Human disturbance is one of the essential driving forces of landscape evolution. The quantitative evaluation of the spatial and temporal characteristics of landscape evolution and its relationship with human disturbance are of great significance to regional ecological protection and management and are crucial for achieving coordinated socioeconomic development and ecological–environmental protection. In this study, we took the coastal wetlands in northern Jiangsu province, China, as the research area, and proposed a quantitative evaluation method for directional landscape evolution. On this basis, the spatiotemporal characteristics of the landscape evolution from 1980 to 2020 and the relationship with human disturbance were quantitatively evaluated by combining a human disturbance index and statistical methods. The results showed that: (1) The area of the natural wetlands decreased significantly over the past 40 years, while the areas of artificial wetlands and non-wetlands increased significantly. (2) The landscape evolution process was dominated by the degradation process. The main types of degradation were natural wetland conversion to artificial wetland and non-wetland areas and Spartina alterniflora invasion. The restoration type was mainly restoration among artificial and natural wetlands. (3) The degradation of wetland landscapes demonstrated a southward shift trend and the spatial consistency with the change of the human disturbance index was high (the correlation coefficient was 0.89). (4) The human disturbance index was significantly and positively correlated with the rate of degradation, with a correlation coefficient of 0.43, and was not significantly and positively correlated with the restoration rate, with a correlation coefficient of 0.14. The findings in this paper provide additional information and theoretical guidance for the control of coastal wetland development and utilization, as well as for achieving coordinated wetland resource development together with utilization and ecological protection in the coastal wetlands of Jiangsu province, China.

Numerous meteorological drought-monitoring indices and remote-sensing-based spatial drought monitoring indices have been developed and applied to monitor drought in different ways. However, individual indices have obvious deficiencies in terms of their responses to drought, and they do not comprehensively reflect the available information on drought. To overcome issues with the data themselves and improve drought monitoring techniques, we use a comprehensive drought index (CDI) derived from the vegetation condition index, the temperature condition index, and the precipitation condition index to monitor meteorological or agricultural drought for the Sichuan-Chongqing region. To assess CDI performance, monthly CDI values for Sichuan-Chongqing region were used to analyse the spatial and temporal variations of the 2006 drought. The results indicated that all aspects of the drought were monitored, and the results were in agreement with related research. Meanwhile, an extreme drought was accurately explored using the CDI in the Sichuan-Chongqing region from 2000 to 2011. Finally, a validation was performed, and the results show that the CDI is closely related with the standardized precipitation index calculated using a 3-month time scale (SPI3), as well as variations in crop yield and drought-affected crop area. These results provide further evidence that the CDI is an indicator that can be used in integrated drought monitoring and that it can simultaneously reflect meteorological and agricultural drought information.