Quantitative attribution and simulation of land use change based on the PLUS model: A case study of the urban agglomeration on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains

As an important urban agglomeration on the Belt and Road economic belt, it is particularly important to plan land use changes reasonably for coordinating ecological and economic development of the Tianshan North Slope Urban Agglomeration. This study explores the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of land use change using land use transfer matrix, studies nine influencing factors using Geodetector model, and predicts the land use change results of Tianshan North Slope Urban Agglomeration in 2030 using PLUS model. The main research conclusions are as follows: ❨1❩ The main land use types of Tianshan North Slope Urban Agglomeration are unused land, grassland and cultivated land, which account for more than 95% of the study area. From 2000 to 2020, cultivated land and construction land showed an upward trend, while forest land, grassland, water area and unused land showed a downward trend. The main source of transferred land was grassland and unused land, with a transferred area of 17,954.01 km2 and 13,954.79 km2 respectively. The main transferred land use types were construction land, unused land and grassland, accounting for 36.61%, 30.73% and 22.76% of the total transferred area; ❨2❩ The main explanatory factors during the study period are NDVI (X4), and the q values are all greater than 0.6 during the research time. The trends of each factor are consistent during the research time. Among the factors with strong explanatory power in the single-factor detection results, their explanatory power in the interaction detection results is also the strongest. The interaction values obtained by interacting with NDVI (X4) and annual average precipitation (X5) are both high, and the interaction values are all greater than 0.5; ❨3❩ Based on the PLUS model, the simulated Kappa coefficient of land use type in 2020 is 0.916, indicating that the simulation result is good. In the predicted results, there are significant changes in the spatial distribution of each land use type. The construction land is expanding to the surroundings, and the water area and cultivated land have increased significantly, while the forest land and grassland have decreased in spatial extent.