Modeling and Visualizing Spatio-temporal Pattern of Land Cover Change in Pearl River Delta Region of China Using Multi-temporal Imagery

Landuse and land cover change (LUCC) is regarded as a good indicator that represents the impacts of human activities on the earth’s environment. When the large collection of multi-temporal satellite images has become available, it is possible to study a long-term historical process of land cover change. The Pearl River Delta (PRD) region in southern China is a region where the rapid development has been witnessed during the last decades. The rapidly developing economy has been associated with an accelerated progress of urbanization, which has been reflected by the time series of land cover change. This paper seeks an efficient methodology to model and visualize spatio-temporal pattern of land cover change in the PRD region using multi-temporal satellite images. The classified satellite images were compared to detection the land cover change from other landuse to built-up areas. The trajectories of land cover change can then be established to model the change with the time. Correlation between the land coverage change sequence with selected economy data was then analyzed to identify the driving force of land cover change in this region. The results show that, from early 1990s to the beginning of the 21st century, the majority change of land cover types are from farmland to built-up area in the PRD region. It is quite clear that cities or towns have been expanded significantly in general. With the visualized demonstration, two kinds of urban growth mode can be found in the study area. Although there still exist some unanswered questions, the proposed method has shown its potential for obtaining better understanding about land cover change dynamics.