Evolution of Urban Landscape Pattern in Suzhou City during 1987-2009

Abstract

The urban landscape pattern evolution and driving forces in SuZhou City in the past two decades were explored based on the landscape ecology theory and the ENVI 4.7 & Fragstats 3.3 technology, using the multi-source interpreted data of Landsat TM images in 1987,2005 and 2009, and Landsat ETM+ image in 2000. The indices chosen are the urban landscape overall constitution, average patch area, patch number, patch density, fractal dimension, contagion index, isolation index, fragment index, landscape diversity and evenness index. Taking the remote sensing as a platform to integrate and analyze the data, the driving forces are summarized together with the development of SuZhou City. This will supply the theory foundation and scientific basis for the land resources of reasonable planning and using, management, sustainable utilization, and the landscape pattern optimization configuration in SuZhou City. The results show that, the landscape pattern in Suzhou City changed greatly from 1987 to 2009. The construction land area increased, while the cultivated land, wood land and water body area decreased. The urban landscape contagion index and landscape fractal dimension were all increased, while the urban landscape diversity and evenness index were all decreased. The isolation index and fragment index of the construction land and cultivated land were small, this shows that the landscape pattern changed mainly by human factors. The population and economy growth together with industrialization and urbanization were main forces for the urban landscape pattern evolution in SuZhou City. The results can provide scientific evidence for ecological landscape design and urban development planning in other regions.