Title
Monitoring Urban Clusters Expansion in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River, China, Using Time-Series Nighttime Light Images.
Abstract
The urban clusters in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River (MRYR) in China include the Chang-Zhu-Tan urban agglomeration, the Wuhan metropolitan area, and the Poyang Lake urban agglomeration. While previous studies of urban expansion in China focused mainly on the coastal regions, this study aimed to investigate urban expansion patterns and factors in the MRYR, which are crucial for urban development in Central China. A neighborhood statistics analysis (NSA) method and a local-optimized threshold method were used to detect urban changes during 1992-2011 from the time-series Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) nighttime light (NTL) images. The evolution of urban expansion intensity and landscape metrics were analyzed at multiple spatial scales, including the whole region, urban agglomeration, and city scales. Finally, the expanded STochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model was built to explore the factors that controlled NTL intensity. The results revealed that urban areas extracted from the NTL data were consistent with those extracted from the Landsat Thematic Mapper data, with an overall accuracy of 81.74% and a Kappa of 0.40. A relatively slow urbanization pace was observed from 1992 to 2002 in the MRYR region, which then accelerated in the period of 2002 to 2007 and then slowed down between 2007 and 2011. Additionally, urban expansion exhibited a radial pattern. The results further indicated that major factors controlling NTL intensity were gross domestic product, followed by total investment in fixed assets, tertiary industry, urban construction area, non-agricultural population, and industrial output in the city clusters. The study provides important insights for further studies on the urbanization processes in the MRYR region.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.3390/rs9101007
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
Field
DocType
urban expansion,nighttime light,Yangtze River Delta,STIRPAT model,driving forces
Population,Physical geography,Urbanization,Thematic Mapper,China,Remote sensing,Urban agglomeration,Urban planning,Geology,Metropolitan area,Gross domestic product
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
9
10
2072-4292
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.42
11
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yanhong Zou140.81
Haiquan Peng230.42
Geng Liu363.16
Kuanda Yang430.42
Yanhua Xie531.09
Q. Weng619931.18