Vegetation Dynamics Due to Urbanization in the Coastal Cities along the Maritime Silk Road
1
Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Sciences, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Beijing 100094, China
2
College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
3
College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
4
Department of Geography and Environment, Faculty of Life and Earth Sciences, Jagannath University, Dhaka 1100, Bangladesh
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: YunusAli Pulpadan
Land 2022, 11(2), 164; https://doi.org/10.3390/land11020164
Received: 25 November 2021
/
Revised: 11 January 2022
/
Accepted: 18 January 2022
/
Published: 20 January 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hazards, Disasters and Land Science toward Asian and Global SDGs for Land Systems: Approaches from Remotely Sensed Geospatial Data Analyses)
Substantial research indicates the effects of urbanization on vegetation cover; however, a view of this scenario from a regional scale is absent. Nowadays, coastal cities have become the new engine for the development of countries in coastal areas. To capture the effects of rapid urbanization on vegetation dynamics, 35 coastal cities along the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) were selected to study the related research using quantitative tools. We calculated spatiotemporal trends of vegetation dynamics along an urban development intensity (UDI) gradient using the MODIS-enhanced vegetation index (EVI) during the period of 2000–2015. We found a significant reduction (p < 0.05) in the EVI in the core area against that in the rural area (ΔEVI) of 14 cities and an insignificant change in vegetation in the peri-urban areas or urban outskirts. EVI decreased significantly along the UDI gradients in 12 coastal cities with a linear pattern and in seven coastal cities with a concave pattern; only Bangkok exhibited a convex pattern. The nonlinear pattern between the EVI and UDI reflected the fact that vegetation dynamics were affected by complicated factors, including climate change and human interventions, over a long period of time. In conclusion, our work provided a scientific reference for the sustainable development of coastal cities along the MSR; further work is necessary to explore the mechanic details of the positive and negative influences of urban factors and related policies on vegetation conditions.
View Full-Text
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Yan, M.; Fan, S.; Zhang, L.; Mahmood, R.; Chen, B.; Dong, Y. Vegetation Dynamics Due to Urbanization in the Coastal Cities along the Maritime Silk Road. Land 2022, 11, 164. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11020164
AMA Style
Yan M, Fan S, Zhang L, Mahmood R, Chen B, Dong Y. Vegetation Dynamics Due to Urbanization in the Coastal Cities along the Maritime Silk Road. Land. 2022; 11(2):164. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11020164
Chicago/Turabian StyleYan, Min, Shunxiang Fan, Li Zhang, Riffat Mahmood, Bowei Chen, and Yuqi Dong. 2022. "Vegetation Dynamics Due to Urbanization in the Coastal Cities along the Maritime Silk Road" Land 11, no. 2: 164. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11020164
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
