Quantifying Urban Land Sprawl and its Driving Forces in Northeast China from 1990 to 2015

Abstract

Drastic urbanization has resulted in numerous problems worldwide, and many studies were devoted to individual cities. There is an urgent need to quantify urbanization patterns and illustrate their driving forces in the regional area on a large scale over a longer time period. This study produced a land cover dataset to characterize sequential urban land expansion in Northeast China from 1990 to 2015 using object-based backdating classification and calculating the expansion index. The drivers were investigated using Pearson correlation analysis and the multiple linear stepwise regression model. The results revealed that the total area of urban land increased by 43.15% from 1990 to 2015, mainly in the middle part of the study area, and especially in the coastal area of Liaoning. Liaoning had the fastest growth rate, while Heilongjiang showed a decrease in growth rate rankings. Urban land expanded northward and southward within Harbin City, towards the west and east within Changchun City, and relatively equally in all directions within Shenyang City. Expansion patterns changed from edge expansion (42%) to outlying expansion (47%). Urban land of Liaoning and the Eastern Inner Mongolia Autonomous region expanded with similar patterns as the entire area, but that of Heilongjiang grew in an opposite pattern, and Jilin maintained outlying major expansion. The influence of factors on urban land sprawl varied temporally. Tertiary industry product, gross domestic product, secondary industry product, total population and urban population were driving factors of urban land sprawl in Northeast China from 1990 to 2015. This research provides quantitative methods for better understanding urban land dynamics and devising feasible strategies for sustainable urban development.

Estimation of Forest Above-Ground Biomass by Geographically Weighted Regression and Machine Learning with Sentinel Imagery

“…Before that, the distribution of sampling plots was generated using ArcGIS (version 10.0, ESRI, RedLands, CA, USA), with the non-forest area being masked out. Non-forested areas were derived from 2015 land use and a land cover map [52] by visual interpretation and manual modification based on Sentinel-2 images (Table 1). In the field, nearby preset plots, a total of 56 sampling quadrats measuring 10 m × 10 m were laid out at each representative sampling plot (Figure 1), including two evergreen coniferous forests, 30 broadleaved deciduous forests, five deciduous coniferous forests, and 19 mixed broadleaf-conifer forests.…”

Urbanization and Urban Sprawl Issues in City Structure: A Case of the Sulaymaniah Iraqi Kurdistan Region

“…Urban sprawl is one of the distinctive phenomena in cities undergoing rapid urbanization processes [1][2][3]. Studies on the driving forces of urban sprawl provide profound insights in sustainable management of urban changes that alter the cities structure and pattern [1][2][3].…”

“…Urban sprawl is one of the distinctive phenomena in cities undergoing rapid urbanization processes [1][2][3]. Studies on the driving forces of urban sprawl provide profound insights in sustainable management of urban changes that alter the cities structure and pattern [1][2][3]. In response to the population explosion and economic growth, the cities in the developing countries across the world have grown very rapidly [2,4,5].…”

“…Studies on the driving forces of urban sprawl provide profound insights in sustainable management of urban changes that alter the cities structure and pattern [1][2][3]. In response to the population explosion and economic growth, the cities in the developing countries across the world have grown very rapidly [2,4,5]. Thus, with rising overall population and urbanization, the pattern of land use and landscape have been altered and such has led to series urbanization-oriented environmental challenges [6].…”

Assessing the Effect of Spatial Proximity on Urban Growth

“…Urbanisation is one of the most critical consequences of LUCC at the local level [2,[5][6][7][8], and has evolved over the years due to social, economic, historical, and cultural factors. As a complex phenomenon, urbanisation has socioeconomic and environmental impacts [9], often evolving in the form of urban sprawl.…”