Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
6.3 Projected Climate Impacts of Urbanization
in Wuhan Metropolitan
Rational choice of urbanization patterns is the hot issue for government and
academia. On one hand, many economists have conducted comparative study of
urbanization pattern from the perspective of economic efficiency, and given the
basis of urbanization model selection. On the other hand, natural scientists have
proved that urban land expansion is one of the most important reasons for global
climate change. Urban land expansion has a non-negligible impact on regional
climate by changing the underlying surface. As an important place for human
settlements, urban development should be evaluated form both environmental
effects and its impact on human welfare when pursuing economic efficiency.
Therefore, not only economic efficiency differences but also the environmental
effects of urban development and its impact on human living conditions should be
considered to choose a rational urban land expansion pattern. Especially in the
context of global climate change, studying impacts of underlying surface on
regional climate change has an important guiding significance for selection of
rational urbanization patterns. China is currently in the period of rapid urbaniza-
tion. In the coming period, China will maintain a high speed of urbanization.
Therefore, rational choice of urbanization model has a special significance for
China.
Wuhan Metropolitan is an important urban agglomeration after the rise of
Central China following the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and the Bohai
Sea Rim in China. It is also the first batch of pilot area of the ''resources-saving
and environment-friendly'' society construction in China. Therefore, it is urgent to
figure out the impact of different urban land expansion patterns on climate change
in Wuhan Metropolitan, which will find out a reasonable urban land expansion
pattern to mitigate regional climate change in Wuhan Metropolitan.
In this case study, we set up three kinds of urbanization scenarios: baseline
scenario, centralized urban land expansion scenario, and decentralized urban land
expansion scenario. The Partitioned and Asynchronous Cellular Automaton Model
is then employed to simulate urban land expansion patterns under different sce-
narios in Wuhan Metropolitan in 2020. The results are taken as a land use/cover
underlying surface data to be input into WRF model, and impacts of urban land
expansion on regional climate change under three different scenarios of urban
land expansion pattern are simulated. Through comparative analysis urban land
expansion under three different scenarios, we generate the spatiotemporal variation
of its impacts on surface climate, which will provide a reasonable response of
urbanization patterns to climate change in Wuhan Metropolitan.
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