Comparative study on landscape construction and its dynamic of typical city areas in Mongolia Plateau and Transbaikal region: A case study of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and Ulan-Ude, Russia

Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and Ulan-Ude in Russia are typical cities in northern Mongolian Plateau. Based on Landsat TM/ETM+ remote sensing interpretation, land use information of the two cities in 1990 and 2000 was extracted. The two cities landscape pattern and its dynamic change were compared according to series landscape and land use parameters, such as Patch Density, Mean Patch Fractal Dimension, land use conversion matrix, land use change ratio and dynamic degree and so on. The main conclusions are listed as follow: The landscape fragment degree of Ulaanbaatar is less than Ulan-Ude in the 1990s, and became larger in 2000s. The landscape patch shape of Ulaanbaatar is simpler and much more regular than Ulan-Ude in study period, as well as the dynamic change in this decade. This result shows that the land system of Ulaanbaatar is disturbed by human activities more intensively than that of Ulan-Ude.