Spatial and Temporal Dynamic of Urban Sprawl in West China: A Case Study of Chongqing, China

摘要

Based on eight remotely sensed images, this paper studies the spatial-temporal characteristic of Chongqing's city spatial morphology evolution in recent three decades. The process and characteristics of urban expansion and urban morphology are analyzed using fractal dimension, radiation index and compactness index based spatial morhoplogic measurement coupled with land use change mornitoring. The results show that Chongqing developed by leaps and bounds and experienced three major stages, i.e., relatively stable period in the 1980s, the slow development period after the mid-1980s and the relatively high-speed development period in recent years. The urban built-up area was 87.32km~2 in 1978 and increased to 282.91km~2 in 2005. The increase built-up area originagtes from different land use type, of which about 76.86% coverted from arable land and about 20.52% coverted from rural area and dependent factory, diggings land and other construction area.