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A Comparative Study on the Characteristics of the Urbanization Processes Between China and India from 1992 to 2013 Using DMSP-OLS NTL Images

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Abstract

Based on DMSP/OLS nighttime light data and statistical yearbook data from 1992 to 2013, this paper extracts the urban built-up areas of China and India by using the reference comparison method and empirical threshold method. Nine landscape pattern indicators such as the patch number and total patch area were selected. Extracting the characteristics of the urbanization processes of the two countries from three spatial scales: the whole countries, typical urban agglomerations, and typical cities, and a multidimensional comparative analysis were carried out. The conclusions are as follows: the total urban areas of China and India increased over the study period by 2.07 times and 1.43 times, respectively. The proportion of the largest urban area in India fluctuated greatly, the urbanization process was dominated by individual large cities, and the development of cities of different sizes in China was relatively balanced. The overall edge length of the Beijing–Tianjin-Hebei, and Delhi urban agglomerations increased over the study period by 72% and 87%, respectively, and the average radii of gyration increased by 47% and 8%, respectively. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration developed greatly in terms of its urban scale and urban area, while the Delhi urban agglomeration developed greatly in terms of its number of urban patches. The mean patch areas of typical cities in China and India increased over the study period by 1.12 times and 1.83 times, respectively, and the number of patches decreased by 6% and 22%, respectively. The expansion of large core cities was dominant in the urbanization of China. Emerging and expanding small urban patches were the main force in the urbanization of India.

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Availability of Data and Material

The DMSP/OLS nighttime light data can be downloaded from the U.S. Weather Service National Geographic Data Center website (https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/download.html).

Code Availability

Software application.

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Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42171413); the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFB0503500), the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. ZR2020MD015 and ZR2020MD018), the Major Science and Technology Innovation Project of Shandong Province (Grant No. 2019JZZY020103), and the Young Teacher Development Support Program of Shandong University of Technology (Grant No. 4072–115016).

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JF and PZ proposed the idea, designed the experiments, and provided the funding for possible publication fees. PZ revised the manuscript and provided some instructions on data analysis. GS performed most of the data analysis and wrote the paper. MZ and QJ performed some data analysis and drawn the images. JC edited the language and performed part of data processing work.

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Correspondence to Junfu Fan or Panpan Zhang.

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Sun, G., Zhang, M., Fan, J. et al. A Comparative Study on the Characteristics of the Urbanization Processes Between China and India from 1992 to 2013 Using DMSP-OLS NTL Images. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 49, 3059–3070 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-021-01443-1

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