Analysis of Land Use Change in Spatial and Temporal of Eastern Coastal Zone of Guangdong

Eastern coastal area along Guangdong province is one of the economically developed regions in China which has experienced a lot of changes in its land-use patterns. It has become necessary to detect the changes happened in this region as this may help determining the level of stress that the coastal zone is facing and improving the management of the coastal resource. Based on the land use data acquired from the large scale land surveys in China in early 1980s and interpreted data from satellite images of 2005, the land use/cover change was detected in this area within this period. The result demonstrates that during the past 20 years, land use changed dramatically in the study area, which characterized by a significant reduction in arable land, degradation of wetlands and the increasing of artificial area. At the same time the spatial distribution of the change was very uneven. The most obvious change occurred in Pearl River estuary section which is also the economic center of Guangdong province. Because farmers wanted to gain more economic benefits, much plantation land took place at the cost of a large reduction of the proportion of agricultural area. The change in the centre and east part of the coastal zone was comparatively small. The dominated land use types in these areas were still agriculture land and forest land which was as same as that in early 1980s.