Impact of Urbanization and Climate on Vegetation Coverage in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region of China

Abstract

Worldwide urbanization leads to ecological changes around urban areas. However, few studies have quantitatively investigated the impacts of urbanization on vegetation coverage so far. As an important indicator measuring regional environment change, fractional vegetation cover (FVC) is widely used to analyze changes in vegetation in urban areas. In this study, on the basis of a partial derivative model, we quantified the effect of temperature, precipitation, radiation, and urbanization represented as nighttime light on vegetation coverage changes in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region during its period of rapid resident population growth from 2001 to 2011. The results showed that (1) the FVC of the BTH region varied from 0.20 to 0.26, with significant spatial heterogeneity. The FVC increased in small cities such as Cangzhou and in the Taihang Mountains, while it decreased in megacities with populations greater than 1 million, such as Beijing and Zhangjiakou Bashang. (2) The BTH region experienced rapid urbanization, with the area of artificial surface increasing by 18.42%. From the urban core area to the fringe area, the urbanization intensity decreased, but the urbanization rate increased. (3) Urbanization and precipitation had the greatest effect on FVC changes. Urbanization dominated the FVC changes in the expanded area, while precipitation had the greatest impacts on the FVC changes in the core area. For future studies on the major influencing factors of FVC changes, quantitative analysis of the contribution of urbanization to FVC changes in urban regions is crucial and will provide scientific perspectives for sustainable urban planning.

Assessing the Effects of Land Cover Land Use Change on Precipitation Dynamics in Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area from 2001 to 2019

“…Most of the studies focused on the impact of urbanization on urban precipitation and the impact of forest or farmland on regional precipitation, while there were few studies on the underlying surface structure and the change of regional water resources in the water-air cycle [17][18][19]. It was found that the change of urban construction land has an important influence on the change of regional precipitation, vegetation, and land surface temperature, but it failed to quantitatively express the influence among them [20][21][22]. By analyzing long-term precipitation data, Zhang et al found that the rapid expansion of urban land in Beijing since 1981 was statistically correlated with the decrease of summer precipitation in the northeast of Beijing from 1981 to 2005, and that the rise of surface temperature and the decrease of evaporation caused by urban expansion were the possible reasons for the change of summer rainfall [23].…”

Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Driving Forces of Urban Land-Use Expansion: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

“…The invariant target area method specifically includes mutual correction, saturation correction, and continuity correction between images. This method has been widely used [81][82][83][84] and is considered to have high reliability. First, perform mutual correction of time series images.…”

Assessing Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production in Various Vegetation Types Based on the Spatio-Temporal Fusion Model in Xiong'an New Area During 2000-2018

“…Temperature and precipitation are two climate factors related to the geographical distribution of vegetation, which are important to the NPP in a dryland ecosystem (Wang et al 2019). Among all climate factors, precipitation has the greatest influence on the vegetation cover changes (Zhou et al 2019), is further related to the crop yield in the Hebei region (Wang et al 2020). In this study, we mapped the spatial correlation between temperature, precipitation and HANPP at pixel level based on the meteorological raster data.…”