An analysis of spatiotemporal changes of urban landscape pattern in Phoenix metropolitan region

The recent decades witness the rapid urbanization around the world. Phoenix, as one of the fastest growing city in United States, experienced fast urbanization during the global urbanization tide. This study analyzes spatiotemporal characteristics during the urban expansion in Phoenix metropolitan area by the support of GIS. In this study, we divided the land use of Phoenix into four classes: urban, agricultural land, desert and recreation land, and chose 4 class-level metrics: PLAND, PD, LSI, and LPI and 3 landscape-level metrics: SHDI, AWMPFD, and CONTAG, to qualify the urbanization dynamics of Phoenix. From 1912 to 2000, desert occupied the largest area of land in Phoenix, but its area kept decreasing; the urban area and its shape complexity kept increasing, and its fragmentation increased first and then declined dramatically; the agricultural area increased at first but then large proportion of its area converted to urban use; recreation land also showed a similar pattern to urban area.