Urbanization around the Pearl River Estuary in China from 1973 through 2001 (WMS)
Visualizations by
Eric Sokolowsky
Released on February 13, 2004
The region around the Pearl River Estuary in southern China experienced rapid urban growth in the 1980s and 1990s. This growth was spurred by the establishment of special government economic zones, particularly in Shenzhen, just to the east of the estuary. Urban areas increased by more than 300% between 1988 and 1996. This growth can be directly assessed by remote sensing measurements from space, particularly by comparing images from the Landsat sensors for the last thirty years. This animation shows nine such images in sequence, from the years 1973, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1988, 1992, 1995, 2000, and 2001.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0
Places you might have seen this: '10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China' a documentary film
also part of a 87 page teaching module through the Standford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education available at (http://spice.standford.edu/catalog/list )