Comparative research on landscape dynamic changes between the eastern and western coastal zone in Guangdong Province

Landscape dynamic changes in coastal zones are very remarkable and such dynamic changes have inevitable effects on the local environment and global environment change. The changing characteristics of landscape structure in the eastern coastal zone and the western coastal zone in Guangdong Province during 1990 to 2007 were detected by using satellite remote sensing images of 1990, 2000 and 2007. This study makes a comparative analysis between these two areas. The results shows that: in the western coastal zone, cropland has a big proportion in area, but it decreases with high speed, the area of forest land and construction land tend to increase, the area of water area decrease gradually; in the eastern coastal zone, the area of cropland is small and change unremarkable, forest land decreased dramatically, water area changes little, construction land increased dramatically. The construction land in eastern coastal zone has increased at 10% while in the western coastal zone 8%. Analysis on the landscape pattern changes show that the landscape pattern and landscape diversity in eastern coastal zone has a larger change range than the western. The landscape pattern in the eastern coastal zone changed dramatically during 1990 to 2000 and changed slowly after 2000, while the landscape structure in the western coastal zone changed a little during 1990 to 2000, but landscape indexes began to increase during 2000 to 2006. The landscape dynamic changes reflect the economic development during different periods. Analysis on the landscape pattern and its changes during different periods is a help to the landscape planning and ecological environment construction.