scholarly journals Study on Spatiotemporal Characteristic and Mechanism of Forest Loss in Urban Agglomeration in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1242
Author(s):  
Zheng Zhu ◽  
Xiang Zhu

Under the backdrop of achieving carbon neutrality and accelerating urbanization, China’s forests face unprecedented pressures. This study explored the spatiotemporal characteristics of forest loss in the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR). The dynamic mechanism of forest loss caused by fire, logging, construction, and pollution was also analyzed using spatial database development, polygon superposition analysis, grid system construction, and coordinate system calculation. The results show that the forest loss in the UAMRYR experienced three stages: continuous acceleration (1990–2010), peak (2010–2015), and slight decline (2015–2020). Rapid urban expansion is the primary cause of forest loss, and the three metropolitan areas had the fastest urban expansion and the most severe forest loss. Due to the success of afforestation efforts, the forest loss caused by fire, logging, and pollution was restored by 80%, while most of the forest losses caused by construction are permanent. Given the current forest loss trends, large expanses of forests in the UAMRYR are at risk of being destroyed and causing serious damage to the region’s ecological environment. Forest losses can be significantly reduced by guiding the rational expansion of cities, supporting afforestation for urban construction projects, strengthening forest fire risk investigation, and implementing ecological reconstruction of polluted areas.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8530
Author(s):  
Fei Tao ◽  
Yuchen Hu ◽  
Guoan Tang ◽  
Tong Zhou

The rapid growth of urbanization and population has aggravated the urban heat island (UHI) effect in urban agglomerations. However, because scholars have so far focused mainly on the magnitude of the UHI effect, there is still a lack of research on the quantitative evaluation of the relationship between urban expansion and the degree of the UHI effect from the urban agglomeration perspective. This paper analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics and the interactive mechanism of the surface urban heat island footprint (SUHI FP) in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRDUA). The summer footprints (FPs) of 27 cities were extracted using a logistics model, and the temporal trend was estimated by a standard deviation ellipse (SDE). Furthermore, the authors used the classical machine-learning k-means algorithm to cluster the temperature attenuation curves to reveal development patterns in different cities. The results showed that the degree of FP expansion during the daytime was more apparent than at night, the area of urban growth positively correlated with a city’s population level, and from 2005 to 2018 (the period of the study), the spatial evolution for all cities showed an overall trend from east to west. These cities were divided roughly into three development patterns by clustering their 2018 temperature attenuation curves. These findings can provide a scientific basis for formulating effective land-use policies by giving a deeper understanding of the spatiotemporal changes in the SUHI FPs and their relationship with land cover in the YRDUA.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 4484
Author(s):  
Ziqi Yu ◽  
Longqian Chen ◽  
Long Li ◽  
Ting Zhang ◽  
Lina Yuan ◽  
...  

Characterizing urban expansion patterns is of great significance to planning and decision-making for urban agglomeration development. This study examined the urban expansion in the entire Yangtze River Delta Region (YRDR) with its land-use data of six years (1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2018). On the basis of traditional methods, we comprehensively considered the four aspects of urban agglomeration: expansion speed, expansion difference, expansion direction, and landscape pattern, as well as the interconnection of and difference in the expansion process between each city. The spatiotemporal heterogeneity of urban expansion development in this region was investigated by using the speed and differentiation indices of urban expansion, gravity center migration, landscape indices, and spatial autocorrelations. The results show that: (1) over the 23 years, the expansion of built-up land in the Yangtze River Delta Region was significant, (2) the rapidly expanding cities were mainly located along the Yangtze River and coastal areas, while the slowly expanding cities were mainly located in the inland areas, (3) the expansion direction of each city varied and the gravity center of the urban agglomeration moved toward the southwest, and (4) the spatial structure of the region became more clustered, the shape of built-up land turned simpler, and fragmentation decreased. This study unravels the spatiotemporal change of urban expansion patterns in this large urban agglomeration, and more importantly, can serve as a guide for formulating urban agglomeration development plans.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Cao ◽  
Yucen Wang ◽  
Guoyu Li ◽  
Xiaoqian Fang

Urbanization has destroyed and fragmented large amounts of natural habitats, resulting in serious consequences for urban ecosystems over past decades, especially in the rapidly urbanizing areas of developing countries. The Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration, which has experienced the fastest socioeconomic development in China, was selected as the study area. To explore the relationship between urbanization and vegetation dynamics at the agglomeration scale, the spatiotemporal characteristics of urban expansion and vegetation variation of the study area were evaluated by landscape spatial analysis, regression analysis, and trend analysis. The results show that the urbanization level of the study area exhibited a continuous upward trend, with Shanghai as the regional core city, and the level of urbanization gradually decreased from the center towards the periphery of the urban agglomeration. The overall urban expansion presented obvious landscape spatial heterogeneity characteristics and the emergence of new cities and towns enhanced landscape connectedness and created a more aggregated urban agglomeration. Noticeable spatiotemporal differences of vegetation variation were observed from 2004 to 2013. Areas with relatively low vegetation coverage showed a steady growth trend, while those with higher vegetation coverage reported a significant decreasing trend. The spatial heterogeneity analysis of the vegetation trend demonstrated that vegetation degradation was a dominant and inevitable process across the study area. However, some parts of the urban sprawl area, especially at the periphery of the metropolis, may experience a greening trend rather than a browning trend, indicating that urbanization does not necessarily lead to large-scale vegetation degradation. Although urbanization poses a negative impact on vegetation and physical environments, urbanization has not yet reduced a large area of vegetation at the regional level.


Author(s):  
Jin-Wei Yan ◽  
Fei Tao ◽  
Shuai-Qian Zhang ◽  
Shuang Lin ◽  
Tong Zhou

As part of one of the five major national development strategies, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), including the three national-level urban agglomerations (the Cheng-Yu urban agglomeration (CY-UA), the Yangtze River Middle-Reach urban agglomeration (YRMR-UA), and the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRD-UA)), plays an important role in China’s urban development and economic construction. However, the rapid economic growth of the past decades has caused frequent regional air pollution incidents, as indicated by high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Therefore, a driving force factor analysis based on the PM2.5 of the whole area would provide more information. This paper focuses on the three urban agglomerations in the YREB and uses exploratory data analysis and geostatistics methods to describe the spatiotemporal distribution patterns of air quality based on long-term PM2.5 series data from 2015 to 2018. First, the main driving factor of the spatial stratified heterogeneity of PM2.5 was determined through the Geodetector model, and then the influence mechanism of the factors with strong explanatory power was extrapolated using the Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) models. The results showed that the number of enterprises, social public vehicles, total precipitation, wind speed, and green coverage in the built-up area had the most significant impacts on the distribution of PM2.5. The regression by MGWR was found to be more efficient than that by traditional Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), further showing that the main factors varied significantly among the three urban agglomerations in affecting the special and temporal features.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 2733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Li ◽  
Hua Shao ◽  
Nan Jiang ◽  
Ge Shi ◽  
Xin Cheng

The development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is an important national regional development strategy and a strategic engineering development system. In this study, the evolution of urban spatial patterns in the YREB from 1990 to 2010 was mapped using the nighttime stable light (NSL) data, multi-temporal urban land products, and multiple sources of geographic data by using the rank-size distribution and the Gini coefficient method. Through statistical results, we found that urban land takes on the feature of “high in the east and low in the west”. The study area included cities of different development stages and sizes. The nighttime light increased in most cities from 1992 to 2010, and the rate assumed an obvious growth tendency in the three urban agglomerations in the YREB. The results revealed that the urban size distribution of the YREB is relatively dispersed, the speed of urban development is unequal, and the trend of urban size structure shows a decentralized distribution pattern that has continuously strengthened from 1990 to 2010. Affected by factors such as geographical conditions, spatial distance, and development stage, the lower reaches of the Yangtze River have developed rapidly, the upper and middle reaches have developed large cities, and a contiguous development trend is not obvious. The evolution of urban agglomerations in the region presents a variety of spatial development characteristics. Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai have entered a phase of urban continuation, forming a more mature interregional urban agglomeration, while the YREB inland urban agglomerations are in suburbanization and multi-centered urban areas. At this stage, the conditions for the formation of transregional urban agglomerations do not yet exist, and there are many uncertainties in the boundary and spatial structure of each urban agglomeration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Sheng Li ◽  
Yu Wu

This paper analyzes the agglomeration level and agglomeration effect of 8 subindustries of equipment manufacturing industry and 26 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). From the perspective of industry, the agglomeration change trend of 8 subsectors of equipment manufacturing industry from 2006 to 2016 in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration (YRDUA) is analyzed. From the perspective of cities, the spatial differences of equipment manufacturing agglomeration degree in 26 prefecture-level cities in the YRDUA are discussed. By using CES production function, the agglomeration effect of equipment manufacturing agglomeration is studied. The results show that the YRDUA has formed an agglomeration pattern of equipment manufacturing industry, with Shanghai as the core, and Hefei, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing as the auxiliary cities, and the overall agglomeration effect in the region is relatively obvious.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document