sustainability Article Land Use Dynamics and Optimization from 2000 to 2020 in East Guangdong Province, China Yong Lai 1,2,3, Guangqing Huang 2,3,*, Shengzhong Chen 2, Shaotao Lin 2, Wenjun Lin 2 and Jixin Lyu 2 1 Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China;
[email protected] 2 Key Lab of Guangdong for Utilization of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Geospatial Information Technology and Application, Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510070, China;
[email protected] (S.C.);
[email protected] (S.L.);
[email protected] (W.L.);
[email protected] (J.L.) 3 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel./Fax: +86-20-87685006 Abstract: Anthropogenic land-use change is one of the main drivers of global environmental change. China has been on a fast track of land-use change since the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978. In view of the situation, this study aims to optimize land use and provide a way to effectively coordinate the development and ecological protection in China. We took East Guangdong (EGD), an underde- veloped but populous region, as a case study. We used land-use changes indexes to demonstrate the land-use dynamics in EGD from 2000 to 2020, then identified the hot spots for fast-growing areas of built-up land and simulated land use in 2030 using the future land-use simulation (FLUS) model. The results indicated that the cropland and the built-up land changed in a large proportion during the study period.