sustainability Article Land-Use/Cover Change and Driving Mechanism on the West Bank of Lake Baikal from 2005 to 2015—A Case Study of Irkutsk City Zehong Li 1,2, Yang Ren 1,2, Jingnan Li 1,2, Yu Li 1,2,*, Pavel Rykov 3, Feng Chen 1,2 and Wenbiao Zhang 1 1 Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China;
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[email protected] Received: 13 July 2018; Accepted: 13 August 2018; Published: 16 August 2018 Abstract: Lake Baikal is located on the southern tableland of East Siberian Russia. The west coast of the lake has vast forest resources and excellent ecological conditions, and this area and the Mongolian Plateau constitute an important ecological security barrier in northern China. Land-use/cover change is an important manifestation of regional human activities and ecosystem evolution. This paper uses Irkutsk city, a typical city on the West Bank of Lake Baikal, as a case study area. Based on three phases of Landsat remote-sensing image data, the land-use/cover change pattern and change process are analyzed and the natural factors and socioeconomic factors are combined to reveal driving forces through the partial least squares regression (PLSR) model.