Analysis of urban expansion and landscape characteristics in Shiyang River Basin—taking Liangzhou District of Wuwei city in China as an example

Urban development means reaching balanced development through the process of self-organizing and being organized (Li,1997). With the accelerated social economic development and urbanization, the rural population moves into cities and towns, where the second and third industries gather. Thus, with the increased number and expanded scale of cities and towns, the spatial expansion of urban land will become the main characteristic of land use change now and in the future (Fang and Sun, 2005; Gober, 2010; Li et al., 2010a).