Spatio-Temporal Characteristics Analysis of Land Use and Change in Xinxiang City

Great land use change has taken place in most regions worldwide and such information is urgently needed to help the mankind with rational land use and development. In this paper, land use and change for Xinxiang City in Henan Province of China were analyzed in 1995, 2000 and 2005 by using a series of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite data. And spatiotemporal characteristics analysis of land use and change in study area was then carried out after certain data pre-processing, interpreting and other related operations of remote sensing data. Some mathematical methods were also adopted and developed in this part such as land use intensity comprehensive index and land use mean center transfer model. And the outcomes show that both area size and spatial distribution of all six land use types had changed from 1995 to 2005. Both cropland and woodland decreased while built-up land, grassland and water body increased during this period. And unused land increased first and then decreased. Different conversion between those land use types with unlike converted area and distribution. Land use comprehensive intensity also increased by 0.73 at the same time showing an improvement of land use efficiency. And mean center positions of all land use types experienced different change process including shift distance and direction over the past ten years. During the study period, the mean center of cropland shifted with a distance of 1.26Km northeastward and the mean center of built-up land shifted 2.17 Km southwest.