Landscape analysis of Land Use/Cover Changes in Coastal Zone of Bohai Bay

Land use/cover change in coastal zone is a research hotspot in both land science and ocean science. This study was carried out in the coastal zone of Bohai Bay and Landsat images (1979, 1989, 1999 and 2008) are used to create the land use maps with eighteen land use types. Landscape indices including mean patch area, area-weighted mean patch fractal dimension, aggregation index, patch cohesion index and Shannon weaver diversity index were applied to investigate the land use/cover Changes. According to the results, landscape of study area experienced great change in the recent 30 years. It revealed that the metropolitan area developed a lot along with transfer of developing focus from small and medium-sized cities to large cities, and the port economy became the most important engine of economic growth in this region.