Spatial-Temporal Dynamic Analysis of Land Use and Landscape Pattern in Guangzhou, China: Exploring the Driving Forces from an Urban Sustainability Perspective

Abstract

Rapid urbanization is one of the most important factors causing land-use change, which mainly results from the orientation of government policies, adjustment of industrial structure, and migration of the rural population. Land use and land cover change (LUCC) is the natural foundation of urban development that is significantly influenced by human activities. By analyzing the LUCC and its inner driving force, as well as landscape pattern change, human activity and urban sustainable development can be better understood. This research adopted a geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) technology to comprehensively analyze land use of Guangzhou, respectively, in 1995, 2005, and 2015. Fragmentation Statistics (FRAGSTATS) is the most authoritative software to calculate landscape metrics. Landscape pattern change was analyzed by FRAGSTATS. The results showed that urban land significantly increased from 16.33% in 1995 to 36.05% in 2015. Farmland greatly decreased from 45.16% in 1995 to 27.82% in 2005 and then slightly decreased to 25.10% in 2015. In the first decade, the non-agricultural conversion of rural land and the expansion of urban land was the dominant factor that led to the change. In the second decade, urban land had been supplemented through the redevelopment of low-efficiency land. The fragmentation of landscape patterns significantly increased from 1995 to 2005 and slightly decreased from 2005 to 2015. It indicated that the change in land use in the second decade was different from that in the first. This difference mainly resulted from three aspects: (1) urban development area and ecological conservation area were clearly defined in Guangzhou; (2) many small towns had developed into urban centers, and the scattered urban land gathered into these centers; (3) the establishment of greenway improved the connection of fragmented patches. After that, this study discussed land-use change and its causes and proposed the trend of urban development from the perspective of sustainability.

Interaction Analysis of Urban Blue-Green Space and Built-Up Area Based on Coupling Model—A Case Study of Wuhan Central City

“…The development of urbanization is usually accompanied by the fragmentation of landscape patches, the shrinking and breaking of blue-green space, and other dynamic changes [11,12]. China's urbanization is considered to be the fastest and most extensive, with the urbanization rate rising from 25.32% in 1987 to 60.60% in 2019 [13]. The rapid growth of urban population makes urban construction land increasingly scarce, and a large number of farmland and forest land around the city have been embezzled [14].…”

Changes in landscape composition and configuration in the Beressa watershed, Blue Nile basin of Ethiopian Highlands: historical and future exploration

“…It is a good indicator for understanding patch fragmentation. An increase of MPS can resulted from progressive clustering of patches ( Liu et al., 2019 ) and an increase in patches size over time. A decreasing trend indicates the fragmentation of the patches.…”

Analysis of the Spatiotemporal Changes in Watershed Landscape Pattern and Its Influencing Factors in Rapidly Urbanizing Areas Using Satellite Data

“…The former study only quantified the temporal influencing factors of land use changes, and the latter study described the temporal and spatial influencing factors respectively, but not quantitatively. In addition, when analyzing the influencing factors of landscape pattern changes quantitatively, many studies failed to solve the problem of insufficient multi-temporal land use data [29][30][31], nor did they consider the interactive effects of different factors on the spatial landscape heterogeneity [32,33]. Some studies even analyzed the transition driving forces of different land use types in different locations of different period to meet the requirements of large quantities data for commonly used analysis methods [34].…”

“…There existed many studies that using these kinds of data analyzed the land use change of different regions in Guangzhou city [38,39], and compared the relationships between these changes and urban expansion [40,41]. Liu et al [31] also discussed the land use change and its causes based on the Landsat satellite data with remote sensing technology. These researches all illustrated the feasibility of using land use data provided by remote sensing technology to analyze the changes of landscape patterns in Guangzhou city.…”