Abstract
In Hong Kong, reclamation is the main method for developing new land use areas as most country parks and mountains are protected under a land policy that emphasizes conservation for their high ecological value. Therefore, the land use for urbanized area in Hong Kong is limited, which has become an issue of concern. Hong Kong’s population is increasing; however, the amount of available land use is insufficient to meet the demand. Developing a high density of buildings is one of the critical strategies of Hong Kong’s government. Highly dense development may result in an urban heat island as well as health problems. In this study, we present an assessment of urban impervious surface changes in coastal megacities like Hong Kong based on satellite images. Landsat satellite images are employed to analyze urban impervious surface changes from 1995 to 2015 in coastal urban areas of Hong Kong. The results show that the increase of impervious surface area is almost the same as the increase in land reclamation area. This suggests that Hong Kong’s land use policy, which underlines conservation for high ecological value and reclamation, may be able to maintain its sustainable development of coastal land use.
Highlights
Impervious surface [1] is a water resistant surface contributing to the assessment of the urbanization [2]
In the process of impervious surface estimation, there were some constraints on the classiffiication of endmembeerrss ffrroommLLaannddssaattTTMMimimaaggeess. .TThhe eshsahdaedeononthtehLeaLnadnsdastaTtMTMimiamgaegs emsamyahyavheavcaeucsaeudseadn aernroerroclracslsaifsisciafitcioanti,own,hwichhicmh amyahyahvaevaefafeffcetectdedthtehererseusultlstsaasswweelll
The strategies to increase the amount of available land to deal with the increasing population growth include building more pencil buildings and reclamation
Summary
Impervious surface [1] is a water resistant surface contributing to the assessment of the urbanization [2]. The V-I-S model has been widely used to estimate urban impervious surface in many previous studies [16,17,18], there is little literature about monitoring the impervious surface changes in Hong Kong as observed from satellite images. Due to the land policy that emphasizes environmental conservation, the change in the impervious surface area of Hong Kong has been small. Estimation of the change of impervious surface area in Hong Kong over the past twenty years can indicate whether the land use strategy is sufficient to meet the requirement for land and lead to suggestions for sustainable land use [23,24,25] in coastal megacities in the long term. It is necessary to assess impervious surface changes in coastal urban areas in Hong Kong
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
