Bringing Geospatial Analysis to the Social Studies: an Assessment of the City Sprawl in China
Résumé
Research area: Taipei urban landscapes, Taiwan. Located on the north of the Taiwan Island, Taipei is the country's core urban political and economic center with population reaching over 2.6 M and continuing to expand within the city.
Research aim: spatio-temporal analysis of urban dynamics in study area during 15 years (1990-2005).
Research objective: application of geoinformatic tools, remote sensing data and application of methodology to spatial analysis for a case study of Taipei.
Data capture: The data include Landsat TM images taken from the U.S.G.S. website. The software used is ENVI GIS.
Research problem: In the past decades, the process of urbanization has become more notable in the East Asia. Since past decades, Taipei city undergone serious urban changes.The development of urban landscapes in Taipei has unique feature; Taiwan's exceptional economic and industrial growth since 1980s, which is often referred as "industrial wonder of Taiwan".
Results: In this research the analysis of changes in landscapes has been done using tools of geospatial analysis. Namely, two satellite images Landsat TM have been processed and classified using ENVI GIS software. As a result of classification, the areas occupied by different landscape types have been calculated and analyzed. Moreover, it has been detected that different parts of the city of Taipei were developing with different rate and intensity. Three (3) different residential types of the city were recognized and mapped. The results demonstrated following outcomes: 1) intensive urban development of the city of Taipei; 2) decline of green areas and natural spaces and, on the contrary, increase in anthropogenic urban spaces; 3) not parallel urban development in different districts of the city of Taipei during the 15-year period of 1990-2005.
Discussion: Recently, the country quickly transformed from an agriculture-based traditional economy into a highly industrialized society. As a result, Taiwan has now a new face of high-technology oriented, economically restructured economy. This caused changes in the face of the country, modifying both its social and natural landscape patterns. Taiwan is nowadays a highly urbanized country with almost 80% of the total population of Taiwan living in urban areas. Intensive urbanization necessarily create new conditions for human-nature coexistence , since rapidly growing city and high urbanization rate affect biodiversity and ecosystems sustainability. The process of urbanization includes transformation of natural landscapes: typical natural land cover type are being transformed into human-affected artificial surfaces and the city area enlarges. Anthropogenic pressure increased rapidly due to the expansion of Taipei metropolitan area. Rapid urbanization affects complex interrelations of natural and urban ecosystems, changes their structure, size and shape, which becames a serious environmental problem. At the same time, Taiwan has unique natural landscapes with high environmental value, outstanding natural beauty, rare and extinct species. In vies of this, environmental monitoring should be considered for effective city management and nature conservation on the island.
Mots clés
Domaines
Traitement des images [eess.IV] Vision par ordinateur et reconnaissance de formes [cs.CV] Milieux et Changements globaux Ingénierie de l'environnement Recherche d'information [cs.IR] Calcul parallèle, distribué et partagé [cs.DC] Apprentissage [cs.LG] Interface homme-machine [cs.HC] Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP] Biodiversité et Ecologie Environnement et Société
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