ASSESSING THE FAST URBANIZATION PROCESS OF WUHAN CITY, P.R. CHINA: FROM LAND USE CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Today, urbanization has become an inevitable trend for many developing countries in the world. In China, since the reform and opening up in 1978, the country has experienced dramatic economic growth, accompanied by an urbanization evolution. However, owing to the lack of environmental awareness and governance, there are also lots of environmental issues emerging. Thus, it is necessary and crucial to have a good understanding about the urbanization progress and the related environmental challenges, in order to achieve the target of sustainable development. With almost 10 million residents in 2011, Wuhan city, one of the oldest but potentially great cities located in the middle of China, was chosen as the study area in this research. A combined analysis on the impacts of urbanization progress has been conducted based on the interpretation of land use pattern change and environmental issues in the recent 10 years, and a holistic environmental management strategy was presented accordingly. A quantitative analysis of land use pattern change during the period 2000 and 2009 was conducted with the assistance of satellite images, remote sensing technology and different statistical methods. The result shows that Wuhan has experienced accelerated urbanization and development in this period. The major land use pattern changes in our studied area are observed to be the expansion of urban areas and the inter- and intra- land transformation between the natural landscapes and artificial landscapes. Based upon the analysis, the urban land occupied 298.8 km2in 2000, and expanded to 656.8 km2 in 2009, with an annual IV change rate of 13.31%, which is much faster than other land use types. Moreover, within the studied area of 2912.8 km2, the forest coverage decreased by359.8 km2 and the water bodies shrunk by 290.1 km2, the percentage changes being 12.35% and 9.96% respectively. Accompanying the speedy and dramatic land use pattern change, there are also challenges brought about by environmental degradation, which have already influenced the livability of the city. In this study, some of the important and critical issues, such as land quality and food productivity, temperature change, water and air pollution, and flood disasters, were addressed and evaluated. After the examination of current environmental policies and facilities, some practical suggestions for effective environmental management were provided, which identified some gaps in current legislation, encouraged the efficient implementation of existing policies and the education of the public.