Bays are some of the core areas for marine economic development. The South China Sea coast is one of the most developed and dynamic places in the Asia-Pacific. In this study, we focused on the large bays surrounding the South China Sea. The techniques of image segmentation and supervised classification as well as image interpretation were used to acquire land-use data of 41 bays from 1988 to 2018. Then, we quantified the intensity and pattern of land-use and land-cover change during the two periods. Plantation land was the dominant agriculture land type as well as the second land use type after natural forest. Agriculture land cover increased from 29.8% to 40.9% and the growth was driven by plantation expansion. Deforestation was serious, including both natural forests and mangroves. Natural forest cover decreased by 31.6% and mangrove cover decreased by 16.2%. The vast majority of forest loss occurred in Sumatra and western Kalimantan. Commodity-driven deforestation for plantations was the major reason for forest loss.
Autores y editores
Zhang, Junjue
Su, Fenzhen
Land (ISSN 2073-445X) is an international, scholarly, open access journal of land use and land management published quarterly online by MDPI.
Proveedor de datos
Land (ISSN 2073-445X) is an international, scholarly, open access journal of land use and land management published quarterly online by MDPI.