Simulation of landscape spatial layout evolution in rural-urban fringe areas: a case study of Ganjingzi District

Abstract

In recent years, the rapid expansion of urban spaces has accelerated the mutual evolution of landscape types. Analyzing and simulating spatio-temporal dynamic features of urban landscape can help to reveal its driving mechanisms and facilitate reasonable planning of urban land resources. The purpose of this study was to design a hybrid cellular automata model to simulate dynamic change in urban landscapes. The model consists of four parts: a geospatial partition, a Markov chain (MC), a multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network (MLP-ANN), and cellular automata (CA). This study employed multivariate land use data for the period 2000–2015 to conduct spatial clustering for the Ganjingzi District and to simulate landscape status evolution via a divisional composite cellular automaton model. During the period of 2000–2015, construction land and forest land areas in Ganjingzi District increased by 19.43% and 15.19%, respectively, whereas farmland, garden lands, and other land areas decreased by 43.42%, 52.14%, and 75.97%, respectively. Land use conversion potentials in different sub-regions show different characteristics in space. The overall land-change prediction accuracy for the subarea-composite model is 3% higher than that of the non-partitioned model, and misses are reduced by 3.1%. Therefore, by integrating geospatial zoning and the MLP-ANN hybrid method, the land type conversion rules of different zonings can be obtained, allowing for more effective simulations of future urban land use change. The hybrid cellular automata model developed here will provide a reference for urban planning and policy formulation.