Detection and visualization of the eco-environmental response under urbanization: A grey relational analysis technique

Urbanization often alters eco-environmental responses, with a broad range of potentially significant environmental and engineering consequences. At a practical, site-specific management level, efficient and effective assessment and control of such urbanized area impacts require a technical capability to rapidly identify development-induced eco-environmental changes. The readily GRT might provide a mathematically format, and specially represent an eco-environmental response analysis to urbanization. The study puts forward the coupling degrees model based on GRT and ISM to investigate the response of eco-environment to urbanization in Jiangsu province, China. The paper selects 16 critical variables to reveal the coupling mechanism and describes the eco-environmental changes in line with urbanization process from 1990 to 2007. The result shows there exists significant phases for the temporal evolvement of coupling degrees, in which the changing of coupling degrees stages takes on the combining curve composed of two inverted "U" shaped.