Exploring the Relationship between Urbanization and Ecological Environment Using Remote Sensing Images and Statistical Data: A Case Study in the Yangtze River Delta, China

Zhenfeng Shao, Lin Ding, Deren Li, Orhan Altan, Md. Enamul Huq and Congmin Li
Additional contact information
Zhenfeng Shao: State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Lin Ding: School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Deren Li: State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Orhan Altan: Department of Geomatics, Istanbul Technical University, 36626 Istanbul, Turkey
Md. Enamul Huq: State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Congmin Li: State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 14, 1-28

Abstract: With the rapid urban development in China, urbanization has brought more and more pressure on the ecological environment. As one of the most dynamic, open, and innovative regions in China, the eco-environmental issues in the Yangtze River Delta have attracted much attention. This paper takes the central region of the Yangtze River Delta as the research object, through building the index system of urbanization and ecological environment based on statistical data and two new indicators (fraction of vegetation coverage and surface urban heat island intensity) extracted from remote sensing images, uses the Entropy-TOPSIS method to complete the comprehensive assessment, and then analyzes the coupling coordination degree between the urbanization and ecological environment and main obstacle factors. The results showed that the coupling coordination degree in the study region generally shows an upward trend from 0.604 in 2008 to 0.753 in 2017, generally changing from an imbalanced state towards a basically balanced state. However, regional imbalance of urbanization and ecological environment always exists, which is mainly affected by social urbanization, economic urbanization, landscape urbanization, pollution loading and resource consumption. Finally, on the basis of the obstacle factor analysis, some specific suggestions for promoting the coordinated development of the Yangtze River Delta are put forward.

Keywords: coupling coordination degree; fraction of vegetation coverage; surface urban heat island intensity; Landsat images; obstacle degree model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/14/5620/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/14/5620/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:14:p:5620-:d:383653

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().