Spatial and temporal dynamics of land cover in Beijing

This paper focuses on the detection of land cover change from 2002, 2006 to 2010 combining TM, ETM+ and ASTER data. Our results indicate that most of the land covered by vegetation or water body previously within the fifth ring road around old city of Beijing has been replaced by urban construction land. The size of urban areas is expanded outside as a form of establishment of ring roads surrounding the old city. This suggests that the speed of urbanization in Beijing over the past 10 years is very fast. This might be caused by the repaid development in economy, the several times´ increase in population and the influence of the local government´s policy as well.