Study of Land Cover Change in the City with the Fastest Economic Growth in China (Hefei) from 2000 to 2020 Based on Google Earth Engine Platform

Hefei’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate ranks first among all cities in China, and it was the fastest-growing city China from 2000 to 2020. The high-speed economic development inevitably led rapid changes land cover types, e.g., an increment artificial features (built-up) decrement natural (vegetation). However, (1) many previous studies focus on change metropolis or at global scale, yet few underdeveloped but fast-growing cities; (2) mainly variations, seldom local characteristics. Thus, is of great significance monitor for with fastest based long time-series satellite images both perspectives. In this study, support huge amounts data (including 719 Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI images, surface temperature, nighttime DEM, multiple products, various auxiliary data), processing parallel computing abilities GEE platform, classification maps Hefei 2020 are produced a random forest machine learning method, spatio-temporal variations driving factors analyzed viewpoints. results show that: accuracy excellent; average overall 93% Kappa coefficient 0.88; general obvious; built-up area expanded 419.72 km2 1530.20 km2, total 264.58%. With expansion area, vegetation coverage decreased by 16.61% (1652.56 km2); (3) temperature shows trend new town old due decentration administration centers; further analysis that population social economy two changes. It worth noting water body increased significantly, although fast urbanization caused whole city, indicating improvement green surfaces simultaneously experienced