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Monitoring Urban Growth and Land Changes in Beijing, China’s Capital City by Remote Sensing: Progress and Challenges

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Challenges Towards Ecological Sustainability in China (JFGES 2017)

Abstract

Over the past two and a half decades, urban growth has been a subject in numerous studies mostly through the use of remote sensing technology. Although many cities, large or small, have been targeted, Beijing as China ’s capital city has probably been more frequently researched than any other metropolises in the world. This chapter aims to examine some major advances in remote sensing -based urban growth studies with Beijing as the focus. For this purpose, we surveyed peer-reviewed English literature paying attention on some journal articles reporting the subject. Specifically, we examined the progress on several issues related to the research design and implementation, namely, spatial extent or temporal scale , data sources , and quantified dimensions . Based on the literature review, we further identified several major challenges and discussed some future research directions. We believe our longitudinal study focusing on major English literature examining the urbanization pattern in Beijing through remote sensing can not only help better research design but also assist formulating effective strategies and polices to deal with major challenges towards ecological sustainability in large metropolises.

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Correspondence to Ting Liu .

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Liu, T., Yang, X. (2019). Monitoring Urban Growth and Land Changes in Beijing, China’s Capital City by Remote Sensing: Progress and Challenges. In: Yang, X., Jiang, S. (eds) Challenges Towards Ecological Sustainability in China. JFGES 2017. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03484-9_4

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