Driving Forces of Landscape Change at the Upriver of Minjiang, China

Research into landscape change was one of two major fields of interdisciplinary research into the human dimensions of environmental change, the other being the approach of socio-economic metabolism; the causes of which were complicated and comprehensive. Based on the household level interview, analyzing the causes of change by the multifactor was a good method. We applied the household level interview data to analyze the causes of landscape cover change at the upper reach of Minjiang, China. The causes of landscape change at the upper reach of Minjiang included agriculture, wood, infrastructure, economy, technology, policy & institution, demography and culture variables, etc. The results showed that the primary causes of landscape change at the upper reach of Minjiang were the correlative country policies (such as the Great Leap Forward, the Deforestation, the Institutional Revolution, the Planned Parenthood, the Open-up, the Natural Forest Conservation Program) and triggered event (such as the three years’ natural disaster) at the large scale, however, at the small scale such as at the village level, the principal cause of which was different, and there were the interplay among different factors. So we thought that the landscape cover change was the result of multifactor interplay at the upper reach of Minjiang, China.