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Extensive land-use and land-cover change, triggered by rapid development of tourism and the expansion of townships, has occurred in the area surrounding the Changbai Mountain Biosphere Reserve (CMBR) in northeast China, a reservoir for distinctive ecosystems and biological diversity. The objective of this study was to examine the land-use changes surrounding the reserve in the context of forest and nature reserve management with the aid of maps from Landsat MSS imagery of 1977 and Landsat TM imagery of 1991 and 2007. The total land area and its change over time for each land-use class were calculated and cell-by-cell change data were used to detect, quantify, and determine the trends in land-use conversions. Results showed that there were large increases in land area for residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation land-use types, whereas the forest area decreased considerably. At the same time, the area under jurisdiction of townships has nearly doubled, with the largest increase in Manjiang. Land-use change was caused by regional population growth as a result of tourism development that triggered the expansion of township boundaries and contributed to shifts in forest management policy. Our study offers land and reserve managers within the CMBR and similar areas a basis for making more informed land-use and management decisions to potentially minimize detrimental ecological impacts of land-use change.
