Abstract
The sustained growth of non-farm wages has led to large-scale migration of rural population to cities in China, especially in mountainous areas. It is of great significance to study the spatial and temporal pattern of population migration mentioned above for guiding population spatial optimization and the effective supply of public services in the mountainous areas. Here, we determined the spatiotemporal evolution of population in the Chongqing municipality of China from 2000–2018 by employing multi-period spatial distribution data, including nighttime light (NTL) data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS). There was a power function relationship between the two datasets at the pixel scale, with a mean relative error of NTL integration of 8.19%, 4.78% less than achieved by a previous study at the provincial scale. The spatial simulations of population distribution achieved a mean relative error of 26.98%, improved the simulation accuracy for mountainous population by nearly 20% and confirmed the feasibility of this method in Chongqing. During the study period, the spatial distribution of Chongqing’s population has increased in the west and decreased in the east, while also increased in low-altitude areas and decreased in medium-high altitude areas. Population agglomeration was common in all of districts and counties and the population density of central urban areas and its surrounding areas significantly increased, while that of non-urban areas such as northeast Chongqing significantly decreased.
Highlights
Urban-rural migration is a major issue affecting the sustainable development of society, while the spatial distribution of population is a core focus of research in population geography [1]
Our integration accuracy was improved by 4.78% compared with the long-time-series nighttime light (NTL) dataset established at the provincial level [39], which indicated that our method for NTL integration was feasible and the resulting data had good quality and generally reliable temporal consistency
Hu et al [25] did this for Sichuan and Chongqing in 2014, with mean relative error (MRE) for population data based on DMSP-OLS and NPP-VIIRS NTL data of 46.3%
Summary
Urban-rural migration is a major issue affecting the sustainable development of society, while the spatial distribution of population is a core focus of research in population geography [1]. Driven by economic globalization, developing countries occupy an increasing share of the world economy and the world’s economic center continues to move to. As the largest developing country, China has experienced an unprecedented growth rate over the past 30 years. The urbanization rate has increased from 26% to 58%. The growth rate is about 2.7 times the world average (World Bank). China’s rapidly developing social economy and ongoing urbanization has resulted in the relocation and reorganization of urban and rural populations [5,6,7,8] as reflected in the continuous growth of the former and substantial reductions in the latter’s labor force.
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