Analyzing land use and land cover change patterns and population dynamics of fast-growing US cities: Evidence from Collin County, Texas

Land use and land cover (LULC) change is a critical component in the global environment change process. The southern and western areas of the United States have experienced rapid population growth in the past decades. This paper analyzed the LULC change patterns and population dy-namics in Collin County, Texas from 2000 to 2019. Landsat images and population data from US Census were analyzed in this study. Supervised maximum likelihood classifier was used to obtain the pre-classified land cover maps. We interpreted the land cover classes for three sets of samples from multiple sources and used them as the input sample for post-classification. A CoMCRF based post-classification was further performed on each of the pre-classified land cover maps. The post -classification improved the overall accuracy (OA) from the pre-classification maps by 2.9%, 5.7%, and 6.6% for 2000, 2010, and 2019, respectively. The Kappa coefficients also increased by 0.044, 0.089, and 0.101 for the three study years. Based on the post-classified land cover maps, we found that the LULC change in Collin County, Texas is primarily in the form of converting field lands to human built land covers. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) were further employed to investigate the tract-level relationships between built-up area change ratio and population change ratio during the period from 2010 to 2019. The results from GWR analysis showed that population change can explain 75.15% of the change in built-up area. This case study for Collin County, Texas provides insights on the most recent LULC change pat-terns and their relations with population dynamics in fast-growing US cities.

Automated summary

This study analyzed the patterns of land use and land cover change and population dynamics in Collin County, Texas, and found that the conversion of field lands to built-up land covers is the primary form of land use change in the region. Additionally, the analysis using ordinary least squares and geographically weighted regression showed that population change can explain 75.15% of the change in built-up area.