Impervious surfaces areas(ISA) is a important indicators in assessing high intensity activities of human land use on the environment / climate impact. And it has very important significance in researching urbanization, global environmental change and global urban ecological.

Dr. KUANG Wenhui and Prof. LIU Jiyuan from Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) carried out a national-scale monitoring of the early 21st century (2000 to 2008) artificial construction land with impervious surface remote sensing monitoring and analysis.

They found that in 2008, ISA accounted for 0.86% of the total land area in China. Urban land areas increased by 43.46% between 2000 and 2008. The annual growth rate of 1788.22 km2/a in this period was 2.18 times that in the 1990s. In particular, urban ISA increased by 53.30% between 2000 and 2008 with an annual growth rate of 1348.85 km2/a. During the 8 years, the ISA in China increased rapidly, especially in the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan Metropolitan Region, Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, and the western China region. The increasing ISA may influence potentially water environmental quality in the major basins. In particular, the number of subbasins having ISA of greater than 10% increased considerably, which were primarily distributed in the Haihe River, Yangtze River and Pearl River basins. In 2008, 14.42% of the basin areas were affected by the increased ISA.

The related results have been published in the journal of China Science Bulletin（KUANG WenHui, LIU JiYuan1*, ZHANG ZengXiang, LU DengSheng & XIANG Bao. Spatiotemporal dynamics of impervious surface areas across China during the early 21st century. China Science Bulletin 2013 Vol.58 No.14: 1691-1701, doi: 10.1007/s11434-012-5568-2）.The complete paper is available online at http://sourcedb.cas.cn/sourcedb_igsnrr_cas/yw/lw/201307/t20130716_3899597.html.