Designing an integrated urban growth prediction model: a scenario-based approach for preserving scenic landscapes

Abstract

This study demonstrates the integration of landscape aesthetic quality and probable urban growth patterns in urban landscape modelling. This was performed using SLEUTH as a scenario-based urban growth model in Gorgan City of Iran. Future urbanization was predicted under developing three different scenarios including historical, managed and aesthetically sound urban growth up to the year 2030. Multi-Layer Perceptron neural network model was conducted for mapping the aesthetic suitability of the study area. The aesthetic suitability layer was used in the third scenario of SLEUTH model as the excluded layer to protect the scenic patches in future. The results showed that by correct implementation of urban growth policies, 323 ha in the second scenario and 650 ha in the third scenario would be saved. This integrated model would help the planners for a better management of urban landscapes as a Spatial Decision Support System.     

Quantification of Urban Landscape Dynamics Using Patch Parameters and Landscape Indices: An Analytical Study of Ranchi

Urbanization incepts serious challenges of growth and its management. The issues of urbanization manifest in the form of overcrowding, congestion, insufficient infrastructure, inadequate service provisioning, environmental degradation, pollution etc and affect the socioeconomic development of the city. Ranchi, the capital of newly formed state of Jharkhand (India) has been witnessing the same scenario; raising the question of its planning and management of growth to make it more efficient and sustainable. It hoists the necessity to study the pattern of urbanization and its impact on other landuse/landcover categories in Ranchi city. In order to assess the urbanization pattern and spatio-temporal dynamics in the study area, the changing pattern of the three significant patch parameters viz. patch frequency, largest patch size and average patch size of all affected landuse/landcover categories over a time gradient representing the pre-capital and post-capital formation phases of the Ranchi city have been analyzed. The two conventional landscape indices viz. Shannon’s diversity Index and Simpson’s diversity index and a newly developed index ‘Normalized Patch size Range Index’ have been employed in the analyses which not only ascertained the finding derived but also provided meaningful insights pertaining to the spatio-temporal urban landscape dynamics prevailing in the Ranchi city.     

Characterizing urban area dynamics in historic city of Kurukshetra,India, using remote sensing and spatial metric tools

Abstract

Developing countries like India are an urbanization hotspot with many upcoming towns and cities. Growth in small and medium sized towns and cities have been unnoticed and growing without appropriate urban planning. Utilizing the available medium resolution satellite data and geospatial platforms, the growth dynamics of Kurukshetra city was analysed over a period of 24 years. The study employed a combination of change detection technique and spatial metrics (six each of class and landscape levels) analysis to delineate the growth track of the city and its environs. A significant increase in urban built up (dense 237%; open 1038%) is seen majorly at the cost of open area (70%) and tree clad (58%). Phases of city’s aggregation and diffusion are observed using class and landscape level spatial metrics. Understanding and monitoring of land use changes in and around city limits using integrated spatial tools provide better decision making capability.     

基于GIS的山地城市建筑高度控制方法及其应用

将自然山体景观的维护作为山地城市建筑高度控制的目标,以研究区域的地表模型(不规则三角网,简称TIN)为基础数据,基于GIS 10.2技术平台,将瞭望点视野中的山脊线下降20%后的高度作为视线高度控制线计算研究区域内建筑高度控制值,以期为山地城市的控制性详细规划和城市设计中的建筑高度控制提供技术参考。最后,以河南省登封市新区为例,应用此方法来绘制该地区的建筑高度控制栅格图。通过设置像元分辨率的大小,本方法也可用于山地城市修建性详细规划中建筑设计方案的比较。     

Satellite monitoring of urbanization and environmental impacts—A comparison of Stockholm and Shanghai

This study investigates urbanization and its potential environmental consequences in Shanghai and Stockholm metropolitan areas over two decades. Changes in land use/land cover are estimated from support vector machine classifications of Landsat mosaics with grey-level co-occurrence matrix features. Landscape metrics are used to investigate changes in landscape composition and configuration and to draw preliminary conclusions about environmental impacts. Speed and magnitude of urbanization is calculated by urbanization indices and the resulting impacts on the environment are quantified by ecosystem services. Growth of urban areas and urban green spaces occurred at the expense of cropland in both regions. Alongside a decrease in natural land cover, urban areas increased by approximately 120% in Shanghai, nearly ten times as much as in Stockholm, where the most significant land cover change was a 12% urban expansion that mostly replaced agricultural areas. From the landscape metrics results, it appears that fragmentation in both study regions occurred mainly due to the growth of high density built-up areas in previously more natural/agricultural environments, while the expansion of low density built-up areas was for the most part in conjunction with pre-existing patches. Urban growth resulted in ecosystem service value losses of approximately 445 million US dollars in Shanghai, mostly due to the decrease in natural coastal wetlands while in Stockholm the value of ecosystem services changed very little. Total urban growth in Shanghai was 1768 km² and 100 km² in Stockholm. The developed methodology is considered a straight-forward low-cost globally applicable approach to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate urban growth patterns that could help to address spatial, economic and ecological questions in urban and regional planning.     

A transboundary study of urban sprawl in the Pacific Coast region of North America: The benefits of multiple measurement methods

Sprawling urban development has emerged as a primary concern of policy makers, land preservationists and both urban and rural communities in developing regions across the globe. For the first time in history, more global residents lived in urban areas than not and the trend to urbanization is in full force at the start of the 21st century. An understanding of the nature and character of urban sprawl is complicated by a failure to satisfactorily define it and by the limitations of measurement techniques designed to characterize complex landscape forms. Like other landscape patterns, the quantification of urban sprawl is highly spatially and temporally scale-dependent. This paper summarizes a recent project to measure urban sprawl in the transboundary region of the Pacific Coast of North America. The metropolitan centers of Portland, OR, Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC, span two nations, three state/provincial governments and dozens of cities. As a region, this was a global leader in population growth in the 1990s. The study relied on three separate methods – an impervious surface metric, a neighborhood density metric and a building permit metric – for quantifying urban growth. The results provide insight on the strengths and shortcomings of different methods with respect to the challenges posed by data availability and format. Taken together they demonstrate the richer understanding that combined methods may offer in characterizing phenomena as difficult to communicate and agree upon as urban sprawl.     

基于土地利用的三维景观格局指数变化分析

由于传统二维景观格局指数未考虑地形特征对景观格局指数的影响,为进一步研究地形结构对景观格局指数的影响,以重庆主城区为研究对象,利用ENVI5.2、ArcGIS10.5、Fragstats4.2平台,对重庆主城区不同城市化阶段的Landsat影像数据进行土地利用变化和三维景观格局分析。结果表明,2008-2018年研究区土地利用面积发生了较大变化,表现为林地和建设用地增加,耕地减少,湖泊与河流面积变化不大;景观格局变化主要表现为景观受人类干扰较强,随着城镇规划越来越合理,景观破碎度减少,景观异质性降低。通过对比二维景观格局指数发现,三维景观格局指数更能反映研究区的景观格局。     

Impact of land-cover layout on particulate matter 2.5 in urban areas of China

ABSTRACT

Urbanization in China is closely connected with ambient particulate matter 2.5 (PM_2.5). However, the potential for altering PM_2.5 through the urban landscape characteristics is uncertain. In this study, we analyzed the urban PM_2.5 pollution situation for 2014–2016 and investigated the impact of landscape factors on urban PM_2.5 in China at the city level. All the prefecture-level cities were stratified by urban population size into small (<500,000), medium (500,000–1,000,000), and large (>1,000,000), and the other second-level administrative cities were assigned as ‘other’ cities. The multivariate regression model including both urban landscape factors and social-economic variables explained 70.0%, 32.8%, 19.2%, and 12.4% of the arithmetic mean PM_2.5 concentration (AMC-PM_2.5) for the other, small, medium, and large cities, respectively. With regard to the configuration of land cover, agricultural activity is a major contributor of PM_2.5 pollution, for which the explanatory power ranged from 7.6% (for the large cities) to 64% (for the other cities). In addition, grassland aggregation also has a limited but negative effect on urban PM_2.5 pollution, despite the negligible effect on dry deposition. Overall, these findings likely reflect the interaction between urban air quality and urbanization, and will have implications for air quality control strategies.     

Urban expansion patterns of 291 Chinese cities, 1990–2015

China has experienced rapid and massive urban expansion in recent decades. To address the opportunities and challenges posed by urbanization, it is important to investigate this process. Although many studies have characterized China’s urbanization, mainly based on individual cities or urban agglomerations, few studies have compared the urban expansion patterns among cities of different regions and sizes at a national scale. Additionally, the source of the newly developed urban land has largely been ignored in previous research. To fill these gaps, we provide a comprehensive view of the growth patterns of 291 Chinese cities during 1990–2015, quantifying the rates, spatial forms, and corresponding landscape characteristics of the urban expansion. More importantly, we further investigate what their new urban land is converted from. Key findings include: (1) the annual expansion (AE) and annual growth rate (AGR) of all 291 cities were 1869.81?km² and 4.81% during 1990–2015; (2) cropland and rural settlements were the predominant source, accounting for 65.22% and 17.49% of the new urban land during 1990–2015; (3) edge-expansion was the dominant growth form for most cities, followed by infilling and leapfrogging growth; and (4) the landscape characteristics of the occupied cropland differed across various cities.     

Measuring the effect of an ongoing urbanization process on biodiversity conservation suitability index: integrating scenario-based urban growth modelling with Conservation Assessment and Prioritization System (CAPS)

The present study adopts an integrative modelling methodology, which combines the strengths of the SLEUTH model and the Conservation Assessment and Prioritization System (CAPS) method. By developing a scenario-based geographic information system simulation environment for Hashtpar City, Iran, the manageability of the landscape under each urban growth scenario is analysed. In addition, the CAPS approach was used for biodiversity conservation suitability mapping. The SLEUTH model was implemented to generate predictive urban layers of the years 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050 for each scenario (dynamic factors for conservation suitability mapping). Accordingly, conservation suitability surface of the area is updated for each time point and under each urban development storyline. Two-way analysis of variance and Duncan’s new multiple range tests were employed to compare the functionality of the three scenarios. Based on results, the managed urban growth scenario depicted better results for manageability of the landscape and less negative impact on conservation suitability values.     

Spatial Analysis of Urban Growth Impacts on Vegetative Greenness with Landsat TM Data

Abstract

Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data have been used to monitor land cover types and to estimate biophysical parameters. However, studies examining the spatial relationships between land cover change and biophysical parameters are generally lacking. With the integration of remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), these relationships can be better explored. The research reported in this paper applies this integrated approach for detecting urban growth and assessing its impact on vegetative greenness in the Zhujiang Delta, China. Multi‐temporal Landsat TM data were utilized to map urban growth and to extract and identify changes in vegetative greenness. GIS analyses were conducted to examine the changing spatial patterns of urban growth and greenness change. Statistical analyses were then used to examine the impact of urban growth on vegetative greenness. The results revealed that there was a notably uneven urban growth pattern in the delta, and urban development had reduced the scaled Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) value by 30% in the urbanized area.     

Multi-source Classification Using Artificial Neural Network in a Rugged Terrain

Abstract

This study advocates the use of GIS and remote sensing technologies to establish urban evolution maps and assess the impact of urbanization on agricultural areas over the last three decades. The target area is the city of Béni‐Mellal, located in central Morocco. The methodology adopted makes use of panchromatic SPOT images to survey the urban areas during the 1980s and 1990s. Available topographic maps provided the information for the 1970s. Maps and statistics of land use and urban growth for Béni Mellal were established after manually classifying images on a per-polygon basis and digitizing topographic maps using GIS capabilities. The results show an increase in dense urban area by 980.7 ha from the 1970s to the 1990s. This increase occurred at the expense of forests (24.7 ha), plantations (752.3 ha), rangeland (113.4 ha), non‐irrigated land (69.7 ha), and irrigated land (20.6 ha). During this period, scattered urban areas, predominantly suburbs, increased by 755.9 ha to the detriment of forests (14.9 ha), plantations (109.8 ha), rangeland (138.9 ha), non‐irrigated land(400.5 ha), and irrigated land (91.9 ha). These cartographic and statistic results are efficient decision‐making tools for protecting agricultural land and planning urban and suburban areas.     

Feature selection for airborne LiDAR data filtering: a mutual information method with Parzon window optimization

ABSTRACT

Filtering is one of the key steps for Digital Elevation Model (DEM) generation from airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data. Machine-learning-based filters have emerged as a class of filtering algorithms in recent years. Most existing studies mainly focus on feature generation due to limited available features a point cloud possesses. More than 30 features have been described in the existing literature. But most generated features are based on geometric information of points. Several redundant and irrelevant features may not necessarily improve the filtering accuracy. Hence, this paper proposes a feature-selection method using minimal-Redundancy-Maximal-Relevance (mRMR) combined with Parzen window optimization to deal with both discrete and continuous features. An optimal/suboptimal feature subset is constructed for machine-learning filters in various landscapes. Experimental results based on AdaBoost show that height-related features, particularly height itself, are of the greatest significance in both urban and rural scenes. Moreover, different subsets can be selected from the datasets of the two landscapes by our feature-selection strategy, which increases the data relevance for describing each geographical landscape. This study provides guidelines for the selection of optimal/suboptimal features for point cloud filtering based on machine-learning algorithms.     

基于RS和GIS的甬台地区城市建设用地扩展特征研究

以多时相Landsat MSS,TM和ETM卫星影像为数据源,利用遥感和GIS手段,提取宁波、台州2市5个时相（1979,1990,1995,2000和2005年）城市建设用地信息,分析了城市建设用地扩展的时间特征、形态特征、空间特征并通过其与人口、GDP因素的相关分析研究其扩展的动力机制。结果表明：①1979年以来,甬台地区城市建设用地总体扩展速度表现为先升后降,而城市建设用地总体扩展强度则表现为不断提高的趋势。②甬台地区城市建设用地的空间结构存在明显的分形特征,城市建设用地空间结构分维逐渐增大,城市建设用地空间复杂性增加,城市建设用地趋向不稳定。③甬台地区城市扩展与社会经济发展具有明显的相关性。     

Earth observations during space shuttle mission STS‐45 mission to planet earth March 24—April 2, 1992

Abstract

The impact of animals upon the landscape, through such actions as trampling, feeding, burrowing, mounding, and dam building, is a topic of interest in university geography classrooms. However, the relatively fine‐scale nature of most such impacts precludes its examination via remote sensing. Nevertheless, remote sensing of many types of animal impact is possible, and in this paper I illustrate several such examples, primarily drawn from free‐access sites on the World Wide Web, using a variety of remote sensing platforms. Instructors of physical geography or resource/land use management courses can thus introduce a variety of remote sensing concepts and imagery types in their classrooms while at the same time examining the role of animals on the landscape.     

Urban expansion in Xiongan New Area since 1975

Abstract

Although urban expansion has been extensively studied at different scales in China, relatively little attention has been paid to the county scale. Xiongan New Area (XNA) was selected as the study area and its urban expansion processes from 1975 to 2017 were retrieved using remote sensing and GIS technology, and its spatial-temporal characteristics of urban expansion were revealed from the aspects of basic characteristics of urban expansion, urban spatial morphological evolution, interactions of urban lands, and assessments of the imbalanced degree of population-land urbanization. Results indicated that urban lands in XNA expanded significantly. Cultivated lands were the first land source for urban expansion. Urban lands mainly adopted the edge-expansion, which rendered the urban fringes to be complex and irregular. The interaction of three counties in XNA was strengthened successively, especially after the implementation of the ‘New Urbanization’ strategy. Population-land urbanization was inharmonious but has improved from moderate to mild imbalance.     

Investigating the land use characteristics of urban integration based on remote sensing data: experience from Guangzhou and Foshan

Abstract

Urban integration is an increasingly popular phenomenon. It is important to characterize the dynamic processes of urban integration from the perspective of geography. However, previous studies mainly focussed on the overall characteristics of a single entity and failed to consider inter-city influences. Therefore, this study aims to systematically investigate this phenomenon. Firstly, spatial clustering technique and landscape metric were used to analyze the temporal change of spatial layout. Secondly, we built multiple ring buffers of city boundary to reveal the directional differences in urban expansion. Lastly, we compared the observed land use data with the results simulated by cellular automata model. These experiments have shown that the urban expansion characteristics during the urban integration process are rather different from those of a single city, and the above methodology can effectively characterize the urban integration phenomenon. The successful example of Guangzhou–Foshan integration could also provide practical experience for other similar attempts.     

长沙市景观破碎化时空分异特征研究

基于2000年长沙市1:10万土地利用图,利用ERDAS软件对1989年、2006年的遥感图像进行解译;在地理信息系统软件ArcGIS和景观格局分析软件Fragstats支持下,以城镇建设空间重心为中心,分别选取东西、南北景观样带(40 km×8 km)和8个不同半径的同心圆缓冲区,用斑块密度、边界密度、平均斑块分维数...     

宁镇扬地区不透水面增长变化监测及其增长模式分析

不透水面是衡量城市化进程的重要指标,本文以宁镇扬地区为例,引入不透水面变化轨迹、增长模式等方法,定量剖析不透水面时空演变过程。结果表明,研究时段内,在城市化进程的推动下不透水面持续扩张,研究区2015-2019年有301 km²的自然或半自然景观最终转化为不透水景观,年均增长率为0.44%;不透水面格局变化在2017年前后具有明显差异,前期增长以镇江市为主,后期镇江市增长幅度大大减缓,而南京增长速度大幅提升;不透水面转变轨迹以一次性转变为主,且2017年后土地变化更加剧烈,反复或连续轨迹较少,植被是城市用地扩张的主要土地来源;研究区不透水面增长主导模式为蔓延式,当前城市边界仍然处在快速向外扩张阶段,城市规划管控对城市边界的发展具有重要的引导意义。     

Examining the impacts of urbanization on surface radiation using Landsat imagery

Metropolitan Beijing is facing many environmental problems such as haze and urban heat island due to the rapid urbanization. Surface shortwave, longwave, and net radiations are key components of the surface-atmosphere radiation budget. Since megacities are affected by the thermal radiation of complex landscape structures and atmospheric environments, quantitative and spatially explicit retrieval from remotely sensed data remains a challenge. We collected the surface radiation fluxes from seven fixed sites representing different land-use types to calibrate the local parameters for remotely sensed retrieval of net radiation. We proposed a remote sensing–based surface radiation retrieval method by embedding the underlying land covers and integrating the observational data. The improved method is feasible to accurately retrieve surface radiation and delineate spatial characteristics in metropolitan areas. The accuracy evaluation indicated that the difference between remotely sensed and in situ observed net radiation ranged within 0~± 40 W· m^?2. The root mean squared error of the estimated net surface radiation was 32.71 W· m^?2. The strongly spatial heterogeneity of surface radiation components in metropolitan Beijing was closely related to land-cover patterns from urban area to outskirts. We also found that the surface net radiation had a decreasing trend from 1984 to 2014, and the net radiation in the urban area was lower than that in the outskirts. According to the surface radiation budgets, urbanization resulted in the cooling effect in net radiation flux in the daytime, which was stemmed from low atmospheric transmittances from massive aerosol concentration and high surface albedo from light building materials.