Analysis of the Expansion and Simulation of Urban Land Use in Guangzhou
广州市城镇用地扩展及预测分析

The contradiction between a shortage of land and fast urbanization is a growing problem, as is the expansion of urban space and the adjustability of land use construction. The expansion of urban land is one of the most important types of the land use change. With the expansion of urban land, high quality cultivated land and important ecology environments are converted to construction land. If we understand the regularity of urban land expansion, the occupation of basic farmland and important environments would decline. Based on RS and GIS, temporal remote sensing data were interpreted and land use information was extracted. Indexes were selected to explore expansion regularities of urban land in Guangzhou from 1990 to 2009. The results show that the expansion speed fluctuated greatly, the barycenter of Guangzhou shifted northeast, and that expansion was strong and stable in the south and weak in the west and southwest. Geographical conditions had a macro effect on the expansion and the economy drove expansion. Transport facilities have guided the direction of urban expansion but policy played a decisive role. The geography simulation system (GeoSOS) has a good effect on the forecast of urban land expansion. The parameters and selected factors are suitable for simulation and forecast; some factors were selected to simulate future change. After the simulation of urban land expansion in 2020, the relative indexes are similar to the expansion of urban land from 1990 to 2009.