{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T04:18:10Z","timestamp":1760242690300,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2016,1,26]],"date-time":"2016-01-26T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1453766400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Rapid urbanization with sizeable enhancements of urban population and built-up land in China creates challenging planning and management issues due to the complexity of both the urban development and the socioeconomic drivers of environmental change. Improved understanding of spatio-temporal characteristics of urbanization processes are increasingly important for investigating urban expansion and environmental responses to corresponding socioeconomic and landscape dynamics. In this study, we present an artificial luminosity-derived index of the velocity of urbanization, defined as the ratio of temporal trend and spatial gradient of mean annual stable nighttime brightness, to estimate the pace of urbanization and consequent changes in land cover in China for the period of 2000\u20132010. Using the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program\u2013derived time series of nighttime light data and corresponding satellite-based land cover maps, our results show that the geometric mean velocity of urban dispersal at the country level was 0.21 km\u00b7yr\u22121 across 88.58 \u00d7 103 km2 urbanizing areas, in which ~23% of areas originally made of natural and cultivated lands were converted to artificial surfaces between 2000 and 2010. The speed of urbanization varies among urban agglomerations and cities with different development stages and urban forms. Particularly, the Yangtze River Delta conurbation shows the fastest (0.39 km\u00b7yr\u22121) and most extensive (16.12 \u00d7 103 km2) urban growth in China over the 10-year period. Moreover, if the current velocity holds, our estimates suggest that an additional 13.29 \u00d7 103 km2 in land area will be converted to human-built features while high density socioeconomic activities across the current urbanizing regions and urbanized areas will greatly increase from 52.44 \u00d7 103 km2 in 2010 to 62.73 \u00d7 103 km2 in China\u2019s mainland during the next several decades. Our findings may provide potential insights into the pace of urbanization in China, its impacts on land changes, and accompanying alterations in environment and ecosystems in a spatially and temporally explicit manner.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs8020094","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2016,1,26]],"date-time":"2016-01-26T10:00:42Z","timestamp":1453802442000},"page":"94","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":15,"title":["Quantitative Estimation of the Velocity of Urbanization in China Using Nighttime Luminosity Data"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"8","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4362-9330","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ting","family":"Ma","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing 210023, China"}]},{"given":"Zhan","family":"Yin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}]},{"given":"Baolin","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}]},{"given":"Chenghu","family":"Zhou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}]},{"given":"Susan","family":"Haynie","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Demographic Consulting, Inc., Santa Ana, CA 92706, USA"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2016,1,26]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"National Bureau of Statistics of China (2003). 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