A Multiscale Evaluation of the Coupling Relationship between Urban Land and Carbon Emissions: A Case Study of Chongqing, China

Exploring the coupling relationship between urban land and carbon emissions (CE) is one of the important premises for coordinating the urban development and the ecological environment. Due to the influence of the scale effect, a systematic evaluation of the CE at different scales will help to develop more reasonable strategies for low-carbon urban planning. However, corresponding studies are still lacking. Hence, two administrative scales (e.g., region and county) in Chongqing were selected as experimental objects to compare and analyze the CE at different scales using the spatiotemporal coupling and coupling coordination models. The results show that urban land and carbon emissions presented a significant growth trend in Chongqing at different scales from 2000 to 2015. The strength of the spatiotemporal coupling relationship between urban land and total carbon emissions gradually increased with increasing scale. At the regional scale, the high coupling coordination between urban land and total carbon emissions was mainly concentrated in the urban functional development region. Additionally, the high coupling coordination between urban land and carbon emission intensity (OI) was still located in the counties within the metropolitan region of Chongqing, but the low OI was mainly distributed in the counties in the northeastern and southeastern regions of Chongqing at the county level. This study illustrates the multiscale trend of CE and suggests differentiated urban land and carbon emission reduction policies for controlling urban land sprawl and reducing carbon emissions.