Potential Suitability and Spatial Dynamics of Land Use Under Climate Change

Land use change has direct human impacts and profoundly alters the structure and function of terrestrial ecosystems. Numerous studies have explored land use change dynamics in the context of socio-economics, often overlooking the influence of climate change on the potential suitability of land use. To address this gap, we propose an integrated framework combining CLUE-S and MaxEnt models to analyze how land use in Tai’an City, Shandong Province, China, responds to future socio-economic and climate change scenarios. The CLUE-S model, based on land demand, and the MaxEnt model, based on suitability assessment, can effectively explore the trends of land change under the influence of human activities and global warming. This study maps the spatial distributions of land use under socio-economic development and four climate change pathways. Overall, the AUC values of the CLUE-S model were all greater than 0.7, and those of the MaxEnt model were all greater than 0.5, indicating that the results of both are relatively reliable. Our study reveals that, within the baseline development (BL) scenario, cultivated land, forest land, grassland, and unused land are projected to decrease between 2020 and 2040. Conversely, the expansion of water bodies and built land will keep growing. In addition, climate change is expected to enhance the suitability of cultivated land between 2020 and 2040, while reducing that of forest land, grassland, unused land, and built land, with only minimal effects on water bodies. Finally, our framework projected that the most widespread priority areas are cultivated land, followed by forest, grassland, water, built land, and unused land. These priority areas are largely determined by human activities, while the influence of climate change is relatively small. Our research framework has broad applicability to the other regions. Considering the MaxEnt model within the framework is beneficial for excluding unsuitable distribution areas of land use types in the CLUE-S model, which will provide new insights for the sustainable use of land resources.