Extracting Frequent Sequential Patterns of Forest Landscape Dynamics in Fenhe River Basin, Northern China, from Landsat Time Series to Evaluate Landscape Stability

The forest landscape pattern evolution can reveal the intensity and mode of action of human–land relationships at different times and in different spaces, providing scientific support for regional ecological security, human settlement health, and sustainable development. In this study, we proposed a novel method for analyzing the dynamics of landscape patterns. First, patch density (PD), largest patch index (LPI), landscape shape index (LSI), and contiguity index (CI) were used to identify the types of forest spatial patterns. The frequent sequential pattern mining method was used to detect the frequent subsequences from the time series of landscape pattern types from 1991 to 2020 and further evaluate the forest landscape stability of the Fenhe River Basin in China. The results show that different frequent sequence patterns have conspicuous spatial and temporal differences, which describe the evolution processes and stability changes during a certain period of forest evolution and play an important role in the analysis of forest dynamics. The proportion of the disturbed regions to the total forest area exhibited a downward trend. The long-term evolution pattern indicates that there are many evolution processes and trends in the forest at the same time, showing an aggregation distribution law. Compared with 2016, the forest landscape has become complete in 2020, and the overall stability of the Fenhe River Basin has improved. This study can provide scientific support to land managers and policy implementers and offer a new perspective for studying forest landscape pattern changes and evaluating landscape stability.