Vegetation role in controlling the ecoenvironmental conditions for sustainable urban environments: a comparison of Beijing and Islamabad

Shahid Naeem; Chunxiang Cao; Mirza Muhammad Waqar; Chen Wei; Bipin Kumar Acharya

doi:10.1117/1.JRS.12.016013

18 January 2018 Vegetation role in controlling the ecoenvironmental conditions for sustainable urban environments: a comparison of Beijing and Islamabad

Shahid Naeem, Chunxiang Cao, Mirza Muhammad Waqar, Chen Wei, Bipin Kumar Acharya

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Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 12, Issue 1, 016013 (January 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.12.016013

Abstract

The rapid increase in urbanization due to population growth leads to the degradation of vegetation in major cities. This study investigated the spatial patterns of the ecoenvironmental conditions of inhabitants of two distinct Asian capital cities, Beijing of China and Islamabad of Pakistan, by utilizing Earth observation data products. The significance of urban vegetation for the cooling effect was studied in local climate zones, i.e., urban, suburban, and rural areas within 1-km2 quantiles. Landsat-8 (OLI) and Gaofen-1 satellite imagery were used to assess vegetation cover and land surface temperature, while population datasets were used to evaluate environmental impact. Comparatively, a higher cooling effect of vegetation presence was observed in rural and suburban zones of Beijing as compared to Islamabad, while the urban zone of Islamabad was found comparatively cooler than Beijing’s urban zone. The urban thermal field variance index calculated from satellite imagery was ranked into the ecological evaluation index. The worst ecoenvironmental conditions were found in urban zones of both cities where the fraction of vegetation is very low. Meanwhile, this condition is more serious in Beijing, as more than 90% of the total population is living under the worst ecoenvironment conditions, while only 7% of the population is enjoying comfortable conditions. Ecoenvironmental conditions of Islamabad are comparatively better than Beijing where ∼61% of the total population live under the worst ecoenvironmental conditions, and ∼24% are living under good conditions. Thus, Islamabad at this early growth stage can learn from Beijing’s ecoenvironmental conditions to improve the quality of living by controlling the associated factors in the future.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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Shahid Naeem, Chunxiang Cao, Mirza Muhammad Waqar, Chen Wei, and Bipin Kumar Acharya "Vegetation role in controlling the ecoenvironmental conditions for sustainable urban environments: a comparison of Beijing and Islamabad," Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 12(1), 016013 (18 January 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.12.016013

Received: 28 July 2017; Accepted: 8 December 2017; Published: 18 January 2018

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