Analysis of landscape pattern and affecting factors in Huailai County

Huailai County of Hebei Province is an important ecological barrier protecting Beijing (the capital city) and the northern region. The land use pattern in Huailai not only directly affects the use of land resources but also critically influences sustainable development of the surrounding ecosystems. The goal of this research was to correctly understand the relationship between the landscape pattern and the driving factors of land use in the region for determination of the driving mechanism of land use change. Using remote sensing technology, the land use data of Huailai County in 1994, 2004 and 2014 was interpreted to find landscape pattern of land use. Then, eight driving factors were selected among a range of socioeconomic and natural factors, which were average height, relief, annual rainfall, temperature seasonality, distance from road, distance from downtown, GDP density and population density. Gradient analysis of landscape pattern and CCA were used to analyze the relation between landscape patterns of land use and the selected socioeconomic and natural factors, and to distinguish the main driving factors. The landscape indexes, such as spread degree, interspersion-juxtapostion index, Shannon’s diversity index and Shannon’s evenness index, in 2014 of the study area showed obvious gradient difference along east-west and north-south directions. Spread degree was higher in the middle and lower in the two ends, while other three indexes showed contrary tendencies. The average height and population density were the leading factors driving the distribution of landscape patterns of land use in the research area, while the GDP density was the minimal factor. The cumulative explanation values of impact factors of land use type for 1994, 2004 and 2014 were 99.1%, 99.3% and 99.3% and with the corresponding total characteristics of 0.780, 0.720 and 0.853, respectively. Based on the explanation values, the value for 2014 was obviously higher than those for preceding two years. This suggested that 2014 was had advantages in terms of explaining the relation between landscape patterns and the driving factors of land use in the study area. The driving factors, including relief, temperature seasonality, annual rainfall, distance from road and distance from downtown, were significantly related with the distribution of landscape patterns of land use in the research area. As time passed by, the correlation between landscape patterns and relief decreased, while those between landscape patterns and the other 4 driving factors increased. The above analysis revealed the reasons behind land use change in Huailai County, providing evidence of land resources sustainable development in the study area.