Extraction and Analysis of Land Cover Heterogeneity over China

Spatial heterogeneity exists in land surface at every scale, and it is one of key factors to bring uncertainty to land parameter retrieval from remote-sensed data. This paper proposed a methodology to use the boundary length among different land cover types to characterize and quantify land surface heterogeneity based on high-resolution land cover images. Then the heterogeneity feature at 1 kilometer scale in China was extracted from “GlobalLand30” land cover datasets with the spatial resolution of 30 m. The mixed structure, degree of fragmentation and intra-heterogeneity of eight main vegetation biomes from MODIS land cover product over heterogeneous surface in china were analyzed. Mountain area and ecotone are more heterogeneous than other regions. Savanna biome (average boundary length is 7 426 meters) is the most heterogeneous zone followed by forest, grass/crop and shrub biome with average boundary length of 4 323, 3 160, 1 779 meters, respectively.