The coupling relationship between sustainable use of land and harmonious development of ecological environment of Chongqing from 1999 to 2013

A rational assessment of the coupling relationship between land use and ecological environment is the premise to ensure that the land resources can be sustainably utilized for the economic development in a region. Chongqing is partially situated in karst area with a vulnerable eco-environment where in the past the environmental impact due to unchanging land use pattern has been severe. Therefore, a well coupled relationship between land use and eco-environment is very important for the sustainable development in the area. In this paper, this relationship and associated reasons for various coupling are fully analyzed, by using principal component analysis through the application of statistical software SPSS. The results show that, land use index increased year by year from 1999 to 2013, which was attribute to the large-scale construction of urbanization. In the same period, the ecological environment index show that the overall eco-environmental quality in the area had a steady increase, except for a declined state from 2000 to 2004. The results also show that, coupling development degree has risen from 0.3874 which implies a mild recession and loss of the land use type, to 0.7540 which suggests an intermediate coordinated development and economic domination type from 1999 to 2013. However, the situation was changed in 2011 when the land use index was for the first time less than the ecological environment index. As a result, basic types of the coupling development was shifted from an ecology-oriented development to an economy-dominated one; the mode of regional economic development changed from a land use controlled type to an eco-environment constrained one; and the ecological environment benefit lagged behind the economic benefits from the use of land resources. Due to the improvement of overall land resource utilization level and ecological environment, the coupling relationship has been transformed from the imbalance development into coordinated one. At present stage, we should stick to such an idea that both intensive utilization of land resources and immediate measures for the resource protection should be implemented simultaneously. Meanwhile, it is encouraged to optimize the economic structure and innovative technology, to develop cycling economy and clean energy, and to maintain a relatively stable eco-environment dynamics to ensure that the utilization of land resources in Chongqing can be sustainably implemented.