Assessment of the patterns of urban land covers and impervious surface areas: a case study of Shenzhen, China

Publication date: Available online 3 April 2019Source: Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/CAuthor(s): Qinghuai Zeng, Yingjia Xie, Kai LiuAbstractRemote sensing techniques have gradually become a popular tool for monitoring urban ecological environments because of their multi-temporal characteristics and rapid acquisition abilities. Based on five Landsat 8 scenes from 2013 to 2017, this study investigates the application of land cover classification and spectral mixture analysis in monitoring the urban environment of Shenzhen. By combining high-resolution data with field survey data, this study also assesses and analyzes the spatiotemporal patterns of various land cover types, including impervious surfaces. The results show that Landsat 8 data can effectively monitor the land covers of Shenzhen with a classification accuracy exceeding 90%. The results also demonstrate that Landsat 8 data can extract information regarding the abundance of impervious surfaces with an acceptable accuracy. Further investigation reveals that the expansion of urbanization in Shenzhen tends to be stable; nevertheless, the areas of impervious surfaces increase slightly, while the areas of forests and cropland decrease slightly. These changes may impact the urban ecological conditions of Shenzhen.
Source: Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts ABC - Category: Science Source Type: research