Land use change monitoring on the process of urbanization in the Central Plains Economic Zone based on remote sensing and GIS technologies

Analysis of land use change for urban sprawl is of great value for the management of urban and rural planning and regional sustainable development. In this study, an important city of the Central Plains Economic Zone - Luoyang City was used as an example to explore the land use monitoring framework for the process of urbanization based on remote sensing and GIS technologies. At first, suitable classification systems of urban land information for the Central Plains Economic Zone was discussed. Then thematic maps of land use change in Luoyang City were extracted through the combination of computer automatic classification methods and visual interpretation. Finally, land use change due to urbanization in Luoyang City from 2006 to 2009 was analyzed. The results show that: the speed of urbanization of Luoyang City in the period 2006-2009 accelerated significantly. For example construction land area increased from 91350ha to 104193ha from 2006 to 2009, with a total change area of 12843ha and increased rate of 4281ha per year. The rate of construction land change increased by 47.11% than that in the period 2000-2006. The high growth rate, which was even higher than that in the same period in Zhengzhou City, shows that Luoyang City was in her stage of rapid urbanization in recent years.