation of land degradation in terms of soil erodibility, by using geostatistical modeling, is vital to protect and reclaim susceptible areas. Soil erodibility, described as the ability of soils to resist erosion, can be measured either directly under natural or simulated rainfall conditions, or indirectly estimated by empirical regression models. This study compares three empirical equations used to determine the soil erodibility factor of revised universal soil loss equation prediction technology based on their geospatial performances in the semi-arid catchment of the Saraykoy II Irrigation Dam located in Cankiri, Turkey. A total of 311 geo-referenced soil samples were collected with irregular intervals from the top soil layer (0-10?cm). Geostatistical analysis was performed with the point values of each equation to determine its spatial pattern. Results showed that equations that used soil organic matter in combination with the soil particle size better agreed with the variations in land use and topography of the catchment than the one using only the particle size distribution. It is recommended that the equations which dynamically integrate soil intrinsic properties with land use, topography, and its influences on the local microclimates, could be successfully used to geospatially determine sites highly susceptible to water erosion, and therefore, to select the agricultural and bio-engineering control measures needed.     

Assessing the effects of land use changes on soil sensitivity to erosion in a highland ecosystem of semi-arid Turkey

There has been increasing concern in highlands of semiarid Turkey that conversion of these systems results in excessive soil erosion, ecosystem degradation, and loss of sustainable resources. An increasing rate of land use/cover changes especially in semiarid mountainous areas has resulted in important effects on physical and ecological processes, causing many regions to undergo accelerated environmental degradation in terms of soil erosion, mass movement and reservoir sedimentation. This paper, therefore, explores the impact of land use changes on land degradation in a linkage to the soil erodibility, RUSLE-K, in Cankiri–Indagi Mountain Pass, Turkey. The characterization of soil erodibility in this ecosystem is important from the standpoint of conserving fragile ecosystems and planning management practices. Five adjacent land uses (cropland, grassland, woodland, plantation, and recreational land) were selected for this research. Analysis of variance showed that soil properties and RUSLE-K statistically changed with land use changes and soils of the recreational land and cropland were more sensitive to water erosion than those of the woodland, grassland, and plantation. This was mainly due to the significant decreases in soil organic matter (SOM) and hydraulic conductivity (HC) in those lands. Additionally, soil samples randomly collected from the depths of 0–10 cm (D ₁) and 10–20 cm (D ₂) with irregular intervals in an area of 1,200 by 4,200 m sufficiently characterized not only the spatial distribution of soil organic matter (SOM), hydraulic conductivity (HC), clay (C), silt (Si), sand (S) and silt plus very fine sand (Si + VFS) but also the spatial distribution of RUSLE-K as an algebraically estimate of these parameters together with field assessment of soil structure to assess the dynamic relationships between soil properties and land use types. In this study, in order to perform the spatial analyses, the mean sampling intervals were 43, 50, 64, 78, 85 m for woodland, plantation, grassland, recreation, and cropland with the sample numbers of 56, 79, 72, 13, and 69, respectively, resulting in an average interval of 64 m for whole study area. Although nugget effect and nugget effect–sill ratio gave an idea about the sampling design adequacy, the better results are undoubtedly likely by both equi-probable spatial sampling and random sampling representative of all land uses.     

Comprehensive analysis of an ecological risk assessment of the Daliao River estuary, China

At present, most estuarine ecological risk studies are based on terrestrial ecosystem models, which ignore spatial heterogeneity. The Daliao River estuary has representative characteristics of many estuaries in China, and we used this estuary as the study area to formulate an estuarine ecological risk evaluation model. Targeting the estuary's special hydrodynamic condition, this model incorporated variables that were under the influence of human activities and used them as the major factors for partitioning sections of the river according to risk values. It also explored the spatial and temporal distribution laws of estuarine ecological risk. The results showed that, on the whole, the ecological risk of the Daliao River estuary area was relatively high. At a temporal level, runoff was the main factor resulting in differences in ecological risk, while at the spatial level, the ecological risk index was affected by pollutants carried by runoff from upstream, as well as downstream pollution emissions and dilution by seawater at the mouth of the sea. The characteristics of this model make it possible to simulate the spatial and temporal risk distribution in different regions and under different rainfall regimes. This model can thus be applied in other estuarine areas and provides some technical support for analysis and control of ecological destruction in estuary areas.     

平原感潮河网地区不同土地利用下营养盐迁移特征

分别在南通平原河网地区选择典型非圩区开展野外原位试验,用野外观测和室内分析相结合的方法,研究平原非圩区典型试验小区不同土地利用下营养盐在自然降雨—径流驱动下迁移的时空分布特征.结果表明,导致营养盐迁移时空分布存在显著差异的主要原因为不同的土地利用类型、施肥条件及植被覆盖度等,不同土地利用下的径流量差异是导致营养盐迁移通...     

The effects of biotic and abiotic factors on the spatial heterogeneity of alpine grassland vegetation at a small scale on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP), China

Understanding the complex effects of biotic and abiotic factors on the composition of vegetation is very important for developing and implementing strategies for promoting sustainable grassland development. The vegetation–disturbance–environment relationship was examined in degraded alpine grasslands in the headwater areas of three rivers on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau in this study. The investigated hypotheses were that (1) the heterogeneity of the vegetation of the alpine grassland is due to a combination of biotic and abiotic factors and that (2) at a small scale, biotic factors are more important for the distribution of alpine vegetation. On this basis, four transects were set along altitudinal gradients from 3,770 to 3,890 m on a sunny slope, and four parallel transects were set along altitudinal gradients on a shady slope in alpine grasslands in Guoluo Prefecture of Qinghai Province, China. It was found that biological disturbances were the major forces driving the spatial heterogeneity of the alpine grassland vegetation and abiotic factors were of secondary importance. Heavy grazing and intensive rat activity resulted in increases in unpalatable and poisonous weeds and decreased fine forages in the form of sedges, forbs, and grasses in the vegetation composition. Habitat degradation associated with biological disturbances significantly affected the spatial variation of the alpine grassland vegetation, i.e., more pioneer plants of poisonous or unpalatable weed species, such as Ligularia virgaurea and Euphorbia fischeriana, were found in bare patches. Environmental/abiotic factors were less important than biological disturbances in affecting the spatial distribution of the alpine grassland vegetation at a small scale. It was concluded that rat control and light grazing should be applied first in implementing restoration strategies. The primary vegetation in lightly grazed and less rat-damaged sites should be regarded as a reference for devising vegetation restoration measures in alpine pastoral regions.     

Vegetation coverage change and associated driving forces in mountain areas of Northwestern Yunnan, China using RS and GIS

The dynamics of vegetation coverage and associated driving forces are one of the key issues in global environmental change. In the study, taking Lijiang County as a case, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index was used to quantify vegetation coverage change in mountain areas of Northwestern Yunnan, China, with the application of remote sensing data and GIS technologies. And associated driving forces of vegetation coverage change were also analyzed, with a focus on land use change and elevation. The results showed that there was high vegetation coverage with a significant increase in the whole county during 1986-2002. However, due to economic development and the implementation of environmental protection polices, vegetation coverage change in the county showed distinct spatial diversity, which mainly behaved as the increasing in the northwest of the county with low human activities, and the decreasing in the south with high economic development. The results also showed that as a restrictive factor, elevation was of great signification on the spatial distribution of vegetation coverage in a broad scale; while in the county level, it was land use that determined the vegetation coverage, since the change of vegetation coverage grades in the study area was mainly associated with the change of land use types.     

A method to the impact assessment of the returning grazing land to grassland project on regional eco-environmental vulnerability

The Chinese government has conducted the Returning Grazing Land to Grassland Project (RGLGP) across large portions of grasslands from western China since 2003. In order to explore and understand the impact in the grassland's eco-environment during the RGLGP, we utilized Projection Pursuit Model (PPM) and Geographic Information System (GIS) to develop a spatial assessment model to examine the ecological vulnerability of the grassland. Our results include five indications: (1) it is practical to apply the spatial PPM on ecological vulnerability assessment for the grassland. This methodology avoids creating an artificial hypothesis, thereby providing objective results that successfully execute a multi-index assessment process and analysis under non-linear systems in eco-environments; (2) the spatial PPM is not only capable of evaluating regional eco-environmental vulnerability in a quantitative way, but also can quantitatively demonstrate the degree of effect in each evaluation index for regional eco-environmental vulnerability; (3) the eco-environment of the Xianshui River Basin falls into the medium range level. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and land use cover and change (LUCC) crucially influence the Xianshui River Basin's eco-environmental vulnerability. Generally, in the Xianshui River Basin, regional eco-environmental conditions improved during 2000 and 2010. The RGLGP positively affected NDVI and LUCC structure, thereby promoting the enhancement of the regional eco-environment; (4) the Xianshui River Basin divides its ecological vulnerability across different levels; therefore our study investigates three ecological regions and proposes specific suggestions for each in order to assist in eco-environmental protection and rehabilitation; and lastly that (5) the spatial PPM established by this study has the potential to be applied on all types of grassland eco-environmental vulnerability assessments under the RGLGP and under the similar conditions in the Returning Agriculture Land to Forest Project (RALFP). However, when establishing an eco-environmental vulnerability assessment model, it is necessary to choose suitable evaluation indexes in accordance with regional eco-environmental characteristics.     

A hierarchical approach for desertification assessment

Environmental systems are complex and multi-scaled open systems. To understand land degradation, one has to consider the interactions between landscape patterns and environmental processes at different scales. Patterns and processes in the landscape are perceived to be organized in nested hierarchical structures. To study land degradation in this context, a coupled top-bottom/bottom-up approach was developed. The top-bottom landscape analysis is aimed at identifying landscape systems at different scales. The bottom-up analysis focuses on system dynamics at finer scales. Applied in a study in central Spain, the approach is aimed at understanding the functional differences between three types of degraded seminatural slopes at different scales. Six levels of organization were distinguished: ped-level, terracette-level, hummock-level, slope part-level, slope level, and watershed level. Properties that characterize these levels were selected for different disciplines. The bottom-up analysis focused on water movement at different spatial scales. Successfully applying this approach revealed the importance for land degradation of the close linkage between spatial patterns and hydrological processes at different spatial scales. Identifying constraining and dynamic indicators related to water conservation at different scales can be useful for assessing desertification.     

Environmental management zoning for coal mining in mainland China based on ecological and resources conditions

The purpose of this research is to establish an environmental management zoning for coal mining industry which is served as a basis for making environmental management policies. Based on the specific impacts of coal mining and regional characteristics of environment and resources, the ecological impact, water resources impact, and arable land impact are chose as the zoning indexes to construct the index system. The ecological sensitivity is graded into three levels of low, medium, and high according to analytical hierarchy processes and gray fixed weight clustering analysis, and the water resources sensitivity is divided into five levels of lower, low, medium, high, and higher according to the weighted sum of sub-indexes, while only the arable land sensitive zone was extracted on the basis of the ratio of arable land to the county or city. By combining the ecological sensitivity zoning and the water resources sensitive zoning and then overlapping the arable-sensitive areas, the mainland China is classified into six types of environmental management zones for coal mining except to the forbidden exploitation areas.     

The land ecological evolutional patterns in the source areas of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in the past 15 years, China

Based on land ecological classification of the source regions of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers and field investigation, two phases of TM remote sensing data obtained in 1986 and 2000 were compared. From spatial variations and type transformation trends, the spatial changes and evolutional patterns of land ecosystem in the source regions of the two rivers were analyzed using the analytical method of landscape ecological spatial patterns. Results show that middle and high-cover high-cold steppe areas degraded considerably by 15.82%, high-cover high-cold meadow areas by 5.15%, while high-cold swamp meadow areas decreased by 24.36%. Lake water area was reduced by 7.5%, especially the lakes in the source region of the Yangtze River. Land desertification is developing rapidly and the average of desertified land area has increased by 17.11%. Desertified land in the source region of Yellow River is expanding at an annual rate of 1.83%. Analysis of the evolutional pattern of land ecotypes shows that the general tendencies of spatial evolution in the regions are coverage reduction and desertification of high-cold steppe, cover reduction and steppification of high-cold meadows, and desiccation of swamp meadows. As a result, land ecological spatial distribution pattern in the region is changing and the state of eco-environment declining.     

The effects of land use changes on some soil properties in İndağı Mountain Pass – Çankırı, Turkey

Understanding spatial variability of dynamic soil attributes provides information for suitably using land and avoiding environmental degradation. In this paper, we examined five neighboring land use types in Indagi Mountain Pass - Cankiri, Turkey to spatially predict variability of the soil organic carbon (SOC), bulk density (BD), textural composition, and soil reaction (pH) as affected by land use changes. Plantation, recreational land, and cropland were the lands converted from the woodland and grassland which were original lands in the study area. Total of 578 disturbed and undisturbed soil samples were taken with irregular intervals from five sites and represented the depths of 0-10 and 10-20 cm. Soil pH and BD had the lower coefficient of variations (CV) while SOC had the highest value for topsoil. Clay content showed greater CV than silt and sand contents. The geostatistics indicated that the soil properties examined were spatially dependent to the different degrees and interpolations using kriging showed the dynamic relationships between soil properties and land use types. The topsoil spatial distribution of SOC highly reflected the changes in the land use types, and kriging anticipated significant decreases of SOC in the recreational land and cropland. Accordingly, BD varied depending on the land use types, and also, the topsoil spatial distribution of BD differed significantly from that of the subsoil. Generally, BD greatly decreased in places where the SOC was relatively higher except in the grassland where overgrazing was the more important factor than SOC to determine BD. The topsoil spatial distributions of clay, silt, and sand contents were rather similar to those of the subsoil. The cropland and grassland were located on the very fine textured soils whereas the woodland and plantation were on the coarse textured soils. Although it was observed a clear pattern for the spatial distributions of the clay and sand changing with land uses, this was not the case for the silt content, which was attributed to the differences of dynamic erosional processes in the area. The spatial distribution of the soil pH agreed with that of the clay content. Soils of the cropland and grassland with higher amounts of clay characteristically binding more cations and having higher buffering capacities had the greater pH values when compared to the soils of other land uses with higher amounts of sand naturally inclined to be washed from the base cations by the rainwater.     

The needs of nomadic-pastoral land users with respect to EIA theory,methods and effectiveness: What are they and does EIA address them?

The aim of this article is to examine the needs of nomadic-pastoral land users with respect to EIA theory, methods and effectiveness based on literature review by applying Retief (2010)’s framework. The article intends to identify these needs and analyse whether EIA addresses them sufficiently and appropriately. Retief (2010)’s framework defines theory, methods (quality) and effectiveness as three main interrelated themes of environmental assessment. Our review was guided by these three themes and moreover, using nomadic pastoralism as a test case, we attempted to expand this broad framework into a four-step approach that can be used to systematically examine EIA literature. The approach first adopts the Retief (2010)’s framework and secondly, identifies issues of nomadic-pastoral land use which matter the most with respect to Retief (2010)’s themes. The next step selected 156 articles for literature review considering the issues identified previously and the fourth step examined the selected articles using a concept-centric review and a content analysis. Nomadic-pastoral land users need EIA theory to incorporate irrational logic and complex and unpredictable socio-ecological features of nomadic-pastoral land use. Decisions made based on the rational decision-making model in EIA cannot sufficiently incorporate the needs of nomadic-pastoral land use due to uncertainties associated with rational decision-making and different power, values and interests of stakeholders in pasture land resources. Furthermore, the needs of nomadic-pastoral land users with respect to EIA methods are related to impact pathways and dynamic character of land use. EIA methods systematically address impact pathways. However, the current EIA methods primarily focus on static land use, and do not address sufficiently and appropriately dynamic nature of land use. For nomadic-pastoral land users, maintaining land quality in nomadic pastoralism and participation in EIA are the most important issues with respect to effectiveness of EIA. However, empirical data are needed to examine whether these needs are addressed in EIA. Nevertheless, the current frameworks for evaluation of effectiveness of EIA are sufficient for assessment of EIA's capacity for addressing the needs of nomadic-pastoral land users. Further studies should aim at incorporating the nature of socio-ecological interaction and dynamics into EIA theories and developing suitable models on herding mobility and strategy for impact prediction in EIA.     

Did the ecological engineering have a great impact on the land use change?

Overuse of land resources has increasingly contributed to environmental crises in China. To mitigate widespread land degradation, actions have been taken to maintain and restore the ecological environment through efforts such as ecological engineering. By analyzing trends in land use, the impact and effectiveness of ecological engineering can be determined. In this study, such changes in Huanjiang County in China were considered. In the early 1990s, an eco-immigration policy and “returning farmland to forest program” were implemented in the county, drastically impacting land use. Land use/land cover changes were detected and analyzed using remote sensing data recorded over 4 years (1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010). Land transfer flow and the rate of land use change elucidated the extent of changes, while nuclear density analysis indicated spatial agglomeration. The results indicate that, over a period of 15 years, farmland area increased, while forest area decreased initially before subsequently increasing. From 1995 to 2000, the highest transfer flow was observed in the grassland to farmland conversion (79.34%). From 2000 to 2005, the transfer flow of conversions was the highest for forest to farmland (56.79%). Land use changes were not prominent from 2005 to 2010. Direct drivers of land use change exert obvious impacts on land use, and indirect drivers impact direct drivers that are then channeled through direct anthropogenic drivers (e.g., land use policies). We found that ecological engineering has a very significant impact on land use change, and that impact varies from region to region.