Assessing the Impacts of Urbanization on the Ecosystem Services of City in Northwestern China: Case Study of Xi'an

Recently, the urbanization process in cities of developing countries has been at an unprecedented scale. However, this process is more under economic development-driven rather than a sustainable way, and has exerted huge pressures on nature ecosystem of cities'. In this research, we try to assess the impacts of urbanization on the functionality of ecosystem in cities in northwestern China, through applying remote sensing technology and estimating changes of ecosystem services value (ESV) of a city during the urbanization process. A case study has been taken in Xi'an, a major city of northwestern China. Results revealed that the ESV of Xi'an has opposite trend of urbanization rate, and the urbanization process has significantly jeopardized the integrity and functionality of the ecosystem of Xi'an.