1. Introduction
Land use and land cover change (LUCC) is a basic parameter to quantify changes in the natural environment and to measure the impact of human activity [
1,
2,
3,
4]. As one of the decisive factors affecting the global ecosystem and the most direct manifestation of global change [
5,
6,
7], LUCC has always been an important concern in global climate change and global environmental change research [
7,
8,
9]. Understanding the LUCC could support the implementation of effective strategies to improve the stability of ecosystem functions and services [
3,
10,
11,
12].
The correct acquisition of land use information is the basis of land use change analysis. Due to the timeliness and periodicity of remote sensing technology, LUCC monitoring by remote sensing has become a conventional method [
13]. The rapid development of new satellite sensors and automatic techniques for classification has enabled researchers to expand the scale of studies from local surveys to macroscopic regional and global monitoring [
8,
14,
15]. Pixel-based and object-based techniques are the two main approaches generally used for classification. The pixel-based method relies mainly on the spectral characteristic of individual pixels, while the spectral, spatial, texture, color, and other attributes are comprehensively considered in the object-based method [
16,
17]. In view of this, object-based classification is generally better than that based on pixels, especially for high resolution images [
18]. Hence, object-oriented analysis (OOA), also referred to as object-based image analysis (OBIA), is becoming a popular research direction, and good results have already been achieved [
17,
18,
19].
LUCC is the main determinant of the landscape spatial pattern and the most direct driving force of changes in the surface landscape pattern [
20,
21]. As human populations and their demands for resources grow, land cover has been directly altered by human activities. Research has indicated that 60% of global land cover change was directly associated with human activities [
15,
22] and that natural systems in a relatively fragile environment are more susceptible to human activities [
23]. Thus, natural ecosystems being sequentially transformed in a predictable sequence is referred to as land-use transition [
10]. The ways in which humans use land are critical to the landscape pattern and processes. Therefore, understanding the effect of LUCC on the landscape pattern is always one of the core issues of LUCC science [
24]. Landscapes are not affected by single factors acting individually and independently. Rather, they respond to multiple factors acting across a wide range of scales and which may interact [
25]. The change of any type of land use, whether large or small, is likely to have an impact on the landscape pattern in a region, especially for natural ecosystems that are sensitive to change. Determining what the land use pattern will be in the future, or should be to optimize competing goals, is not easy [
24,
26,
27]. A landscape pattern analysis based on geometric characteristics can effectively reflect the spatial pattern of LUCC and its effect on the influence of landscape ecology [
24,
28]. Landscape pattern indices are the most commonly used methods to reflect landscape changes [
29,
30]. Most landscape pattern response analyses for natural ecosystems have simply analyzed the characteristics of the landscape pattern index on the basis of land use information extraction, and usually analyze the effects of major land use types [
31,
32,
33]. It is true that in the natural ecosystem, grassland, forest land, and wetlands provide greater ecosystem service values [
34], but due to the impact of human activities, the effects of the increase of land use types, such as construction land and farmland, on the whole natural system should not be ignored [
35]. In natural ecosystems, changes caused by small land use types are likely to play a greater role in the overall landscape pattern. Therefore, under the influence of climate change and human activities, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the possible impact of the change of each land use type on the overall landscape pattern, so as to systematically analyze the effects of land use change on the landscape pattern.
Our study focused on the Zoige Plateau for three main reasons. First, it is home to the most important plateau wetland in China [
36], which plays an important role in water conservation and supply, and in ecological balance as well [
37]. Second, land use in this region has changed dramatically as a result of its relatively fragile ecological environment and the acceleration of human activities [
23,
38,
39,
40,
41]. The progress of previous studies has been relatively slow, with most research conducted before 2010 [
31,
32,
41,
42]. In addition, previous studies of land use information extraction were mostly based on visual interpretation [
34,
41], a simple supervisory classification [
26], or failed to elaborate upon the extraction method [
14]. Thirdly, most landscape pattern response analyses simply analyzed the characteristics of the landscape pattern indices on the basis of land use information extraction [
31,
32,
42]. Further, how the changes of different land use types affect the overall landscape pattern, and how the changes of different land use types contribute to the landscape pattern in the Zoige Plateau have not been systematically studied. Three specific research aims are: (1) explore the applicability of the object-oriented method based on the Landsat 8 operational land imager (OLI) for land use information extraction in the Zoige Plateau; (2) analyze the temporal and spatial changes of land use in the Zoige Plateau from 2000 to 2015, and (3) analyze the effects of land use changes on landscape patterns systematically. This study has great practical significance for understanding the status of land use in the study area, and the results could provide guidance for the sustainable use of local land resources and the construction of regional ecological civilization.
5. Discussion
(1) The applicability of the object-oriented method based on Landsat 8 OLI for the extraction of land use information in the Zoige Plateau was assessed. Grassland, forest land, and wetland were the three main land use types in this area, and the distribution of these three land use types was relatively concentrated in patches. Therefore, object-oriented analysis could substantially reduce the “salt-and-pepper” noise caused by pixel-based classification. In addition, the shapes of wetland, farmland, and construction land were relatively regular, but showed differences. Based on the object-oriented method, the shape information could be distinguished so as to better classify these three types. Therefore, the land use information for the Zoige Plateau was very accurate, with an overall accuracy of 93.2% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.889, which were higher than in the existing research [
53,
54]. In addition, many previous studies used visual interpretation to obtain land use information in this region [
31,
32,
34,
41], which was time-consuming and laborious, so this study also made a contribution to the automatic acquisition of land use information correctly in this region. However, both SVM and KNN classifications showed lower user accuracy for forest land in this study. The forest land in this area was generally distributed on the mountains with higher elevations, and distributed in belts, which was similar to the distribution shape of wetlands. In addition, the color of wetland was a combination of green vegetation and water, and the forest land was affected by elevation and slope, resulting in no representative difference in color. Both of these two reasons could lead to forest land being misclassified as wetland and water body. The altitude and slope of the object had not been taken into account in the process of the object-oriented method in our study. Therefore, some other ancillary data such as DEM, slope, and aspect could be used and may improve the classification accuracy [
17]. Furthermore, the automation and intelligence of image segmentation, scale optimization, and feature space optimization in object–oriented classification would be useful in future studies [
17,
55].
(2) The results of this study showed that, from 2000 to 2015, the area of land related to production activities had increased greatly, while the area containing natural ecosystems had decreased to varying degrees, among which wetland displayed the most significant change. It is commonly accepted that both climate change and human activities are important factors in the formation and development of wetland degradation [
56]. The warmer and drier trend in this area was an indisputable fact [
32,
42,
54,
57] that could cause wetland to become drier grassland, or even sandy land [
32,
42], but the effect was relatively small [
54,
57,
58,
59]. Anthropogenic factors were dominant in the loss of wetland. Overgrazing, artificial ditch drainage, land reclamation for agriculture, and peat mining led to irreversible effects on wetland degradation [
57,
58,
59,
60]. The statistics showed that over the 15-year study period, the population for Zoige County increased by more than 14,000 people (
Figure 10). To meet the material needs of the increasing population, there had been extensive land reclamation, drainage, and dredging of marshland, together with the development of farmland, resulting in the degradation and reduction of grassland and wetland with an increase of farmland and unused land. In view of the importance of wetlands, specific political countermeasures have been carried out, such as the establishment of nature reserves and prohibition of grazing [
57]. These measures did have an effect, and the area of wetland increased from 2010 to 2015. However, the protected areas attracted more tourists (
Figure 10). Tourism development inevitably had an impact on the natural environment, resulting in the increase of construction land. The warming climate caused glaciers in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau to melt, and retreat was a reason for an increased water body area [
61]. Furthermore, relevant national eco-environmental protection projects, including the cessation of artificial drainage and building dams to preserve water, are playing an important role in water conservation and supply [
57].
(3) We selected a suite of commonly used landscape indices with the aim of capturing detailed information concerning the landscape in this region. The results of indices NP, LFI, and PD of most types of land use increased to varying degrees, among which construction land and farmland were the most obvious during this period. The rate of change of NP of construction land was nearly 1800% from 2010 to 2015. Furthermore, the value of LFI of construction land in each of the four years was the largest among the seven land use types, which suggested that construction land was the dominant type that caused the increased fragmentation of this region. The increasing trend of SHDI and SIDI also illustrated the aggravation of fragmentation in this area from another perspective. The values of LSI, FRAC_MN, and PAFRAC of all seven types showed a decreased trend from 2000 to 2015, revealing a more regular and smaller heterogeneity of landscape shape in this region. We used the correlation analysis method to analyze the effects of land use changes on landscape patterns systematically. Although associations in our results could not prove causality, our multi-angle analysis results suggest that the land use types with a small area have an increasing influence on the whole landscape (
Table 5 and
Table 6). This study concluded that the effects of land use changes on a relatively small area were intensified over time. One previous study [
34] evaluated the changes in ecosystem service values in Zoige Plateau during 1975–2005. They found that due to the expansion of construction land and unused land area, the ecological service value of this area was greatly affected. The value of ecosystem services exhibited an accelerating rate of decrement. These two studies analyzed the impact of land use change in the Zoige Plateau from the perspective of landscape pattern response and ecological service value, respectively. Although the research time interval was different, the change trends of results of these two studies were consistent. Accordingly, our study results also could provide a reference for relevant local government departments to manage and regulate local land use. Although protective measures have had some success, there is still a long way to go to protect and restore the ecosystem functions of the natural systems in the region. How to better balance ecological conservation and economic development is critical [
62].
6. Conclusions
Our study analyzed the land use change characteristics of the Zoige Plateau during 2000–2015 and the effects on the regional landscape pattern. Our study showed that it was feasible to extract land use information in the Zoige Plateau by combining the object-oriented method and SVM. Our study revealed that, over the 15–year study period, the area of construction land, unused land, and farmland increased substantially, while grassland, forest land, and wetland decreased to varying degrees, with wetland changing the most significantly. This suggested that human activities have a great impact on the change of land use pattern in this region. The whole landscape of the Zoige Plateau showed a trend of fragmentation, increasing landscape diversity, and homogenization. As a whole, the effects of unused land, farmland, and construction land on the landscape pattern were increasingly stronger than those of the other types, among which farmland had the most significant impact (with correlation coefficient of 0.959, p < 0.001). The changes of unused land and water also made a significant contribution to the change of landscape in different aspects. This suggested that the effects of the changes of land use types with a relatively small area on the overall landscape pattern of the region were intensified over time. Our results suggest that future land use planning of this area could protect natural resources such as wetlands and grasslands, and the impact of relatively small land use types on the whole region should also be considered.