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Critical thresholds in urbanization-vegetation dynamics: Multiscale remote sensing evidence from Chinese cities.
Yining Shen1, Nan Wang1, Yunyan Du1
1State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
Journal of Environmental Management
|April 25, 2026
Summary
Urbanization reshapes vegetation, but a national greening trend exists. A key urbanization threshold (≈0.88) shows vegetation recovery, varying by city tier and region.
Area of Science:
- Urban Ecology
- Remote Sensing
- Environmental Science
Background:
- Urban vegetation is vital for ecosystem services but threatened by urbanization.
- Understanding urbanization's impact on vegetation dynamics, including nonlinear effects and thresholds, is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify human-induced vegetation trends and their response to urbanization intensity across Chinese cities.
- To identify nonlinear relationships and multiscale threshold effects between urban expansion and vegetation dynamics.
Main Methods:
- Integrated multi-source remote sensing data (MODIS NDVI, Landsat impervious surfaces) for 370 Chinese cities (2001-2022).
- Quantified vegetation trends (Sen_HNDVI) and urbanization intensity (impervious surface proportion, β).
- Analyzed spatial heterogeneity and identified distinct urbanization-vegetation interaction patterns.
Main Results:
- Observed a significant national greening trend (+0.009 per decade) with regional disparities (greening in NW, degradation in E).
- Identified a predominant 'V-shaped' relationship between vegetation trends and urbanization, with a recovery threshold at β ≈ 0.88.
- Found scale-dependent thresholds, with higher-tier cities showing recovery potential at lower urbanization intensities.
Conclusions:
- Urbanization-vegetation dynamics are nonlinear and scale-dependent, with critical thresholds influencing ecological recovery.
- Four distinct interaction patterns (degradation, recovery, stabilization, improvement) were identified.
- Findings support integrating ecological thresholds into urban planning for sustainable development.
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