Geostatistical analysis on human impact indexes for land use/cover in Fujian Province and Fuzhou City

Land use/cover change (LUCC) is an important component of global change research. Based on Geostatistics and taking the TM images in 1985 and ASTER images in 2002 in Fujian Province, the TM images in 1988 and the ASTER images in 2004 in Fuzhou City as the data sources, the present paper built the human impact indexes, compiled the human impact indexes maps and the human impact indexes change maps, calculated the parameters of semivariograms. The results showed that the human impact indexes and change had directionalities, the trends of main land use/cover types, all types and change types were approximately NE-SW in Fujian Province and NWSE in Fuzhou City using Standard Deviational Ellipse, the trends were consistent with the topographies respectively. The structural variance/sill ratio of human impact indexes was 88.96% in Fujian Province, 81.05% in Fuzhou City, the nugget/sill ratio was 11.04% and 18.95% respectively suggesting the intrinsic factors which were mainly nature factors such as topography were the dominant composition in the land use/cover pattern. The structural variance/sill ratio of human impact indexes change was 42.19% in Fujian Province, 42.17% in Fuzhou City, the nugget/sill ratio was 57.81% and 57.83% respectively suggesting the intrinsic and extrinsic factors influenced the change of land use/cover simultaneously. The structural variance/sill ratio of human impact indexes and change in Fuzhou City were smaller than the ones in Fujian Province respectively which showed scale had important impact on the human impact indexes and change.