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Thresholds of landscape change: a new tool to manage green infrastructure and social–economic development

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Abstract

An understanding of how and where a landscape can be improved with green infrastructure is important for the development of land-use policies. However, it is still a big challenge to manage landscapes due to a lack of condition-based diagnosis and consistent conflicts with social–economic interests. The purpose of this study is to identify the thresholds of landscape change and to explore new reference lines of policy decision-making for balancing social–economic development and green infrastructure management. Five different landscape types and their thresholds of landscape change were identified using parametric and piecewise linear models in the district of Haidian, Beijing, PR China, and their changes and social–economic drivers were analyzed with principal component analysis and a stepwise linear regression model for the time period 1991–2010. It is shown that different thresholds of different landscapes do exist and can be identified by the area of their key elements of green infrastructure. Integrating these thresholds into a social–economic context, it is shown where and how social–economic variables can be manipulated quantitatively to achieve development targets with respect to green infrastructure in individual towns and the entire district. Green infrastructure can be managed by changing just a small proportion of social–economic investment. This paper provides a useful tool to achieve a sustainable development by balancing green infrastructure with social–economic interests.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by Centre of Land Consolidation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of China (41271198) and the National Project (2012BAJ24B05).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Yuanmingyuan West Road 2, Haidian District, Beijing, 100193, People’s Republic China

    Wenping Liu & Zhenrong Yu

  2. Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Hohenheim, Schloß, Osthof-Süd, 70593, Stuttgart, Germany

    Jirko Holst

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  1. Wenping Liu
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Correspondence to Zhenrong Yu.

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Liu, W., Holst, J. & Yu, Z. Thresholds of landscape change: a new tool to manage green infrastructure and social–economic development. Landscape Ecol 29, 729–743 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-014-0007-1

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