Spatial Analysis of Vegetation Distributions in Urbanized Areas on a Regional Scale

Vegetation plays a key role in not only improving urban environments, but also conserving ecosystems. The spatial distribution of vegetation can be expected to make green corridors for landscape management, wind paths against heat island phenomena, etc. It is required to investigate the spatial distribution of vegetation on a regional scale because there should be green corridors and wind paths in the areas between urban areas and suburbs. We have developed a spatial analysis method of vegetation distributions using remotely sensed data on a regional scale. The method consists of a spatial autocorrelation analysis, an overlay analysis, and a hydrological analysis with the NDVI adopted as the potential of the vegetation abundance. Application of the method leads to the extraction of the lines between the core areas and sparse areas of vegetation. The purpose of this study was to analyze the vegetation distributions in urbanized areas. We applied our method to the urbanization areas and analyzed the features of vegetation distributions regarding spatial continuity through the verification of its applicability. We used a vegetation map digitized from aerial photographs as the reference. The map contained three vegetation types of land cover: grasslands, agricultural fields, and treecovered areas.