Relationship between urbanization and ecological vulnerability in the Nansi Lake area based on RS and GIS

Abstract

Urban construction and expansion constitute an inevitable process during the social-economic development,but urban development has some adverse impacts on regional ecosystems which cannot be ignored,particularly in fragile and sensitive wetland areas. In this paper,with the Nansi Lake and the surrounding three counties as the study area and on the basis of remote sensing( RS) data and geographic information system( GIS),the authors analyzed the land use and land cover change and the changes of eco-vulnerability from 1987 to 2010,and investigated the relationship between the urbanization and regional ecological fragility. The results show that,from 1987 to 2010,the growth of urban areas accounted for more than 60% of the effective regional landscape changes,and the largest regional eco-loss landscapes were water bodies and green fields,with the most obvious changes of ecological vulnerability occurring at the lakeside of the Nansi Lake.