Sustainability, Vol. 11, Pages 4994: Remote Sensing-Based Analysis of Landscape Pattern Evolution in Industrial Rural Areas: A Case of Southern Jiangsu, China (Sustainability)

With the rapid economic development of industrial rural areas in Southern Jiangsu, the rural landscape and ecological environment of these industrial rural areas are getting damaged. Based on GIS and RS techniques, Landsat Satellite remote sensing images from 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2018 were collected for Jiangyin, Zhangjiagang, Changshu and Kunshan, to extract landscape pattern indexes and spatial distribution data. Landscape pattern indexes of the patch-class level and landscape level from each year were calculated by FRAGSTATS. After analyzing and comparing landscape pattern variation of five years, progress, characteristics and driving forces of landscape pattern evolution were explored. At the patch-class level, construction land had continuously encroached on green and cultivated land, exhibiting trends of expansion and centralization. At the landscape level, the number of small patches and degree of landscape fragmentation generally increased. The direct cause of landscape pattern evolution in industrial rural areas of Southern Jiangsu was the encroachment and segmentation of green and cultivated land by construction land, and the dominant factors driving the changes in construction land in the industrial rural areas of Southern Jiangsu were the effects of land and population aggregation exerted by the development of township enterprises and rural industries.