Assessing the long-term impact of urbanization on run-off using a remote-sensing-supported hydrological model

Abstract

Land use/land cover (LULC) change in Dongguan, a city belonging to the Pearl River Delta metropolitan area, and its impact on the run-off of this city since the rapid urbanization period starting in 1979 are analysed in this article. Historic remote-sensing imagery (acquired in 1979, 1989, 2000, 2006, and 2013) was processed by the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method to obtain LULC data, and a long-term hydrologic impact assessment (L-THIA) model was applied to evaluate the long-term effects of LULC changes on surface run-off. The results show the urbanized area in Dongguan has increased more than 52% from 1979 to 2013 and the percentages of annual surface run-off depth and annual surface run-off coefficient are 58% and 5.83%, respectively. The increase in annual surface run-off is related to urbanization, and the centre area of the city has experienced the largest increase in annual surface run-off. The 32 towns’ local indicators of spatial association show centre towns are hot spots of increases in annual surface run-off in Dongguan city.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments and suggestions.

ORCID

Hui Zhang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8964-7059

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 51379222 for a project titled: ‘Study and test of urban flood forecasting model under changing environment’.