Vegetation Dynamics under Rapid Urbanization in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area Urban Agglomeration during the Past Two Decades

Detection of long-term vegetation dynamics is important for identifying improvement and degradation, especially rapidly urbanizing regions with intensive land cover conversions. The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) urban agglomeration has experienced rapid urbanization during the past decades profound impacts on vegetation, so there an urgent need to evaluate across use/cover change (LUCC). Based normalized difference index (NDVI) 2001–2020, we used coefficient variation, Theil–Sen median trend analysis, Hurst exponent analyze spatiotemporal future consistency growth among main LUCC in GBA. Results demonstrated that low NDVI values high fluctuations were mainly distributed central areas, whereas primarily located peripheral hilly mountains. area-averaged showed overall increasing at a rate 0.0030 year?1, areas (82.99%) more than four times those degradation (17.01%). persistent forest grassland converted from built-up displayed most obvious greening; over 90% these trend. In contrast, browning occurred 60% built-up. Future (91.37%) will continue existing trends, 80.06% GBA was predicted develop benign direction, compared 19.94% malignant direction. Our results contribute in-depth understanding GBA, which crucial conservation land-use optimization.