Background: Desertification is one of the main obstacles to global sustainable development. Monitoring, evaluating and mastering its driving factors are very important for the prevention and control of desertification. As one of the largest deserts in China, the development of desertification in Otindag Sandy Land (OSL) resulted in the reduction in land productivity and serious ecological/environmental consequences. Although many ecological restoration projects have been carried out, the vegetation restoration of OSL and the impact mechanism of climate and human activities on desertification remain unclear. Methods: Taking OSL as the research area, this paper constructs the desertification index by using the remote sensing images and meteorological and socio-economic data, between 1986 and 2016, and analyzes the spatio-temporal evolution process and driving factors of desertification by using trend analysis and spearman rank correlation. Results: The results showed that: (1) Desertification in the OSL has fluctuated greatly during the past 30 years. Desertification recovered between 1986 and 1990, expanded and increased between 1990 and 2000, reduced between 2000 and 2004, developed rapidly between 2004 and 2007, and recovered again between 2007 and 2016; (2) The desertification of OSL is dominated by a non-significant change trend, accounting for 73.27%. In the significant change trend, the area of desertification rising trend is 20.32%, which is mainly located in the north and east, and the area of declining trend is 6.41%, which is mainly located in the southwest; (3) Desertification is the result of the superposition of climate and human activities. Climate change is the main influencing factor, followed by human activities, and the superposition effects of the two are spatio-temporal differences. Conclusions: These results shed light on the development of desertification in OSL and the relative importance and complex interrelationship between human activities and climate in regulating the process of desertification. Based on this, we suggest continuing to implement the ecological restoration policy and avoid the destruction of vegetation by large-scale animal husbandry in order to improve the situation of desertification.

With the rapid advancement of urbanization and industrialization, the contradiction between the social economy and resources and the environment has become increasingly prominent. On the basis of limited land resources, the way to promote multi-objective comprehensive development such as economic, social development and ecological and environmental protection through structure and layout regulation, so as to maximize regional comprehensive benefits, is an important task of current land spatial planning. Our aim is to obtain land-use-change data in the study area using remote-sensing data inversion and multiple-model simulation. Based on land suitability evaluation, we predict and optimize the land use structure of the study area in 2030 and evaluate and compare ecosystem services. Based on remote-sensing images and eco-environmental data from 1985 to 2014 in the study area, land use/land cover change (LUCC) and future simulation data were obtained by using supervised classification, landscape metrics and the CA-Markov model. The ecosystem services were evaluated by the InVEST model. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to evaluate the land suitability for LUCC. Finally, the LUCC in 2030 under two different scenarios, Scenario_1 (prediction) and Scenario_2 (optimization), were evaluated, and the ecosystem service functions were compared. In the last 30 years, the landscape in the study area has gradually fragmented, and the built-up land has expanded rapidly, increased by one-third, mainly at the cost of cropland, orchards and wasteland. According to the suitability evaluation, giving priority to the land use types with higher environmental requirements will ensure the study area has a higher ecosystem service value. The rapid development of urbanization has a far-reaching impact on regional LUCC. Intensive land resources need reasonable and scientific land use planning, and land use planning should be based on the suitability evaluation of land resources, which can improve the regional ecosystem service function.

The middle reaches of the Yangtze River region (MRYRR) are China’s first trans-regional urban agglomeration, located in the center of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The MRYRR is an important ecological reserve, and its land cover changes are affected by both socio-economic development and geographical environment. In this paper, Landsat ETM/TM/OLI remote sensing images were used to monitor land use and landscape patterns from 1990 to 2015. Through supervised classification, land use transfer matrix, landscape pattern metrics and correlation analysis, the spatial-temporal patterns of land use change and its relationship with socio-economic in the study area were revealed. The results showed that: (1) the main land use types in the study area were cropland (CL) and forestland (FL), accounting for more than three-quarters of the study area. During the study period, built-up land (BL) increased, CL decreased, FL increased first and then decreased; (2) the BL expanded mainly by occupying CL and FL, and regional landscape pattern was gradually fragmented, with complex patch shape and increasing diversity and heterogeneity. Among them, the BL is gradually gathered, and the FL and CL are gradually fragmented; (3) in the past 25 years, the urbanization process in this region has been obvious, and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has increased by 36 times. The socioeconomic variables were positively correlated with BL, orchard (OL) and Shannon diversity index (SHID), and negatively correlated with CL, Wasteland (WL), mean patch size (MPS) and contagion size (CONTAG). The results showed that the urbanization development has a great impact on the region, and the ecological protection task is still challenging. It is necessary to protect high-quality cropland and draw a red line for ecological protection. We should strengthen the construction of ecological corridors and ecological nodes to adapt to regional sustainable development.

The temporal and spatial characteristics of vegetation in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (MRYR) were analyzed from 1999 to 2015 by trend analysis, co-integration analysis, partial correlation analysis, and spatial analysis using MODIS-NDVI time series remote sensing data. The average NDVI of the MRYR increased from 0.72 to 0.80, and nearly two-thirds of the vegetation showed a significant trend of improvement. At the inter-annual scale, the relationship between NDVI and meteorological factors was not significant in most areas. At the inter-monthly scale, NDVI was almost significantly correlated with precipitation, relative humidity, and sunshine hours, and the effect of precipitation and sunshine hours on NDVI showed a pronounced lag. When the altitude was less than 2500 m, NDVI increased with elevation. NDVI increased gradually as the slope increased and decreased gradually as the slope aspect changed from north to south. NDVI decreased as the population density and per capita GDP increased and was significantly positively correlated with afforestation policy. These findings provide new insights into the effects of climate change and human activities on vegetation growth.