Quantifying changes in land use and surface water bodies in Wuhan China

Extensive urban land expansion in recent decades has resulted in large scale land reclamation and occupation of natural surface water bodies in many Chinese cities. A common phenomenon is that lakes, ponds or creeks in and around cities are converted to impervious (i.e. urban built-up) land use due to the requirements of new urban construction (Gao et al. 2003; Gao et al. 2004; Zhang et al. 2005). This conversion has widely destroyed the natural status of surface water bodies. Furthermore, it creates negative impacts on the urban ecosystem and degrades the urban environment. After 2000, many cities in China started to take measures to conserve surface water resources, mainly focusing on lakes. However, the interrelationship between the qualitative and quantitative status of surface water systems and land use changes has not received much attention from urban planners nor from water managers.