Transformative urban changes of Beijing in the decade of the 2000s
Transformative urban changes of Beijing in the decade of the 2000s
The rapid economic growth, the exodus from rural to urban areas, and the associated extreme urban development that occurred in China in the decade of the 2000s have severely impacted the environment in Beijing, its vicinity, and beyond. This article presents an innovative approach for assessing mega-urban changes and their impact on the environment based on the use of decadal QuikSCAT (QSCAT) satellite data, acquired globally by the SeaWinds scatterometer over that period. The Dense Sampling Method (DSM) is applied to QSCAT data to obtain reliable annual infrastructure-based urban observations at a posting of ~1 km. The DSM-QSCAT data, along with dierent DSM-based change indices, were used to delineate the extent of the Beijing infrastructure-based urban area in each year between 2000 and 2009, and assess its development over time, enabling a physical quantification of its urbanization which reflects the implementation of various development policies during the same time period. Eventually, as a proxy for the impact of Beijing urbanization on the environment, the decadal trend of its infrastructure-based urbanization is compared with that of the corresponding tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) column densities as observed from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) instrument aboard the second European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS-2) between 2000 and 2002, and from the SCanning Imaging Absorption SpectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY aboard of the ESA’s ENVIronmental SATellite (SCIAMACHY /ENVISAT) between 2003 and 2009. Results reveal a threefold increase of the yearly tropospheric NO2 column density within the Beijing infrastructure-based urban area extent in 2009, which had quadrupled since 2000.
Keywords: dense sampling method; Beijing; urbanization; change indices; troposphericNO2 columns
Beijing, change indices, dense sampling method, troposphericNO2 columns, urbanization
Sorichetta, Alessandro
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Nghiem, Son V.
adefb467-c15c-4092-863a-e7833765a6e9
Masetti, Marco
c3d261b3-da8c-4040-8fea-bc4389542c42
Linard, Catherine
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Richter, Andreas
080ff20b-2ec5-4204-a809-2d1c63e4be1f
16 February 2020
Sorichetta, Alessandro
c80d941b-a3f5-4a6d-9a19-e3eeba84443c
Nghiem, Son V.
adefb467-c15c-4092-863a-e7833765a6e9
Masetti, Marco
c3d261b3-da8c-4040-8fea-bc4389542c42
Linard, Catherine
231a1de7-72c2-4dc1-bc4e-ea30ed444856
Richter, Andreas
080ff20b-2ec5-4204-a809-2d1c63e4be1f
Sorichetta, Alessandro, Nghiem, Son V., Masetti, Marco, Linard, Catherine and Richter, Andreas
(2020)
Transformative urban changes of Beijing in the decade of the 2000s.
Remote Sensing, 12 (4), [652].
(doi:10.3390/rs12040652).
Abstract
The rapid economic growth, the exodus from rural to urban areas, and the associated extreme urban development that occurred in China in the decade of the 2000s have severely impacted the environment in Beijing, its vicinity, and beyond. This article presents an innovative approach for assessing mega-urban changes and their impact on the environment based on the use of decadal QuikSCAT (QSCAT) satellite data, acquired globally by the SeaWinds scatterometer over that period. The Dense Sampling Method (DSM) is applied to QSCAT data to obtain reliable annual infrastructure-based urban observations at a posting of ~1 km. The DSM-QSCAT data, along with dierent DSM-based change indices, were used to delineate the extent of the Beijing infrastructure-based urban area in each year between 2000 and 2009, and assess its development over time, enabling a physical quantification of its urbanization which reflects the implementation of various development policies during the same time period. Eventually, as a proxy for the impact of Beijing urbanization on the environment, the decadal trend of its infrastructure-based urbanization is compared with that of the corresponding tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) column densities as observed from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) instrument aboard the second European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS-2) between 2000 and 2002, and from the SCanning Imaging Absorption SpectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY aboard of the ESA’s ENVIronmental SATellite (SCIAMACHY /ENVISAT) between 2003 and 2009. Results reveal a threefold increase of the yearly tropospheric NO2 column density within the Beijing infrastructure-based urban area extent in 2009, which had quadrupled since 2000.
Keywords: dense sampling method; Beijing; urbanization; change indices; troposphericNO2 columns
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remotesensing-12-00652
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Accepted/In Press date: 11 February 2020
Published date: 16 February 2020
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
Funding: The research carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, was funded by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program, and in part by the NASA Earth Science R&A Program. The APC was funded by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program.
Funding Information:
Acknowledgments: The research carried out at the School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Southampton (UK) was done in the framework of the WorldPop Project (www.worldpop.org). The research carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, was supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program, and in part by the NASA Earth Science R&A Program. The authors want to thank to Gregory Neumann of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the DSM data processing. Particularly for proofreading this paper, we thank Mr. Edward H. Sewall, who is a JPL technical editor and a native speaker of English with a bachelor degree major in English from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and Mr. David Kerr, a native speaker of English working at WorldPop as a GIS Specialist Technician.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the author.
Keywords:
Beijing, change indices, dense sampling method, troposphericNO2 columns, urbanization
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 438455
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/438455
ISSN: 2072-4292
PURE UUID: e61c65d8-6543-40d6-94c4-3c1220ab2da8
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Date deposited: 10 Mar 2020 17:32
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 06:55
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Author:
Son V. Nghiem
Author:
Marco Masetti
Author:
Catherine Linard
Author:
Andreas Richter
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