Using landsat satrllite imagery to examine spatial urban expansion of five municipalities in Taiwan

This objective of this research was on using the Landsat satellite imagery for GIS-based urbanisation spatial pattern analysis in five municipalities in Taiwan since 1980 to 2010. The five municipalities include Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The satellite images used in this research contented Landsat MSS, Landsat TM, and Landsat ETM+. Urbanisation often results in the increasing the density of transportation systems and population growth, and ultimately leading to change of land cover. Forest lands, agricultural lands, and other naturally vegetated lands were converted into high density of urban constructions, such as buildings, urban concrete playgrounds and transportation systems. Urban structures, natural vegetation and water all have unique spectral reflectance characteristics. Using this characteristic, the Maximum Likelihood supervised classification was performed, and the images was divided into two classes, urban area and non-urban area in each municipality. The percentages of urban zone over the area of each municipality were calculated in every ten years since 1980 to 2010. The results indicated that population growth pressure caused the urbanisation spatial pattern to be significant dynamic. The urban pattern was started at a city centre core and was extended to outside regions. In Taiwan, urban patterns in each municipality was influenced by transportation systems, but was limited by natural barriers, such as river and mountainous areas. Overall, the Taipei, the capital city was developed in early stage, and approached fully urbanised in 2000 due to extremely high population density and fully integrated transportation systems. Other municipalities were still in stage of growth, and need enhance transportation systems and increase population from other places in order to assist the metropolis development.