article · Land
The Markov-FLUS model, calibrated with eighteen driving factors including point-of-interest data, simulates land-use dynamics in Hubei Province from 2020 to 2035 across four policy scenarios: natural development, economic priority, ecological protection, and cultivated land protection. Model validation against historical records from 2000 to 2020 achieved an overall accuracy of 0.93 and a Kappa coefficient of 0.86. Cultivated land remains the dominant land-use category across all projections, alongside a general increase in construction land. In the economic priority and natural development scenarios, rapid construction growth encroaches upon forests and farmland. Conversely, the ecological protection pathway safeguards forests and water bodies while curbing urban spread, and the cultivated land protection scenario successfully increases farmland area whilst restraining construction expansion. These simulations provide comparative frameworks to evaluate how policy options shape regional spatial planning and ecological sustainability.
Land managers and policy planners need clear projections to understand how development priorities alter natural landscapes over time. By simulating the spatial outcomes of competing economic, agricultural, and conservation strategies, decision makers can quantify trade-offs between urban expansion, food production, and environmental preservation, helping balance economic growth against the loss of vital ecosystems and farmland.
The demonstrated simulation approach serves as a spatial decision-support tool for regional planning bodies, environmental consultancies, and land resource authorities. It represents an applied and tested modelling framework ready to inform long-term municipal zoning, conservation zoning, and agricultural preservation policies. Commercial planning firms could integrate these multi-scenario predictive workflows into GIS-based consultancy services for territorial spatial planning and environmental impact assessments.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
A goal of land change modelers should be to communicate scenarios of future change that show the variety of possible future landscapes based on the consequences of management decisions. This study employs the Markov-FLUS model to simulate land-use changes in Hubei Province in multiple scenarios that consider social, economic, and ecological policies using 18 driving factors, including point-of-interest data. First, the Markov-FLUS model was developed and validated with historical data from 2000 to 2020. The model was then used to simulate land-use changes from 2020 to 2035 in four scenarios: natural development, economic priority, ecological protection, and cultivated land protection. The results show that the Markov-FLUS model effectively simulates the land-use change pattern in Hubei Province, with an overall accuracy of 0.93 for land use simulation in 2020. The Kappa coefficient and FOM index also achieved 0.86 and 0.139, respectively. In all four scenarios, cultivated land remained the primary land use type in Hubei Province from 2020 to 2035, while construction land showed an increasing trend. However, there were large differences in the simulated land use patterns in different scenarios. Construction land expanded most rapidly in the economic priority scenario, while it expanded more slowly in the cultivated land protection scenario. We designed the protection scenario to restrict the rapid expansion of construction land. In the natural development and economic priority scenarios, construction land expanded and encroached on cultivated land and forests. In contrast, in the ecological protection scenario, forests and water areas were well-preserved, and the decrease in cultivated land and the increase in construction land were effectively suppressed, resulting in a large improvement in land use sustainability. Finally, in the cultivated land protection scenario, the cultivated land showed an increasing trend. The spread and expansion of construction land were effectively curbed. In conclusion, the Markov-FLUS model applied in this study to simulate land use in multiple scenarios has substantial implications for the effective utilization of land resources and the protection of the ecological environment in Hubei Province.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.3390/land12040744
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
