Land Use/Cover Change Process and Driving Force Analysis in Lianyungang

Land use/cover change is an important issue for global environmental research. Combined with the use of GIS, this paper explores the utilities of CBERS images to analyze the land use/cover changes in the city of Lianyungang, and analyzes the driving forces by the principal component analysis. Results show that during the past 8 years, the local land use pattern has changed greatly, especially for the land types with lower economic benefits, which have been converted to those with higher economic benefits. Among them, areas of the cultivated land and saltern land decreased greatly and most of them had been transformed to construction land. The unused land converted to construction land also increased significantly. Socio-economic factors such as population, economic development and scientific technology have major effect on the regional landscape dynamics.