Changes of land-cover and landscape pattern in Huihe national nature reserve

Changes in land-cover and landscape pattern are significant components of studies on ecological and environmental changes within nature reserves. Here, we applied change rate and transform matrix model with GIS to analyze Huihe nature reserve land-cover, based on 4 periods of Landsat TM images during 1995-2010. Then, we studied landscape pattern changes with a set of landscape indices such as mean patch area and cohesion index. The results showed that high coverage grassland and marshland are major land-cover types within Huihe nature reserve, which all decreased from 1995 to 2010 (-379.38 km2 and -39.25 km2). As to the landscape pattern, all landscape indices of high coverage grassland and marshland fell down, especially the mean patch area index and average shape index of marshland. Considering the changing periods, the degradation of land-cover and landscape pattern mainly happened from 1995 to 2004, whereas it slowed down after 2004. Our results approved that the situation of the grassland and wetland had changed better because of the establishment of national administration, as well as improving management actions.