Spatiotemporal Evolution of Urban Expansion Using Landsat Time Series Data and Assessment of Its Influences on Forests Analysis of urban land use dynamics is essential for assessing ecosystem functionalities and climate change impacts. The focus of this study is on monitoring the characteristics of urban expansion in HangJiaHu and evaluating its influences on forests by applying 30m multispectral Landsat data and a machine learning algorithm. Firstly, remote sensed images were preprocessed with radiation calibration, atmospheric correction and topographic correction. Then, the C5.0 decision tree was used to establish classification trees and then applied to make land use maps. Finally, spatiotemporal changes were analyzed through dynamic degree and land use transfer matrix. In addition, average land use transfer probability matrix (ATPM) was utilized for the prediction of land use area in the next 20 years. The results show that: (1) C5.0 decision tree performed with precise accuracy in land use classification, with an average total accuracy and kappa coefficient of more than 90.04% and 0.87. (2) During the last 20 years, land use in HangJiaHu has changed extensively. Urban area expanded from 5.84% in 1995 to 21.32% in 2015, which has brought about enormous impacts on cultivated land, with 198,854 hectares becoming urban, followed by forests with 19,823 hectares. (3) Land use area prediction based on the ATPM revealed that urbanization will continue to expand at the expense of cultivated land, but the impact on the forests will be greater than the past two decades. Rationality of urban land structure distribution is important for economic and social development. Therefore, remotely sensed technology combined with machine learning algorithms is of great significance to the dynamic detection of resources in the process of urbanization.

Multitemporal Land Use and Land Cover Classification from TimeSeries Landsat Datasets Using Harmonic Analysis with a Minimum Spectral Distance Algorithm An understanding of historical and present land use and land cover (LULC) information and its changes, such as urbanization and urban growth, is critical for city planners, land managers and resource managers in any rapidly changing landscape. To deal with this situation, the development of a new supervised classification method for multitemporal LULC mapping with longterm reliable information is necessary. The ultimate goal of this study was to develop a new classification method using harmonic analysis with a minimum spectral distance algorithm for multitemporal LULC mapping. Here, the Jiangning District of Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, China was chosen as the study area. The research methodology consisted of two main components: (1) Landsat data selection and timeseries spectral reflectance reconstruction and (2) multitemporal LULC classification using HA with a minimum spectral distance algorithm. The results revealed that the overall accuracy and Kappa hat coefficients of the four LULC maps in 2000, 2006, 2011, and 2017 were 97.03%, 90.25%, 91.19%, 86.32% and 95.35%, 84.48%, 86.74%, 80.24%, respectively. Further, the average producer accuracy and user accuracy of the urban and builtup land, agricultural land, forest land, and water bodies from the four LULC maps were 92.30%, 90.98%, 94.80%, 85.65% and 90.28%, 93.17%, 84.40%, 99.50%, respectively. Consequently, it can be concluded that the newly developed supervised classification method using harmonic analysis with a minimum spectral distance algorithm can efficiently classify multitemporal LULC maps.