Under the backdrop of achieving carbon neutrality and accelerating urbanization, China’s forests face unprecedented pressures. This study explored the spatiotemporal characteristics of forest loss in the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR). The dynamic mechanism of forest loss caused by fire, logging, construction, and pollution was also analyzed using spatial database development, polygon superposition analysis, grid system construction, and coordinate system calculation. The results show that the forest loss in the UAMRYR experienced three stages: continuous acceleration (1990–2010), peak (2010–2015), and slight decline (2015–2020). Rapid urban expansion is the primary cause of forest loss, and the three metropolitan areas had the fastest urban expansion and the most severe forest loss. Due to the success of afforestation efforts, the forest loss caused by fire, logging, and pollution was restored by 80%, while most of the forest losses caused by construction are permanent. Given the current forest loss trends, large expanses of forests in the UAMRYR are at risk of being destroyed and causing serious damage to the region’s ecological environment. Forest losses can be significantly reduced by guiding the rational expansion of cities, supporting afforestation for urban construction projects, strengthening forest fire risk investigation, and implementing ecological reconstruction of polluted areas.
The landscape visual aesthetic quality (LVAQ) of urban residential districts is an important index for measuring urban livability and is a tripartite concern among urban managers, real estate developers and residents. The LVAQ of residential districts is determined by their visual openness and the aesthetic degree of the surrounding landscape, a value combining subjective evaluation and objective analysis. Although existing studies have carried out empirical analyses on the LVAQ of residential districts and have summarized some influencing factors, they have largely overlooked the specific impact and interactions of various factors, failing to establish 3D city models meeting LVAQ analysis requirements and falling short in developing appropriate evaluation approaches suitable for whole city scale. In this study, we propose a spatial simulation analysis for the LVAQ of residential districts based on 3D city modeling, aesthetic evaluation and viewshed analysis. In order to improve the accuracy of the study, we collected massive RS data and established a 3D city model covering a large amount of architecture and landscape information. We analyzed three representative cases and calculated the LVAQ of 1258 residential districts in Changsha City, Hunan, China, evaluating the results with various construction and planning indicators. Our results show that the LVAQ of residential districts is affected by their own construction conditions and the surrounding districts and landscape areas. Various architectural and planning indicators have restrictive and direct effects on LVAQ. Optimizing the layout of landscape areas and the construction mode of residential districts through urban planning and urban renewal may help improve their LVAQ. This study helps better understand the general principles that affect the LVAQ of residential districts and supports the development of urban scale LVAQ analysis methods for residential districts. The findings are expected to provide methodological support for the landscape analysis and evaluation of urban residential districts in China and other developing countries and provide optimization ideas for urban human settlement environment sustainability.
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