Spatial process of green infrastructure changes associated with rapid urbanization in Shenzhen, China

Through a case study of Shenzhen City, China, this study focused on a quantitative method for analyzing the spatial processes involved in green infrastructure changes associated with rapid urbanization. Based on RS, GIS and SPSS statistics software, the approach includes selection of the square analysis units and representative landscape metrics, quantification of the change types of landscape metrics in all analysis units through two indices and hierarchical cluster analysis of the above analysis units with different landscape metric change types (i.e. spatial attributes). The analyses verify that there is a significant sequence of continuous changes in green infrastructure in Shenzhen. They are the perforation, the segmentation, the fragmentation, the evanescence and the filling-in processes, which have a good spatio-temporal correspondence with urbanization and reflect the synthetic influence of urban planning, government policies and landforms. Compared with other studies on quantifying the spatial pattern, this study provides an alternative probe into linking the spatial pattern to spatial processes and the corresponding ecological processes in the future. These spatio-temporal processes offer many opportunities for identifying, protecting and restoring key elements in an urban green infrastructure network for areas in the early stages of urbanization or for non-urbanized areas.