The Influence of Urbanization to the Outer Boundary Ecological Environment Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques—A Case of the Greater Bay Area

Urbanization brings great enrichment to human production and life, but also has certain environmental impact on the area where the city is located. Many studies have revealed the negative effects of urbanization on the ecological environment of urban or urban agglomerations, especially in the early stage of urbanization, but there are few studies on the impact on the peripheral ecological space environment. Will the peripheral environment be better off with less human interference as people move to cities during urbanization? In order to answer this question, we took the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the most economically dynamic area in China, as an example to explore the relationship between impervious changes of urban agglomerations monitored by remote sensing in the Bay Area and ecological indicators of forest and grassland in Guangdong Province outside the Bay area. The results showed that:(1) in the past 30 years, the area of grassland outside the bay area did not change regularly, while the area of forest decreased year by year. The landscape indices of forest and grassland were gradually fragmented and discrete. Moreover, the distribution of Fraction Vegetation Coverage (FVC) of forest and grassland has changed since before urbanization. (2) Through correlation analysis, it is found that the changes in forest area and the landscape index of forest and grassland are strongly correlated with the development of urbanization in the Greater Bay Area. This shows that the process of urbanization in the Greater Bay Area will have a non-negligible impact on the peripheral environment. In the process of urban development, we should not only focus on the inner city but also consider the outer environment of the city.