Multiple scenarios analysis on land use simulation by coupling socioeconomic and ecological sustainability in Shanghai, China

Land use simulation under different development strategies is the key research direction of quantitative analysis of land use planning. Recent studies coupled the spatial optimization of land use with economic development and ecological protection, but without consideration of environmental justice. This study introduced the evaluation of ecosystem services (ES) supply and demand equilibrium into the coupled model integrating Multi-Objective Programming (MOP) model and Patch-Generating Land Use Simulation (PLUS) model. It can comprehensively consider both socioeconomic and ecological objectives by analyzing geographical, built environment, and socioeconomic data. We found that the dynamic degree of land use change in the sustainable development (SD) scenario is much higher than the overall land use change trends during the last decade. A large number of cropland and parts of built-up land will be transferred towards ecological land. Furthermore, the results show that the coupled model of land use simulation can mitigate the mismatch of ES supply and demand, leading to environmental injustice. The sustainable development scenario can help decision-makers to understand how important government intervention is during future land use planning from the perspective of sustainable development.