Effects of urban sprawl on LUCC - A case study in Guiyang City

Regional land use change has been and will continue to be one of the hugest human impacts on the environment. Based on eight remotely sensed images of Guiyang city from 1973 to 2001, this paper studies the effect of urban sprawl on the land use and land cover of Guiyang in recent three decades. The process and characteristics of urban expansion and the arrounding land use change were analyzed. Besides, the driving mechanisms behind the expansion are also discussed from several aspects. The results show that the urban built-up area was 10.84km(2) in 1973 and increased to 60.32km(2) in 2001. The built-up increased by 4.56 time and increased averagely by 1.77km(2) per year. The increase built-up area originates from different land use type, of which about 59.20% coverted from arable land and about 35.36% coverted from rural area and dependent factory, diggings land and other construction area. Among the driving forces of built-up expansion, the economic development is the fundamental driver of urban land expansion, and the location and topography factor is the natural limiting factors, while the political policy factors and population growth further accelerated the rate of urban land expansion.