Abstract
Although many prior efforts found that road networks significantly affect landscape fragmentation, the spatially heterogeneous effects of road networks on urban ecoenvironments remain poorly understood. A new remote-sensing-based ecological index (RSEI) is proposed to calculate the ecoenvironmental quality, and a local model (geographically weighted regression, GWR) was applied to explore the spatial variations in the relationship between kernel density of roads (KDR) and ecoenvironmental quality and understand the coupling mechanism of road networks and ecoenvironments. The average effect of KDR on the variables of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land surface moisture (LSM), and RSEI was negative, while it was positively associated with the soil index (SI), normalized differential build-up and bare soil index (NDBSI), index-based built-up index (IBI), and land surface temperature (LST). This study shows that rivers and the landscape pattern along rivers exacerbate the impact of road networks on urban ecoenvironments. Moreover, spatial variation in the relationship between road network and ecoenvironment is mainly controlled by the relationship of the road network with vegetation and bare soil. This research can help in better understanding the diversified relationships between road networks and ecoenvironments and offers guidance for urban planners to avoid or mitigate the negative impacts of roads on urban ecoenvironments.
Highlights
Roads appear as conspicuous objects across the world
The relationships demonstrated that the negative relationship between kernel density of roads (KDR) and land surface moisture (LSM) was distributed in most of the study areas, indicating that the LSM decreased with the increase in KDR
There was a part of the study areas showing a positive relationship, distributed in the central area of the urban area and the southern part of the study area, where it was distributed in negatively correlated places of the KDR and the index-based built-up index (IBI) and the KDR and the land surface temperature (LST) (Figure 4C,D,I,J)
Summary
Roads appear as conspicuous objects across the world. China’s mountainous areas, including hills and plateaus, cover an area of 6.636 million km , accounting for 69.1% of the total land area in the country, which means that these road networks might affect the ecoenvironment of a considerable part of the country’s earth surface. Previous studies suggest that roads might affect the ecoenvironment of nearly. 15–20% of the total land area of the United States [1] and nearly 16% of the Netherlands [2]. Roads might impact approximately 20% of China’s land ecosystems [3]. It is projected that a further 25 million km of roads will be constructed around the world by
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