A research on natural geographical factors based on Chinese urban expansion

Abstract

To further explore the intrinsic mechanism of urban expansion, this paper was mainly related to natural geographical factors on urban expansion based on MSS and TM multi-spectral remote sensing image of the 34 provincial capital level cities in China from 1975 to 2005. With the help of MATLAB, SPSS and ARCGIS, the methods that the principal component factor analysis, correlation analysis, and meanwhile overlay analysis had been used. And the results showed that the natural geographical conditions of Chinese cities had a deep effect on their urban expansion. Firstly, mountainous cities were limited by the terrain that their expansion rate was lower than that of the cities in the plain. At the same time, with average altitude increasing, urban expansion rate had a tendency of decreasing. The spatial and temporal changes of urban expansion were bound up with the average slope of the province. And the speed of urban expansion varied greatly on different levels of slope. Secondly, urban expansion showed distinct characteristics respectively in different weather conditions. Correspondingly, the temperature, precipitation and sunshine hours were selected as different grade reference factors to analyze urban expansion characteristics. Thirdly, analysis on the relationship between the hydrological and urban expansion had been done. In conclusion, this paper had made a try on the study of natural geographical factors on urban expansion. And it had an important practical significance to classify different cities with natural environmental indicators.