A method characterizing urban expansion based on land cover map at 30 m resolution

Based on the global land cover data at 30 m resolution (GlobeLand30) in the year 2000 and 2010, the urban expansion process of 320 cities in China was analyzed using lognormal regression, and the expansion model were established. Three metrics were presented for the models, including the peak position, the full width at half maximum, and the skewness. It was found that the three metrics could reveal different patterns of the urban expansion process of cities with different sizes. Specifically, cities with larger size tend to expand outward strongly, and their expansion intensity and influence are likely to be higher. Moreover, most cities’ expansion occurs around the urban core with spatially limited influence. In addition, it was also found that the city’s expansion intensity is related to the city size. These results showed that the lognormal regression model could describe the distribution of urban expansion with effectiveness and robustness.