Monitoring Urban Expansion in Beijing, China by Multi-Temporal TM and SPOT Images

We select Beijing City as the study area, focusing on the urban expansion in the past decade based on remotely sensed data (TM and SPOT of year 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2007) and GIS technology. Land use change is detected by means of post classification comparison. We obtain the distribution map of urban land during three periods for ten years. Then, spatial model of urban expansion is analyzed by GIS technology. Markov chains is used to gain the percentage for each type of land use convert to urban land; and urban expansion in given size of window is discussed. The main results are: (1) The work flow of multi-temporal land use change detection proved to be efficient. The outcomes were maps of land use pattern, urban ratio and expansion intensity maps; (2) From central city to suburb, the land use variation takes on strong spatio-temporal change. Urban expansion cores and traffic are two urban expansion spatial influence factors.