Preliminary Study on Pattern to Process in Land Change in a Coastal Watershed of Southeast China

This paper aims at revealing how land use and land cover change in a subtropical coastal watershed of Southeast China, which has enormous influence on the region´s economic and ecological health. Land sat Thematic Map per satellite imagery of 1986, 1996 and 2007 were used to create maps of each time point for 6 land categories. The results show that Built increased while Agriculture shrunk from 1986 to 2007. Orchard shows first losses and then gains in the study period. The transitions from Agriculture to Built and the transition Agriculture to Orchard are the systematic transitions which can be a proof that urbanization and Orchard development accompanied with agricultural decline of the area. These findings may be helpful to gain better understanding on linkage between pattern and process of land change at watershed scale.