Assessment of coastal development policy based on simulating a sustainable land‐use scenario for Liaoning Coastal Zone in China

Abstract

Unsustainable land development policy can result in serious eco‐environmental issues, leading to unsustainable development in coastal zones, the phenomenon of which is particularly prominent in developing countries. How to assess the impact of policy on the sustainable development of land resource in the future is a challenge that is well worth exploring. With the coastal zone of Liaoning Province in China as an example, this paper proposes a new framework for assessing coastal development policy based on simulating the sustainable land‐use scenario (S). The results show that under Scenario D that driven by government's development policies, the proportions of highly exploited construction land and shoreline would be 11 and 18 percentage points higher, respectively, than those under Scenario S, whereas the potential losses of agricultural land and natural land in Scenario S would increase by 14.5% and 12.6%, respectively, the natural shoreline would decrease by 25.1% in comparison with Scenario S. Policy‐led deviation indexes in industrial, urban, and port land use are 12.98, 7.15, and 2.02, respectively, on the contrary in natural land use, it even reaches a high level of −15.07. This indicates that, being driven by the government development policies, the development scales of industrial, urban, and port land/shoreline use significantly will exceed the corresponding sustainably healthy ranges, leading to a massive diversion of natural land/shoreline, which thereby becomes the type most remarkably impacted by policy errors. The findings can provide case‐study analysis and reference for assessing the impact of development policy on resource‐environment sustainability.

Reshaping the Sustainable Geographical Pattern: A Major Function Zoning Model and Its Applications in China

“…They are usually determined based on scientific mechanism analysis or by consulting national industry standards, such as slope of construction land and environmental quality standards. If there is no clear scientific solution, that is, algorithms do not solve it and there are no national industry standards, then they can be determined by subject experts or by consulting relevant research (Fan et al, , ). Integrated assessment of grid cell territorial functions constrained by total control parameters λ n .…”

“…Using these simulation models, it is possible to construct rational scenarios for different sustainability objectives, such as maximizing economic effects (Wu et al, 2012), minimizing pollutant emissions or environmental impacts (Bohnes et al, 2017;Degraeuwe et al, 2017), prioritizing ecological security (Brunner et al, 2017;Eitelberg et al, 2016), limiting climate change and carbon emissions (Anaya-Romero et al, 2015;Prestele et al, 2017), as well as for other sustainability scenarios, such as water resources (Proskuryakova et al, 2018), agricultural production (Chaudhary et al, 2018;Krasa et al, 2010;Van Vliet et al, 2017), or environmental protection (Najmuddin et al,2017;Zarandian et al, 2017). Obviously, most of these models are based on historical or current scenarios, and they assume consistent historical trajectories and development statuses, which can be problematic for developing countries with large-scale and disorderly land development (Fan et al, 2018). The models also usually develop an optimization system for a single objective and then reveal temporal and spatial evolution guidelines, but it is difficult for them to coordinate multiple objectives.…”

“…There are two useful research foundations in the existing literature. The first is in research on land use and concerns the common assumption in early studies that looked at pursuing maximum economic benefit and studies that emphasized maximizing food security in a single agricultural production system, which held that there are differences in the suitability of land for the cultivation of crops and deriving economic benefits and that there is an optimal land allocation scheme that can maximize its suitability for development and utilization or maximize economic benefits (Xu et al, ; Lin & Yi, ; Fan et al, ). The other foundation is the common basis of all research on ecosystems, which is that different geographical areas need to remedy different ecological problems, such as soil erosion and rocky desertification, or need to protect ecological service functions, such as biodiversity and water conservation, and despite the economic benefits of developing and utilizing areas of land being rarely considered, seeking to maximize the value of ecological service functions can lead to a land optimized allocation scheme (Tilman et al, ; Winemiller et al, ).…”

Construction of knowledge rule sets for the classification of land cover information for the coastal zone of Peninsular Malaysia

“…As the zone with the most intense land-sea interactions, the coastal zone is one of the most complex and dynamic natural systems on the surface of the Earth. Its natural conditions are superior and rich in resources, advance science, and technology, and provide convenient transportation, which can provide extremely favorable conditions for economic development (Fan et al, 2018;Soderqvist et al, 2005;. The coastal zone is not only the most valuable land and source of resources for many coastal countries but also the base for the development of marine enterprises and the economy, as well as the link for foreign trade and cultural exchange.…”

Using the Markov Model to simulate and predict the land use change in1992-2030 in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

“…Ecological interference evaluation method was introduced in the dynamic evaluation of the land use changes in rapid urbanization of coastal zones (Yi, Qian, Kobuliev, Han, & Li, 2020;Zhang et al, 2019). The development policy was assessed by simulating the sustainable land-use scenario (Fan, Wang, Wang, Chen, & Zhou, 2018;Li, et al, 2015).The spatial structures of major function zoning in China were explored using the spatial modeling and landscape metrics methods (Fan et al, 2019;Y. F. Wang & Fan, 2020).…”