Abstract: Geographical components spatio-temporal change is one of the important contents in geography research. And perspective study is that how to use computer technology to express the spatio-temporal change of spatial data. Aiming at revealing the spatio-temporal variation of land use/land cover (LULC) process and mining spatio-temporal variation rules, the types and methods of spatio-temporal variation of LULC patches are discussed, and a spatio-temporal variation analysis algorithm for analyzing LULC patches is constructed. The reliability and effectiveness of the algorithm are verified according to analysis of spatio-temporal variation of LULC in the past 40 years in the Fuxian Lake Basin. The results show that, the method can be used to analyze the spatio-temporal variation process of geographical elements such as surface cover, and can efficiently reveal the change process of geographic elements and their attributes on the time axis.

Key words: spatio-temporal variation, spatio-temporal process object, LULC, patches, surface cover