Urbanization and its environmental effects in Shanghai, China

This paper analyzes the processes and characteristics of urbanization in Shanghai, focusing on the population and land use and land cover (LULC) change, and its correlation with the evolution of climatic and ecological indicators based on the historical land use data, meteorological station data, social statistical data, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and land surface temperature (LST) data. The possible association between urban heat island (UHI) and urbanization indicators are also discussed. Examination of the population variation indicates a continuously increase of registered population and a rapid increase of floating population that mainly comes from neighboring provinces in recent years. With rapid urban sprawl, a large amount of cultivated lands has been replaced with building lands around urban areas and towns of Shanghai. Urbanization is correlated with the increase of air temperature, hot days and the decrease of relative humidity, wind speed and vegetation NDVI in Shanghai. The growth of UHI in Shanghai has been driven by the continuous increase of buildings, paved roads, buses, population and GDP, as well as the decrease of cultivated land. Boosting the area of green land in urban areas has to a certain extent mitigated the UHI in Shanghai in recent years. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V.