Sisi Yu¹  Tobias Leichtle²  Zengxiang Zhang³ Fang Liu⁴ Xiao Wang³  Xue Yan⁵ Hannes Taubenböck ⁶

Author Details：

1. Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430074, China. 2. German Aerospace Center, German Remote Sensing Data Center, Oberpfaffenhofen 82234, Germany. 3. Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China. 4. Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China. 5. Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430074, China. 6. Institute for Geography and Geology, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Würzburg 97074, Germany.

Abstract

Urban growth is recognized as the conversion of vegetated surface to built-up surface. However, there is still no consensus about the urbanization-induced dynamic of vegetation greenness in view of existing literatures. In this study, we aimed to empirically investigate whether urban growth mean the loss of vegetation greenness. We selected 340 Chinese cities as the study areas, relied on consistent multi-temporal remotely sensed data and adopted linear regression analysis, annual growth area, Tail-Sen slope and Mann-Kendall models. Results show that although vegetation greening generally lagged behind urban growth in the monitoring period, a tendency of their consistent speeding up can be observed over time. By categorizing four forms and four trends of vegetation greenness dynamics related to urban growth, we revealed the diversity of Chinese cities. The former focused on the velocity of urban growth and vegetation greenness dynamics within newly urbanized area in three phases, i.e., 2003–2008, 2008–2013 and 2013–2018. The latter focused on the interannual trends of vegetation greenness dynamics among the previously existing and newly urbanized areas. The key finding is that, in over 85 % of the cities, we measured an increase of vegetation greenness along with urban growth. In addition, our detailed results allow quantifying the impact of urbanization in Chinese cities on vegetation protection and sustainable development.

城市增长被认为是植被表面向建筑表面的转变。然而，从现有文献来看，城市化引起的植被绿化动态仍未达成共识。本研究旨在实证检验城市增长是否意味着植被绿度的丧失。本文选取340个中国城市作为研究区域，基于一致的多时相遥感数据，采用线性回归分析、年增长面积、Tail-Sen斜率和Mann-Kendall模型。

结果表明：虽然在监测期间植被绿化总体上滞后于城市增长，但随着时间的推移，植被绿化有持续加快的趋势。通过对与城市发展相关的植被绿化动态的4种形态和4种趋势进行分类，揭示了中国城市的多样性。前者主要研究2003—2008年、2008—2013年和2013—2018年三个阶段的新型城市化区城市增长速度和植被绿度动态。后者侧重于既有和新城市化地区植被绿度动态的年际变化趋势。主要发现是，在超过85%的城市中，我们测量了植被绿度随着城市增长而增加。此外，我们的详细结果可以量化中国城市化对植被保护和可持续发展的影响。

注：本成果获得汕头大学地方政府发展研究所2022年度开放基金（No. 07422002）的资助。

Cite this article:

Sisi Yu, Tobias Leichtle, Zengxiang Zhang, Fang Liu, Xiao Wang, Xue Yan, Hannes Taubenböck, Does urban growth mean the loss of greenness? A multi-temporal analysis for Chinese cities. Sci Total Environ. 2023;898:166373.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166373.