Spatiotemporal Evolution of Urban Agglomeration and Its Impact on Landscape Patterns in the Pearl River Delta, China

Abstract

An urban agglomeration is the engine of regional and national economic growth, but also causes many ecological and environmental issues that emerge from massive land changes. In this study, the spatiotemporal evolution of an urban agglomeration was quantified and its impacts on the urban and regional landscape patterns were evaluated. It showed that the urbanized land area of the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration (PRDUA) in China nearly quadrupled, having linearly increased from 1819.8 km2 to 7092.2 km2 between 1985 and 2015. The average annual growth rate presented a bimodal wave-like pattern through time, indicating that the PRDUA has witnessed two rounds of the urbanization process. The growth modes (e.g., leapfrog, edge-expansion, infilling) were detected and they exhibited co-existing but alternating dominating patterns during urbanization, demonstrating that the spatiotemporal evolution of the urban development of the PRDUA follows the “spiral diffusion-coalescence” hypothesis. The morphology of the PRDUA presented an alternating dispersal-compact pattern over time. The city-level and regional-level landscape patterns changed synchronously with the spatiotemporal evolution of the PRDUA over time. The urbanization of the PRDUA increased both the complexity and aggregation of the landscape, but also resulted in an increasing fragmentation and decreasing connectivity of the natural landscape in the Pearl River Delta region. These findings are helpful for better understanding how urban agglomerations evolve and in providing insights for regional urban planning and sustainable land management.

Landscape Evolution and Its Driving Forces in the Rapidly Urbanized Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, a Case Study in Zhuhai City, South China

“…The area of water bodies and unused land decreased slightly, although the change is not significant. This new result is essentially consistent with previous findings from ecological and forest landscapes in this area [32,40,41,48].…”

“…Based on landscape metrics, the change in land-use types was closely related to the characteristics of human activities, presenting an ecologically fragile landscape with a complex diffusion-coalescence pattern along the ruralurban transect [33,34]. The rapid urbanization has also resulted in significant landscape transformation and triggered a series of ecological and environmental issues, particularly in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, where the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is located [36][37][38][39][40][41]. With the rapid economic development, industrialization, and urbanization process, coupled with the adjustment of industrial structure, the excessive exploitation of land resources has led to the occupation of a large amount of ecological space and the continuous deterioration of ecological resources, making the PRD region a hotspot for land-use change research in China [13,42].…”

Impact of landscape patterns on ecosystem services in China: a case study of the central plains urban agglomeration

“…The landscape pattern can better indicate the effect of urban agglomeration construction on land use/cover type. For example, many studies have shown that urban agglomeration construction increases the complexity and aggregation of landscape, while also leading to fragmentation and reduced connectivity of landscape (Wu et al, 2023).…”

Spatio–Temporal Patterns and Driving Mechanisms of Urban Land High-Quality Use: Evidence from the Greater Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration

“…Furthermore, research on the driving mechanisms behind ULHU has become increasingly diverse. It has been observed that the level of urban land use is not solely influenced by socio-economic factors, such as economic development [18], industrial structure [19], and road transportation systems [20], but also by political and natural factors, such as policy instruments [14], regional integration [21] and the quality of the ecological environment [22]. However, existing studies often fail to recognize the complexity and interconnectedness of these driving factors.…”