QUANTIFYING THE ECOLOGICAL PATTERNS OF URBAN DENSIFICATION THROUGH MULTIPLE ENDMEMBER SPECTRAL MIXTURE ANALYSIS, LANDSCAPE METRICS, AND FUZZY LOGIC WG VII/4 Human Settlement and Impact analysis

This paper introduces an integrative methodology that has been developed to measure temporal changes in urban morphology based on the techniques of multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA), landscape metrics, and fuzzy logic. In order to illustrate an application of the methodology, the paper uses two satellite images acquired in 1990 and 2000 for the metropolitan area of Los Angeles County, California, a megacity with complex morphological patterns that are rapidly changing due to a range of complex, interrelated forces of urbanization that are poorly understood. Through a wall-to-wall exercise, the paper discusses: (1) how the spatially continuous character of urban morphology in Los Angeles has been analyzed through the MESMA technique to capture and quantify within-class changes at the sub-pixel level; (2) how the magnitudes of changes have been assessed through fuzzy logic; and (3) how landscape metrics have been applied to quantify the ecological patterns of change at the census tract level.