Expressing the spatio-temporal pattern of farmland change in arid lands using landscape metrics

摘要

Identifying, recording and monitoring land cover change on the Earth's surface is a complex procedure. Spatio-temporal modelling is an effective approach to simplifying and simulating the process. Existing spatio-temporal modelling methods are typically based on either, an overlay of multi-temporal land cover maps, or temporal trend analysis of spatial pattern indices. Consequently, an understanding of the spatial dynamics of any changes is either fragmental in the former case, or invisible in the latter case, due to the lack of adequate geographical location information.