Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Landscape and Ecological Engineering (2018) 14:257–267 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-018-0349-y ORIGINAL PAPER Quantifying spatiotemporal patterns concerning land change in Changsha, China Bin Quan 1,2  · Hongge Ren 2  · Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr. 3  · Peilin Liu 1 Received: 26 August 2017 / Revised: 11 March 2018 / Accepted: 16 April 2018 / Published online: 5 June 2018 © International Consortium of Landscape and Ecological Engineering and Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Changsha has undergone speedy socio-economic development, rapid modifcation of industrial structure, and acceleration of urbanization, which has infuenced land cover change during the most recent three decades. Policies have aimed to conserve total agricultural area, but it is not clear how successful these policies have been. Our purpose is to characterize and interpret spatiotemporal patterns of land change with respect to the policy to maintain agricultural area in Changsha, China. Maps at 1990, 2000, and 2010 show four land categories: Built, Forest, Crop and Other. We compute change components and apply Intensity Analysis to compare the land changes during two time intervals: 1990–2000 and 2000–2010. We also compare the central region to the peripheral region during 1990–2010. The maps show that Changsha’s land change accelerated from 1990–2000 to 2000–2010. Change was more intensive in the central region than in the peripheral region. Crop and Forest experienced net decreases while Built experienced net increase during both time intervals and in both regions. Built’s gain tar- geted Crop and avoided Forest during both time intervals and in both regions. The central region’s largest change component is quantity change, due to Built’s net gain. The peripheral region’s largest change component is exchange, due to simultaneous transitions from Forest to Crop and from Crop to Forest. According to these data, policies have not maintained the quantity of Crop, as the peripheral region has not gained Crop sufciently to compensate for Crop’s loss from the central region. Keywords Change components · Intensity Analysis · Urbanization · Socio-economic development · Land cover · Agricultural area Introduction Land use changes have occurred rapidly since the economic restructuring in China (Liu et al. 2010). Chinese cities tri- pled in size during 1978–2010 (Schneider and Mertes 2014). A series of development strategies including “Rising of Cen- tral China” and “The Belt and Road Initiative” has attempted to infuence land changes, especially in central China, in provinces such as Hunan Province. Hunan’s capital city is Changsha (27°51′–28°40′N, 111°53′–114°5′E), which has an area of about 12,000 km 2 covering fve national develop- ment zones and nine provincial industrial parks. Changsha has experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization for more than two decades, which makes it representative of cit- ies in central China. Changsha has recently established the “XiangJiang New Area,” which strives to be the major area in the Yangtze River Economic Zone and the core growth pole of the “The Belt and Road” region. This region includes the transition belt of the east coastal area and the mid-west area, along with part of the Yangtze economic belt and * Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr. rpontius@clarku.edu Bin Quan quanbin308@aliyun.com Hongge Ren rhg365@outlook.com Peilin Liu liu_peilin@126.com 1 College of City and Tourism and HIST Hengyang Base of UNESCO, Hengyang Normal University, Hengyang 421002, People’s Republic of China 2 School of Resource, Environment and Safety Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, People’s Republic of China 3 School of Geography, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610-1477, USA