Impacts of the Development on Land Use and the Water Environment

Abstract

As the world’s largest alluvial island and China’s third largest island, Chongming enjoys significant geographical and ecological resources, which enables it to be at the forefront of Shanghai’s future sustainable development. Ecological construction and environmental conservation are the two key development principles for the island’s planning. With the support of a series of favored development strategies and policies, the process of urbanization in Chongming has been accelerating since the 2000s. This has triggered further changes in land use/cover and the local water environment. However, questions relating to (1) the extent to which the local environment has been affected by urbanization and (2) the policy implications of managing urbanization to achieve sustainable development have not yet been explicitly answered. Therefore, this chapter focuses on an assessment of the impact of urbanization on land use/cover change and the water environment by integrating statistics and remote sensing data. More importantly, certain policy deliberations related to ecological planning, water management, and the development of a low-carbon society are proposed to support the decision-maker in putting the eco-island plans into practice.