Necessity of a Multifaceted Approach in Analyzing Growth of Impervious Surfaces

Ghali Abdullahi Abubakar,Ke Wang,Amir Reza Shahtahmassebi,Jiexia Wu

doi:10.3390/su12104109

Abstract

While substantial efforts have been devoted to the remote sensing of impervious surfaces, few studies have developed frameworks to connect impervious surfaces’ growth with spatial planning decisions. To this end, this paper develops a multifaceted approach with three components: Visualization, numerical analysis, and simulation at the sub-pixel level. First, the growth of impervious surfaces was visualized through write function memory (WFM) insertion for the period of 1974–2009 of Cixi County in Zhejiang Province, China. Second, anomaly detection, statistical analysis, and landscape metrics were used to quantify changes in impervious surfaces over time. Finally, a slope, land use, exclusion, urban extent, transportation, and hill shade (SLEUTH) cellular automata model was employed to simulate the impervious surface growth until 2015 under four specific spatial decision scenarios: Current trends, environmental protection growth, business growth, and Chinese policy for protecting rural regions. The results show that Cixi County experienced compact growth due to expansion and internal intensification. Interestingly, the SLEUTH reveals that the projected space of impervious surfaces’ growth was consistent with reality in 2015. The framework established in this study holds considerable potential for improving our understanding of the interaction between impervious surfaces’ growth and planning aspects.

Highlights

Urban regions are described as ecosystems with biotic and abiotic components, which consist of function, connection, structure, and history [1,2]
It is noteworthy that the initial analysis in this study showed that the amount of impervious surfaces in 1974 was low; adding this image to the RGB impervious surface (RGB_IS) might not reveal considerable change
This paper developed a multifaceted approach with three components: Visualization, numerical analysis, and simulation at the sub-pixel level to comprehensively understand growth of impervious surfaces for the years of 1974, 1981, 1987, 1995, 2000, 2002, and 2009

Summary

Introduction

Urban regions are described as ecosystems with biotic and abiotic components, which consist of function, connection, structure, and history [1,2]. One of the key components of urban ecosystems is impervious surfaces, which consist of impermeable landscape features, including roads, buildings, parking lots, railways, and sidewalks that prevent water from infiltrating the soil [3]. There is a growing recognition of characterization of changes in impervious surfaces, such as their abundance, spatio-dynamics, and future growth [9,10]. This information is crucial to a range of issues in urban geography, such as sustainable land management and ecosystem conservation [11,12]

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Conclusion