A case study on land use change analysis using RS and GIS in the West Jilin Province in China

In recent years, land-use/cover dynamic change has become a key subject urgently to be dealt with in the study of global environmental change. Supported by the Landsat TM digital images in 1986, 1996 and 2000 in the west Jilin Province, land use changes analysis are studied in this paper. We classified land use as cultivated land, forest land, grassland, water areas, construction land and unused land. According to the land use data, there was a disproportionate distribution of six land use types in the study region. Cultivated land, grassland, unused land were the primary land use types, they accounted for 85.64% of total area in 1986. On the basis of land use map, we can compute the land use conversion area in the study region, and then get the land use conversion matrix. Grassland, unused land, cultivated land and water areas conversion were the primary conversion in the study region, they accounted for 94.20% of all conversion area in 1986-1996, while construction land and water areas had little change. Grassland decreased greatly during these three periods, and they mainly converted into cultivated land and unused land, these two kind of conversion area accounted for 86.40% of all grassland conversion area. During 1986-2000, the absolute area of unused land keep unchanged, but unused land had distinct phase characteristic: unused land decreased greatly during 1986-1996, while increased greatly during 1996-2000.