Modeling the dynamics of urban sprawl and spatial landscape pattern in beijing metropolitan area

Urban sprawl has sparked a new debate over land-use policy in Beijing metropolitan area in China during past three decades. Increasing populations and economics intensify the urban growth and cropland encroachment. The metropolitan area has gone through a rapid urban growth and transformation from rural to developed land over a short period of time and provided an excellent study area for this study. Using historical land use maps and a spatially explicit dynamic cellular automata urban sprawl model we present applications of a spatially explicit model of land use change. The use of the results for environmental assessments is illustrated by calculating spatial indices to assess the impact of land use change on forest fragmentation. It is concluded that spatially explicit modeling of land use change yields important information for environmental management and land use planning. We quantify the urban sprawl and model the spatial landscape pattern change in Beijing metropolitan area, China. These results constitute a foundation for spatial and ecosystem models to predict long-term environmental impacts of land use change in China.