Analysis of Spatio-temporal Changes of Land Use in Wuhan City Using Remote Sensing and GIS

Land use and land cover change is the most important topic of global climate change. GIS and RS provide effective technical methods for land use change research. In this paper we used multi-temporal Landsat remote sensing images of Wuhan city (1991, 2002 and 2005), combined with GIS technology, analyzed the characteristics of land area change, information of land types conversion, land spatio-temporal changing model etc. According to the general characteristics and evolution pattern of land use change, we revealed the main tendency of land evolvement in the rapid urbanization and explored urban land use structure evolution model from 1991 to 2005. The results show that from 1990s, urban expansion was fast and the trend of urbanization was very obvious in Wuhan. Based on the information and models of land use change, we discovered the characteristics and rules of land use change in Wuhan city, and then predicted its future trend of evolution of land use, which will be helpful for land resources management and urban planning.