Radiation effect of urbanization on land use and landscape pattern in Beijing

Urban fringe is a complex transition region between urban areas and rural areas and experiences dramatic land transformation. Up to now, the main ideas and research methods about fringe area have focused on the urban boundary determining and the land use and landscape pattern changes of urban fringe at home and abroad. Meanwhile, a small number of people have begun to study the gradient influence upon land use and landscape pattern caused by urbanization. However, few people do correlative research on the impacts of urbanization with radiation distance increasing upon land use and landscape pattern based on urban groups. In this paper, Beijing city is selected to be the study areas, 20 buffer zones had been created around urban areas (including the main urban areas and ten satellite cities) based on digital land use maps in 1995. By the method of buffer analysis, this paper has studied the gradient effect of the radiation distance of urbanization influence upon land use and landscape pattern. Results show that: has great differences: the influence on croplands and built-up area are the largest, the influence on woodlands, grasslands, water bodie and unused land has not prominent correlation caused by nature and socio-economic environment around Beijing city and the influence on croplands, built-up areas and grasslands is being strengthened with urban expanding in recent years.