Applying SLEUTH model for simulating urban growth scenario of Chongqing districts

Districts of Chongqing is selected as the study area, which has a rapid rate of urbanization and eco-environmental pressure. The fundamental data of this study is the remote images and urban planning images of Chongqing city in 1988, 1993, 2000 and 2007. After data processing by RS and GIS, model calibration is applied to obtain the best parameters for the SLEUTH model. Then, the SLEUTH model is used for the simulation of the urban growth over the past 20 years. On the basis, the SLEUTH model is applied to predict the situation of urban expansion of the region in the next 10 years. The simulation results show that the calibrated model has a higher simulated precision for the urban expansion of study area, and the pace of urbanization has become relatively rapid in the study area, which may be closely related to the current land planning, road construction, industrial structure and economic policy.