*Article* **Comparative Analysis of Temporal-Spatial Variation on Mountain-Flatland Landscape Pattern in Karst Mountainous Areas of Southwest China: A Case Study of Yuxi City**

**Li Wu 1, Jing Zhou <sup>1</sup> and Binggeng Xie 2,\***


**Abstract:** Taking Yuxi City, a typical mountain-flatland in the southwestern karst mountainous area, as an example, we used six remote sensing images from 1995 to 2018 as the main data sources, and the grid scale was used to calculate the landscape pattern index in order to analyze the temporal-spatial evolution characteristics of the landscape pattern. The results are shown as follows: (1) At the class level, most landscape indices and fragmentation degrees of landscape units in the flatland area are significantly higher than those in the mountainous area. The layout of construction land and cultivated land is also more concentrated than that in the mountainous area, but the central tendency of forest and grass in the mountainous area is more eye-catching. (2) At the landscape level, although the landscape diversity index and landscape shape index of both the mountainous areas and the flatland areas decrease in the low-value area and increase in the high-value area, the proportion of high-value areas in the flatland area is noticeably greater. The proportion of the high-value areas of the largest patch index in the mountainous area is significantly greater, and in the flatland area, the low-value area continues to expand while the middle and high value areas continue to shrink. (3) The landscape shape of the flatland area is becoming more complex, and the landscape units in the mountainous area tend to be single. The natural landscape of forest and grass in the mountainous area continues to expand and tends to be contiguous, while the man-made landscape in the flatland area continually increases and shows fragmentation, reflecting the pattern characteristics formed by the coupling evolution of land use between two regions. The urban expansion and the increase in the construction land in the flatland area are mutually causal with the decrease in cultivated land and the increase in forest and grass in the mountainous area.

**Keywords:** mountainous areas; flatland areas; grid scale; landscape pattern evolution; Yuxi City

doi.org/10.3390/land12020435 Academic Editor: Xiaoyong Bai

**Citation:** Wu, L.; Zhou, J.; Xie, B. Comparative Analysis of Temporal-Spatial Variation on Mountain-Flatland Landscape Pattern in Karst Mountainous Areas of Southwest China: A Case Study of Yuxi City. *Land* **2023**, *12*, 435. https://

Received: 25 December 2022 Revised: 4 February 2023 Accepted: 6 February 2023 Published: 7 February 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
