Assessment of changes in environmental factors in a tourism-oriented Island

Front Public Health. 2023 Jan 9:10:1090497. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1090497. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Tourism development has influenced industrial structure changes and has become a major driving force for China's new urbanization. However, the development will negatively impact natural resources and the ecological environment and will become an essential driving factor for land use change. Therefore, understanding the impact of tourism urbanization is crucial for sustainable local development. This study selected the Dachangshan Island in the Changhai County, Dalian, China, as the study area, because it is the only coastal island-type border county in China. During the study period, changes in local environmental factors were analyzed based on land use data, Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 data of 2009, 2014, and 2019. The results showed that: (1) the overall land surface temperature (LST) in the research region shows an increasing trend; the LST in 2014 and 2019 increased by 6.10 and 5.94 °C, respectively, compared with 2009. With respect to specific land types, impervious surfaces maintained a high land surface temperature (25.44, 32.38, and 31.86); however, surface temperatures for cropland, forest, grassland, and water bodies remained stable. (2) The land use land cover (LULC) change analysis from 2009-2019 indicates that impervious surfaces and cropland increased by 0.5653 km2 and 0.9941 km2, while the areas of forest, grassland, and water bodies decreased. The results also showed that forests (-1.3703 km2) are most affected by urbanization. (3) The results of the landscape index calculation showed that the variation at the patch scale is different for different LULC types. The patch density of impervious surfaces decreased, but the aggregation index increased over time, while the patch density of the forest increased continuously. At the landscape scale, overall patch type and distribution remained stable. The purpose of this study is to explore the environmental changes of islands and provide a reference for the sustainable development of islands.

Keywords: Dachangshan Island; land cover transformation; land surface temperature; landscape index; tourism urbanization.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Environmental Monitoring* / methods
  • Temperature
  • Tourism*
  • Urbanization
  • Water

Substances

  • Water

Grants and funding

This research study was supported by the Basic Scientific Research Project (Key Project) of the Education Department of Liaoning Province (Grant No. LJKZ0964), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41771178), the Phased Results of the Liaoning Provincial Social Science Planning Fund 2022 Project-Research on Modernization Framework and Indicator System Design of Governance Capacity of Fishing Villages in the New Era (L22BFX005), the Economic and Social Development Research Project of Liaoning Province 2023-Research on the Construction of Evaluation Index System of Rural Governance System Modernization and Governance Capacity of Liaoning Province (2023lsljdybkt-005), Evaluation Study on Fishery Modernization and Sustainable Development in Liaoning Province, a Basic Scientific Research Project of Education Department of Liaoning Province in 2022, and Liaoning Social Science Planning Fund Project-Research on Legal Protection of Personal Data in the Era of Artificial Intelligence (No. L19BFX013) in 2019.