Effects of forest compensation policy for public welfare on the spatiotemporal patterns and dynamics of vegetation cover: a case study at Lin'an, Hangzhou City

Evaluation of the effect of ecological compensation policies is important for improving policy regulations and vegetation recovery. We analyzed the spatiotemporal pattern of vegetation cover from 2001 to 2015 at Lin’ an City. We established the land-use change matrix in vegetation degraded area. We created a geodatabase in Arc GIS, including the Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI), national and provincial boundary of forest compensation policy for public welfare, built-up area, road, elevation, key forest reserves, rivers, and topographic wetness index. Finally, we used the multiple linear regression analysis to estimate the effects of national and provincial forest compensation policy for public welfare, biophysical factors, urbanization, and other human activities on vegetation cover change. Our results show that, during the 2001 to 2015, approximately 97% of the vegetated areas have suffered different levels of decline or degradation, with the moderate level of degradation constituting the largest proportion. The results of multiple linear regressions suggest that policy, elevation, distance to river, distance to key forest reserves, and distance to the center of the town have a significantly negative correlation with vegetation degradation, whereas distance to road and topographic wetness index have a positive correlation with vegetation degradation. Elevation has the greatest effect among the external factors analyzed. Moreover, in each degradation level, the areas where the compensation policy was implemented suffered a lower degradation than the other areas did. Our findings suggest that the implementation of ecological compensation policy plays a positive role in protecting vegetation cover, restricting inappropriate utilization, and improving regional environment quality.