Exploration of eco-environment and urbanization changes in coastal zones: A case study in China over the past 20 years
Zihao Zheng, Zhifeng Wu, Yingbiao Chen, Zhiwei Yang, Francesco Marinello
Abstract
With the rapid development of urbanization and population migration, since the 20th century, the natural and eco-environment of coastal areas have been under tremendous pressure due to the strong interference of human response. To objectively evaluate the coastal eco-environment condition and explore the impact from the urbanization process, this paper, by integrating daytime remote sensing and nighttime remote sensing, carried out a quantitative assessment of the coastal zone of China in 2000–2019 based on Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) and Comprehensive Nighttime Light Index (CNLI) respectively. The results showed that: 1) the overall eco-environmental conditions in China's coastal zone have shown a trend of improvement, but regional differences still exist; 2) during the study period, the urbanization process of cities continued to advance, especially in seaside cities and prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu and Shandong, which were much higher than the average growth rate; 3) the Coupling Coordination Degree (CCD) between the urbanization and eco-environment in coastal cities is constantly increasing, but the main contribution of environmental improvement comes from non-urbanized areas, and the eco-environment pressure in urbanized areas is still not optimistic. As a large-scale, long-term series of eco-environment and urbanization process change analysis, this study can provide theoretical support for mesoscale development planning, eco-environment condition monitoring and environmental protection policies from decision-makers.