TY - JOUR

T1 - CLUENaban

T2 - A land use change model combining social factors with physical landscape factors for a mountainous area in Southwest China

AU - Wehner, Stefanie

AU - Herrmann, Sylvia

AU - Berkhoff, Karin

N1 - Funding Information: This work was conducted within the LILAC (“Living Landscapes China”) project, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under promotional reference 0330797A . The authors thank two unknown reviewers for their valuable comments which have strengthened the paper substantially. Copyright: Copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2014/1

Y1 - 2014/1

N2 - Land use modelling has used rural areas as object for a long time. Modellers start in general with physical landscape factors to determine the spatial distribution of land use, especially agricultural crops. An important factor defining rural areas is the dominance of livelihoods/economies based on agriculture combined with a strong relationship to tradition, high value of family ties, scales of social aggregation, and a framework given by nature. The inter-linkages among economic, social and environmental components determine both the complexity and dynamics of rural development. Both modellers and social scientists seek a better understanding of these complex rural systems in terms of their development paths, the underlying forces and the interactions between physical land use and rural society. In this paper, we use a combination of a land use change model and information about social relationship by referring both to the common spatial unit of villages for a rural region in south west China. We want to show how such a common unit can help to include social science information into a physically oriented land use model. The inclusion of social data results in a substantial improvement of the modelling results. In the model run we could show that land use patterns in the study area were closely related to socio-economic characteristics and governmental rules. In China, collective land and state land are distinguished. This land designation turned out to be the most important factor for the land use types rainfed, irrigated land, and rubber. All land use types were influenced by the ethnicity of village inhabitants because they had different land use traditions.

AB - Land use modelling has used rural areas as object for a long time. Modellers start in general with physical landscape factors to determine the spatial distribution of land use, especially agricultural crops. An important factor defining rural areas is the dominance of livelihoods/economies based on agriculture combined with a strong relationship to tradition, high value of family ties, scales of social aggregation, and a framework given by nature. The inter-linkages among economic, social and environmental components determine both the complexity and dynamics of rural development. Both modellers and social scientists seek a better understanding of these complex rural systems in terms of their development paths, the underlying forces and the interactions between physical land use and rural society. In this paper, we use a combination of a land use change model and information about social relationship by referring both to the common spatial unit of villages for a rural region in south west China. We want to show how such a common unit can help to include social science information into a physically oriented land use model. The inclusion of social data results in a substantial improvement of the modelling results. In the model run we could show that land use patterns in the study area were closely related to socio-economic characteristics and governmental rules. In China, collective land and state land are distinguished. This land designation turned out to be the most important factor for the land use types rainfed, irrigated land, and rubber. All land use types were influenced by the ethnicity of village inhabitants because they had different land use traditions.

KW - Land use change

KW - Modelling

KW - Participatory mapping

KW - Social factors

KW - Southwest China

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84889096719&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.09.027

DO - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.09.027

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84889096719

VL - 36

SP - 757

EP - 765

JO - Ecological indicators

JF - Ecological indicators

SN - 1470-160X

ER -