Abstract: Changes in typical landscapes have an important influence on the ecohydrological processes and thus water environment security at the watershed scale. In this study, we adopted land use/cover change trajectories in combination with landscape ecology approaches, to investigate the spatiotemporal variability in typical landscapes of Yuqiao watershed, Tianjin during the past 30 years based on Landsat MSS images from 1984 to 2013. The land use/covers exhibit remarkable changes, with 50% and 33% decreases in woodland and farmland, respectively. The changes in land use/cover occur largely in north hilly and northern plain regions, representing about 63.11% of the whole watershed, of which about 96.65% of changes is caused by human activity. The variation of typical landscapes has a similar pattern to that of the whole watershed, exhibiting an overall upward trend in landscape fragmentation for each landscape type with lowered connectivity. The landscape diversity reveals a trend of gradual increase and the heterogeneity of landscape pattern is enhanced.

Key words: vegetation restoration, soil microbial biomass carbon, soil physical-chemical property, growth stage