Projecting the land use changes in China for the next two decades using a dynamic simulation framework

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a modelling framework to simulate large-scale land use changes, and its effect on the structural and functional diversity of the ecosystem and social-economy based on the remotely sensed digital images. The improved DLS model is developed with three scenarios in China from 2001 to 2020. The projection results show that obvious land use changes will take place in the forestry area, grassland, cultivated land and unused land. Dramatic changes will appear in Cultivated area in Northeast China, Huang-Huai-Hai plain and Southwest China. The changes of forestry area are characterized by regional diversification. Grassland decreases mainly along the Great Wall of Inner Mongolia and on Tibets Plateau. The newly expanded urban land, comparably smaller, distributes mainly around the old towns or residential centers. There is no obvious change in water area. The unused area shrinks with the expansion of forest and grass area in Western China. Based on this study, the capability of improved DLS modelling framework in projecting the LUCC scenarios was tested successfully, and a conclusion was made that DLS model is an useful model in scenario construction.