Habitat degradation degree in response to land use change in Guiyang City from 2005 to 2015

Guiyang City is an important central city in southwest China. It is located in a typical karst ecological vulnerability region. In recent years, the land use of the city has been reshaped by a series of ecological protection planning and rapid economic development, which has heavily influenced on habitat quality. In order to investigate such influence and associated spatial pattern on the urban habitat degradation degree in both karstic and ecologically vulnerable region, this paper attempts to analyze the characteristics of land use change between 2005 and 2015 in the city, based on the land use data, by using Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model. The results show that, (1) Urban construction land, rural settlement and forestland have a sharp increase trend, while paddy field and dry land have an obvious decrease trend from 2005 to 2015 in Guiyang City. The other land use types have little change in this decade. It is prominent that numerous dry lands have been converted to forestland, land for construction and rural settlement, as well as paddy field converted to forestland. (2) During the past ten years, the habitat degradation degree generally has a decreasing trend over the city, which is dominated by slight decrease. The rise of the degradation degree mainly occurs in the south area, while the decreases of the degree are located in the north, east and west of the city. (3) Decreases of high value and low value are main types in change of habitat degradation degree hot-spots in Guiyang City. Increasing region of high value is mainly situated in south part of Guiyang, while increasing region of low value and decreasing regions of high value and low value are mainly in north, east and west parts of Guiyang City. Area change of threat land use types (e.g. paddy field, dry land, urban construction land, rural settlement, road, industrial and mining land) exerts a positive impact on habitat degradation degree while area change of natural land use types (e.g. forestland, shrub, grassland, water) has a negative impact on habitat degradation degree. The conversions from paddy field and dry land to urban construction land, rural settlement and forestland due to Green for Grain Project and rapid urbanization are main reasons for the change of habitat degradation degree in Guiyang City.