Spatial–temporal evolution characteristics of land use and habitat quality in Shandong Province, China

To explore the sustainable mechanism of land use and habitat quality, the present study examined the land cover data of Shandong Province from 1980 to 2020 to understand the spatial–temporal evolution characteristics of land use. The “Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Trade-off” (InVEST-HQ) model and spatial auto-correlation model were further employed to evaluate the habitat quality and analyze the relationship between its spatial distribution pattern and land use type. Our results suggested that cultivated land was the dominant land use type in Shandong Province from 1980 to 2020. During this period, the area of water and URL (urban and rural industrial and mining residential land) were gradually increased, while other land types decreased progressively. Political and socio-economic factors were the dominant factors for the evolution of land use types, which exhibited significant stage variation characteristics, and the most drastic change was observed from 2010 to 2020. We further found that habitat quality in Shandong Province was dominated by moderate degradation, whose degree of degradation was positively correlated with the degree of land use development. Moreover, the average habitat quality decreased obviously over the past 40 years, and the fastest decreased period was similar to the phase change characteristics of land use types. In addition, habitat quality was significantly clustered in spatial distribution. Hot spots (high-value areas) were mainly natural ecosystems, while cold spots (low-value areas) were mainly ecosystems that were significantly affected by human activities, such as cultivated land and URL. Our findings suggest that administrators should formulate differentiation policies, solve the development dilemma of low-level habitat quality areas and build land space security pattern to promote the ecological quality.