The application of graphic information analysis in land use change

Land use or land cover change is the focus of global environmental change. Land use is a number of heterogeneous spatial patterns under complex driving forces. Land use does not only show itself in terms of quantity change and quality modification, but also in terms of spatial pattern change. Furthermore, spatial pattern change is an important content in the study field of land use change. We select Qianguo County of Jilin Province as a study area, detect land use changes based on the Landsat TM with the post-classification method, and calculate the transition matrix based on GIS. We then analyze spatial pattern change of land use in the study area based on the combination of geography graphic information theory, statistical analyses and spatial analysis tools of GIS. The results indicate that we can use several graphic parameters to depict the patches of every land use type, and the curve of the graphic parameters changing with the area of the graph can in effect disclose the characteristics of different land use class. Furthermore, we can use VCM curves to express the land use spatial pattern and its change.