The aim of the project is to look at spatial and temporal urban land use change in China and assess its impact on society and environment.
Over the next two decades, the urban population of China is expected to increase by 400 million people. The size and scale of urban population growth and the concomitant urban land-use changes in China pose major challenges to local and regional ecosystems, and ultimately the global environment. We conduct detailed case study analysis of rapidly growing urban regions. By undertaking multiple place-based case studies to draw comparisons at different spatial scales and across different political regimes, our research seeks to identify common themes about the international spread of urban areas and policy and institutional levers that may affect the pathways of urban development.
As a part of this project I intend to look at historic NDVI values from the Shanghai region and identify agricultural pixels that have been converted to urban areas.