China urbanization process induced vegetation degradation and improvement in recent 20 years

Vegetation is a significant factor in improving the quality of eco-environment, which leads to sustainable development of urban agglomerations. However, there is a lack of research on the positive and negative feedback of urbanization process on vegetation changes from a long-term and large-scale spatial scale. In this communication, China was selected as research area to analyze the impact of urbanization on vegetation by quantifying the changes in construction land and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from 2000 to 2018. We found that 70.72% of the areas showed significant vegetation improvement, while in urban agglomerations, there were 95.75% of the areas (at the 95% confidence level). Urbanization intensity in most urban agglomerations was negatively correlated with NDVI and showed a downward trend along the intensity gradient. NDVI in areas covered by complete vegetation showed an upward trend.

Automated summary

Vegetation plays a crucial role in improving the quality of the eco-environment and promoting sustainable development in urban agglomerations. Research in China has shown that over 70% of areas have experienced significant vegetation improvements during the urbanization process, with urbanization intensity negatively correlated with the vegetation index.