Analysis of Landscape Changes in an Urban Fringe Area for Sustainable Landscape Planning

Abstract

The worldwide conversion of natural lands into urban land uses is the most significantprocess affecting landscape character and ecological conditions. The aim of this research was toanalyze the changes of landscape character and ecological conditions to provide comprehensiveinformation to assist policy makers in meeting wider sustainability objectives in an urban fringelandscape. The result indicated that the landscape experienced the decrease in woodland cover(-22.70%) and agricultural land cover (-10.30%) between 2002 and 2014. However, the urbanland cover sharply increased from 5.07% in 2002 to 38.07% in 2014. Due to their location onthe edge of the core urban area, this landscape character unit had been under increasingpressure from new built developments. Development pressures include housing expansion fromadjoining urban areas, and business developments particularly associated with key roadintersections and expansions of public infrastructure. Furthermore, the landscape had beenchanging rapidly as massive high-rise apartment developments were built as the core urban areaexpands, with the removal of woodlands and arable fields. These landscape changes in the studyarea had a strong impact on landscape character for this period. The index of landscapeheterogeneity declined from 0.802 in 2002 to 0.712 in 2014. The index of area weighted meanwoodland patch shape was decreased from 3.196 in 2002 to 2.784 in 2014. The resultsuggested that it became a more homogeneous landscape and had less species and a less stableecological structure for this period. This research only used the index of landscape heterogeneityfor landscape ecological analysis. For more ecological information, a more comprehensiveanalysis based on landscape ecological metrics is needed in future researches.