Monitoring coastal land reclamation and land use change around Hangzhou Bay using Landsat dataset (1970s-2014)

The coastal region is an important potential land resource, and reclamation is a valid means to utilize land and expand human living space. Since the 1970s, large-scale reclamation projects have taken place in eastern coastal regions, China. To examine the reclamation program around the Hangzhou Bay in Zhejiang Province, China-using a time-series Landsat dataset in 1976, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2014, a visual interpretation is applied to extract artificial coastline and reclamation land-use information. The result showed that during the year 1976 to 2014 period, the total reclamation area around Hangzhou Bay is 1039.84 km(2), and the project was mainly occurred in south of Hangzhou Bay, particularly in Ningbo and Shaoxing county. In addition, between 1976 and 1980, the speed of reclamation was higher than any other period, followed by period from 2006 to 2009. Moreover, the early reclamation lands were mainly used for cropland and aqua-farm ponds. After the year 1990, industrial warehouse space and land for harbor and wharf first appeared, and both of them have increased markedly. The land use types tend to be of diversity overall since 21st century.