Mexico City metropolitan expansion since the 1970s: a multitemporal dynamic map derived from Landsat imagery
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Abstract
This study presents a dynamic map depicting the metropolitan expansion of Mexico City from the 1970s onward, with a temporal resolution of approximately 3.5 years. The analysis focuses on the impervious surfaces in the northern and eastern regions of the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (ZMCM) between 1973 and 2021, utilizing medium-resolution satellite imagery (Landsat, sensors MSS, TM, ETM+, and OLI) acquired on 14 distinct dates. We employed a supervised classification using Support Vector Machines (SVM), with training pixels for the 'urban land-use' class derived from two pure elements (one with high albedo and the other with low albedo) from a Linear Spectral Mixture Analysis. The user and producer accuracies for the "urban land-use" class ranged from 65% to 95% and from 55% to 91%, respectively. High rates of peripheral expansion were observed between 1973 and 1986, and again from 1993 to 2014, with a notable deceleration afterwards. The dynamic map is built on the most comprehensive geospatial dataset for the Mexico City Metropolitan Area - the most populous metropolitan region in the country and one of the most dynamic globally - with high potential for training machine learning algorithms on future expansion processes. This tool also provides invaluable insight for evaluating urban and regional planning programs in the past and in the future, especially those associated with large-scale urban projects on the Mexico City megalopolis.
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