A review on historical trajectories and spatially explicit scenarios of land-use and land-cover changes in China

Land use in China has changed remarkably over the past centuries with manifold implications for sustainable development. Investigation and projection of the land-use and land-cover changes (LUCC) have therefore become critical to promote the understanding of the LUCC process and the interactions with human societies. Scientists had devoted great efforts to create, process, and interpret comprehensive historical land-use/cover datasets, and to simulate future land-use systems under different scenarios. We synthesize the literature on the historical trajectories of LUCC in China, and summarize existing efforts of scenario developments for the projection of spatially explicit LUCC. Our review therefore provides salient suggestions for future land-use change analysis.