Monitoring the Expansion of Urban Construction Land in Jiangsu Province with a New Method Based on Night Light Data

Abstract

Due to China's fast urban expansion rate, many scholars have used various data to study the expansion dynamics of urban construction land in China. As a new data source, night light remote sensing data are more suitable for the background of rapid urbanization in China, however, current methods to extract urban construction land from night light data still have certain disadvantages. This study proposed a new method to extract urban construction land from night light data, extracted the urban construction land in Jiangsu Province during the period 2000–2013, and made temporal-spatial analyses of the results. The proposed new method to extract urban construction land from night light data proved to be feasible, and it overcame certain disadvantages of current methods. The analyses revealed that urban construction land in Jiangsu Province expanded rapidly from 2000 to 2013, but the expansion speed slowed down after 2003. And the expansions mainly took place in the southern part of Jiangsu Province, especially in Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou.