Analysis of Vegetation Distribution in Urban Areas: Spatial Analysis Approach on a Regional Scale

Recently, it is required to investigate the spatial distribution of vegetation in urban areas on a regional scale for not only the improvement of urban environment but also the conservation of ecosystem. In addition, the seasonal fluctuation of vegetation should be also analyzed because the vegetation distribution can be used for urban landscape management. The purpose of this study is to analyze the spatial distribution and seasonal fluctuation of vegetation on a regional scale. We defined the NDVI calculated from four kinds of Landsat ETM+ data as the potential of vegetation abundance and applied them to the spatial analysis using local spatial autocorrelation. As the results, it was obvious that the areas of high NDVI were extracted independently of seasonal fluctuation while there were various kinds of the extractions depended on seasonal fluctuation. We discussed the integration of the seasonal information on the spatial features of vegetation.