Quantifying the direct effects of long-term dynamic land use intensity on vegetation change and its interacted effects with economic development and climate change in jiangsu, China

Abstract

Vegetation change reflects sensitive responses of ecosystem environment to global climate change as well as land use. It is well known that land use type and its transformation affect vegetation change. However, how the changes in land use intensity (LUI) within different land use types impact vegetation and the interactions with other drivers remain poorly understood. We measured the LUI of Jiangsu Province, China, within the main land use types in 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2018 by combining remote sensing-based land use data with representative county scale economic and social indicators. Structural equation models (SEMs) were built to quantify the influences of long term LUI on vegetation change interacting with economic development, climate change and topographical conditions in transformed land, cropland, rural settlements and urbanized land, respectively. Seventy percent of significant vegetation change existed in non-transformed land use types. Although the area with a vegetation greening trend is larger than that with a vegetation browning trend, the vegetation browning areas is prominent in urbanized lands and some croplands in south basins. The constructed SEMs suggested the dominant negative effect of fast economic development regardless of land use types, while LUI played important and different direct and indirect effects on affecting vegetation change significantly interacting with economic development and climate change in different land use types. The LUI increasing led a vegetation greening in cropland, and stronger than climate warming with both positive direct and indirect effects for influencing climate change. The LUI change took negative effects on vegetation change in rural and urban areas, while a positive indirect effect of LUI increasing in urbanized land signaled the positive results of human managements. We then provided some land use-specific suggestions on basin scale for land management in Jiangsu. Our results highlight the necessity of long-term LUI quantification and promote the understanding of its effects on vegetation change interacted with other drivers within different land use types. This can be very helpful for sustainable land use and managements in regions with fast economic development.

Keywords: Climate change; Land use intensity; Structural equation models; Sustainable land management; Vegetation change.