Patterns and structures of land use change in the Three Rivers Headwaters Region of China

Located in Qinghai Province of China, the Three Rivers Headwaters Region is the source region of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lantsang Rivers, and plays an important role in biodiversity conservation and regulating water supply. Despite many efforts on land use change in Qinghai, knowledge of the spatial variation of land use change is still lacking. This study examines the patterns of land use change across various watersheds, prefectures and the temple surroundings. Remote sensing images of 1987, 1997 and 2007 were analyzed to derive land use distributions; patterns and structures of the landscape were then quantified with landscape metrics. The results illustrated that the Yangtze River headwater region had more diverse and more evenly distributed landscape, while the Lantsang and the Yellow headwater regions showed a decline in landscape diversity. Comparison of the land use patterns of four prefectures revealed that Yushu Prefecture experienced an increase in landscape diversity from 1987 to 2007 while the land use patches in Guoluo Prefecture exhibited more aggregated patterns than other prefectures. Analysis of the spatial variations of land use change in the temple surroundings illustrated that 19.7% and 35.9% of the temples in Guoluo and Yushu Prefectures, respectively, encountered land use change for their immediate areas within 2 km. Comparison of the surroundings of temples and human settlements found that land use change was not evenly distributed, and that greater land use change had occurred for the surroundings of human settlements. Such findings provided insights into the spatial variation of land use change in the Three Rivers Headwaters Region.