Study On The Regional Differences Of The Urbanization Process Based On DMSP/OLS Image Data, China

Since the reform and opening up, China achieved rapidly urban development urbanization. According to the experience of developed countries, and China is now experiencing rapid urbanization process. The size and structure of citys'economy and form are developing in different speeds and evolving in various modes. As the main indicators of national economic development, urbanization has become the main driving force to support the rapidly economic development. Therefore, it is now a hot issue of urban studies to effectively measure the effects of urbanization development, evaluate spatial patterns of urbanization and measure the link between different cities the strength of the city.This night light image data used in this thesis is from the Operational Linescan System (OLS) sensor on The United State America Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). This product is available for the research on the macro-scale of urbanization spatial patterns and process changes, which can capture the context of a clear footprint of human activity in the dark and overcomes the traditional datas'shortcomings such as complex, costly, subjective and difficult to compare. Applying this product in 2003 and 2009, the author established a economic model of urban night, a compounded night light index of urbanization, and analyzed the economic hinterland of prefecture-level cities and the urban economic network relations based on the gravity model and network construct analysis theory. This thesis studied and analyzed the prefecture-level cities by compounded night light index of urbanization, night landscape economic index of urbanization, the hinterland of prefecture-level cities and the intensity of urban space and network relationship. Additionally, the evolution and pattern change of city size level and the spatio-temporal characteristics of urbanization in China was also be analyzed from a different point of view.Through this dissertation, we can draw the following conclusions:1) The urbanization spatial pattern in China is developing region, the North faster than the South, the East faster than the Central region, the Central region faster than The West; 2) Urbanization showed obvious space attenuation of "Coastal> Plain> Hilly areas> Central Highlands> Western Mountain Region"; 3) National policies, financial investment and infrastructure have significant impact on local urbanization in China; 4) Cities in northern part have high level of urbanization on the whole but low level of landuse. cities in southern part show an high degree of urbanization but the developing space of landuse is limited; There are low urbanization in central and western cities and a behindhand level of the western cities; 5) Impact forces of urban space showed a trend of "Beijing and Tianjin> Yangtze> Pearl River Delta", but the influence of those urban agglomeration are decreasing, and the regional disparity of the urbanization level reducing; 6) China's urbanization has a obviously trend of "moving north" and "Migration to the Mainland"; 7) The developing size and level urban agglomeration in China are verified based on spatial relationship.