Abstract
Land degradation is a global environmental issue, affecting human sustainable development. The trend of land cover change (LCC) is one of the core sub-indicators of land degradation assessment in Sustainable Development Goal 15.3.1, which is closely related to the quality of land resources and regional ecological environment. Sustainable management of land resources is the basis and premise of sustainable development of human society and economy. In order to more comprehensively assess the land degradation situation from LCC, optimize the land cover (LC) structure and land resource utilization. This paper combines land cover qualitative change (LQaC) (LC type change) and land cover quantitative change (LQtC) (land vegetation cover change) to comprehensively assess land degradation, and applies it to the Pakistan part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The results showed that land degradation area in Pakistan from 2001 to 2020 was 1.99% (17,550.07km2), of which 1.90% (16,756.35km2) was caused by LQaC, and 0.09% (793.72km2) was caused by LQtC. Land improvement was 10.75% (94,805.65 km2). Land degradation is mainly caused by LQaC, and it mainly in the Indus River Valley and the central and eastern plains, which is significantly affected by human activities. At the same time, we found that in Pakistan: the continuous agricultural expansion (grassland to cropland) and vegetation establishment (unused land to grassland) are accompanied by serious withdrawal of agriculture (cropland to grassland) and vegetation loss (grassland to unused land). The agricultural expansion and the intensification of human activities lead to land degradation. Our assessment suggests that the government should focus on formulating effective land use policies, while protecting the ecological environment and vegetation: improving the productivity of cropland, optimizing the use of cropland resources, and reasonably reclaiming cropland to realize “Land Degradation Neutrality” and sustainable development of land resources in Pakistan.
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Data availability
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. The data sets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This study is supported by Sichuan Provincial Department of science and technology (project of Sichuan Provincial Department of science and technology, “Research and Application of Key Technologies for Agricultural Drought Monitoring in Tibet Based on Multi-source Remote Sensing Data”, Grant No: 2021YFQ0042), Government of the Tibet Autonomous Region (Tibet Autonomous Region Science and technology support plan project, “Construction and Demonstration Application of Ecological Environment Monitoring Technology System in Tibet Based on Three-dimensional Remote Sensing Observation Network”, Grant No: XZ201901-GA-07) and School of Geoscience and Technology, Southwest Petroleum University.
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XP: Data collection and processing, data analysis and writing the original draft. WZ: Supervision and manuscript review. HZ: data collection and validation. YZ: validation and manuscript review. LR: manuscript review. ZY: Supervision.
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Peng, X., Zegen, W., Zhuo, H. et al. A land degradation assessment based on the combination of quantitative and qualitative change of land cover: a case study in Pakistan. Environ Earth Sci 82, 43 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-022-10738-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-022-10738-6