Abstract:

In the process of rapid urbanization，land use patterns are going through changes and have significant impacts on the system of earth surface.Therefore，it is very important to study land use change processes and possible tendencies.This paper selected Wuxi district as the study area，which has rapid urbanization and prominent ecoenvironmental pressure.Historical land use scenarios for 1980，1995 and 2000 were analyzed to track land use change by TM/ETM image explanation and spatial analysis of Arcgis software.And relief image，transportation images，urban extent images were also integrated.The SLEUTH model，a cellbased tempospatial process model，was applied to interpret historical land use change patterns and simulate future change scenarios.Then land use change trends under different land protection situations were revealed according to these scenarios.The result showed that the precision of historical land use change simulation was high.Based on the coefficient calibration result and grayscales of land pattern in excluded layer，two land use change scenarios were simulated.The “scenario I” assumes that land use patterns will follow the trend of historical land use change，in which urban space will rapidly grow with huge encroachment of arable land.However the “scenario II” enhances paddy field protection intensity by 50 percent，dry field by 12 percent，forest and grass by 50 percent.The result shows that the rapid growth trend of urban space is restricted well and arable land is protected.The study also testifies the applicability of SLEUTH model in analyzing land use tempospatial process in rapid urbanization region of China.

Key words: urban growth, land use change, SLEUTH, scenario