Abstract
Understanding the urban land-cover spatial patterns is of particular significance for sustainable development planning. Due to the nonlinear characteristics related to the spatial pattern for land cover, it is essential to provide a new analysis method to analyze them across remote sensing imagery. This paper is devoted to exploring the fractals and fractal dimension properties of land-cover spatial patterns in Shenzhen city, China. Land-cover information was extracted using a supervised classification method with ArcGIS technology from cloud-free Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI imagery, covering 1988–2015. The box-counting method and the least squares regression method are combined to estimate fractal dimensions of the land-cover spatial pattern. The information entropy was used to verify our fractal dimension results. The results show the fractal dimension changes for each land cover type from 1988 to 2015: (1) the land-cover spatial form of Shenzhen city has a clear fractal structure, but fractal dimension values vary in different land cover types; (2) the fractal dimension of build-up land increases and reaches a stable value, while grassland and cultivated land decrease; The fractal structure of grassland and bare land showed a bifractals trend increasing year by year; (3) the information entropy dimension growth is approaching its maximum capacity before 2011. We integrated the information entropy index and fractal dimension to analyze the complexity in land-cover spatial evolution from space-filling, space balance, and space complexity. It can be concluded that driven by policies, the land-cover spatial form in Shenzhen experienced a process from a hierarchical spatial structure with a low evolution intensity to a higher evolution intensity with multiscale differential development. The fractal dimension has been becoming better through self-organization, and its land resources are reaching the growth limits.
Highlights
With the urbanization acceleration and the rapid growth of urban space, changes in the urban spatial structure occur every day
Significant bifractals can be seen in the fractal dimensions of the different land-cover types, and these implies a self-affine characteristic that unsynchronized fractals develop in different directions, scales, and regions [14]
This paper has presented a novel study of the urban land-cover evolution characteristics based on a landcover dataset with a long-term sequence for Shenzhen
Summary
With the urbanization acceleration and the rapid growth of urban space, changes in the urban spatial structure occur every day. The contradiction between the functional organization of urban interior space and the uneven use of urban land is becoming increasingly severe, affecting the sustained and healthy development of the urban economy and society [1,2]. To mitigate the urban development contradictions and support the sustained development of urban space, it is vital first to understand the current functional organization of urban interior spaces [3]. The fractal dimension represents the urban land’s morphological characteristics and represents an optimal structure to optimize space [5]. Different fractal dimension values indicate different spatial structure features. This paper is devoted to studying the relationship between urban land-cover structure changes and policies.
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