30 m global impervious surface area dynamics and urban expansion pattern observed by Landsat satellites: From 1972 to 2019

Using more than three million Landsat satellite images, this research developed the first global impervious surface area (GISA) dataset from 1972 to 2019. Based on 120,777 independent and random reference sites from 270 cities all over the world, the omission error, commission error, and F-score of GISA are 5.16%, 0.82%, and 0.954, respectively. Compared to the existing global datasets, the merits of GISA include: (1) It provided the global ISA maps before the year of 1985, and showed the longest time span (1972-2019) and the highest accuracy (in terms of a large number of randomly selected and third-party validation sample sets); (2) it presented a new global ISA mapping method including a semi-automatic global sample collection, a locally adaptive classification strategy, and a spatio-temporal post-processing procedure; and (3) it extracted ISA from the whole global land area (not from an urban mask) and hence reduced the underestimation. Moreover, on the basis of GISA, the long time series global urban expansion pattern (GUEP) has been calculated for the first time, and the pattern of continents and representative countries were analyzed. The two new datasets (GISA and GUEP) produced in this study can contribute to further understanding on the human's utilization and reformation to nature during the past half century, and can be freely download from http://irsip.whu.edu.cn/resources/dataweb.php.

Automated summary

This research developed the first global impervious surface area (GISA) dataset from 1972 to 2019 using over three million Landsat satellite images, validated by random reference sites from cities worldwide. The new dataset provides a wider time span, higher accuracy, and a new method for global ISA mapping, while also calculating the global urban expansion pattern for the first time, contributing to a better understanding of human impact on nature over the past half century.