Modeling the Relative Contributions of Land Use Change and Harvest to Forest Landscape Change in the Taihe County, China

Forests are under pressure from land use change due to anthropogenic activities. Land use change and harvest are the main disturbances of forest landscape changes. Few studies have focused on the relative contributions of different disturbances. In this study, we used the CA-Markov model, a land-use change model, coupled with a forest landscape model, LANDIS-II, to simulate dynamic change in Taihe County, China, from 2010 to 2050. Scenarios analysis was conducted to quantify the relative contributions of land use change and harvest. Our results show that forestland and arable land will remain the primary land-use types in 2050, whereas the built-up land will sprawl drastically. Land use change and harvest may result in the significant loss of forest area and changes in landscape structure. The simulated forest area will increase by 16.2% under the no disturbance scenario. However, under harvest, forest conversion, and integrated scenario, the area will be reduced by 5.2%, 16.5%, and 34.9%, respectively. The effect of harvest is gradually enhanced. The land use change will account for 60% and harvest will account for 40% of forest landscape change in 2050, respectively. Our results may benefit from the integration of regional forest management and land-use policy-making, and help to achieve a trade-off between economy and ecological environment.