Correlation analysis on spatial pattern of land use and soil at catchment scale
流域尺度土地利用与土壤类型空间分布的相关性研究

Land use/cover change and its driving force have become the hot topic of ecologists and geographers within recent years with farmland loss due to population growth. However, most research works carried out at present are focused on the role of human factors on land use/land cover change, for example population growth, grain demand, road construction, urban expansion, policy change and others. In fact, apart from the human factors, the land use/land cover change on macro scale is more dependent on the natural environmental background. As one of principal environmental factors, the spatial distribution of soil types may affect land use structure and change . To study the relationship between soil and land use pattern will be of significance to identify the effect of natural environmental factors on land use change . In this study, a case study was carried out in Yuqiao Reservoir Basin focusing on the relationship between the soil spatial pattern and land use pattern by using remote sensing data, GIS modeling, and landscape ecological approaches. It was found: (1) the land use types less involved by human, such as woodland (including woodland, sparse woodland, shrubland, other types) and grassland, are mainly distributed in the leaching Cinnamon soil, infant cinnamon soil and brown forest soil while the land use types affected strongly by human activity, such as cropland, are mainly distributed in the leaching Cinnamon soil, infant cinnamon soil and fluvoaquic soil; (2) The land use diversity is commonly smaller than soil diversity in the same area. Meanwhile, land use and soil diversity index changes with the topographic gradient. They increase from mid-low hill areas, low-hill areas, low-hill and plain areas to flat basin inter-hills; (3) Both the diversity index of soil and land use decline with the mean patch area increase, and the soil diversity increase with the total area increase of the catchment rather than the land use diversity index; (4) Comparing the soil and the land use, slight correlationship is found between the mean patch size of land use and soil, while a good positive relationship is found between them. This implies that diverse land use areas often appear in the heterogeneous soil areas.