Quantifying urbanization levels on the Tibetan Plateau with high-resolution nighttime light data

The Tibetan Plateau(TP)is undergoing rapid urbanization.To improve urban sustainability and construct eco-logical security barriers,it is essential to quantify the spatial patterns of urbanization level on the TP,but the existing studies on the topic have been limited by the lack of socioeconomic data.This study aims to quantify the urbanization level on the TP in 2018 with Luojia1-01(LJ1-01)high-resolution nighttime light(NTL)data.Specifically,the compounded night light index is used to quantify spatial patterns of urbanization level at mul-tiple scales.The results showed that the TP had a low overall urbanization level with a large internal difference.The urbanization level in the northeast,southeast and south of the TP was relatively high,forming three hotspots centered in Xining City,Lhasa City and Shangri-La City,while the urbanization level in the central and western regions was relatively low.The analysis of influencing factors,based on the random forest model,showed that transportation and topography were the main factors affecting the TP’s spatial patterns of urbanization level.The comparison analysis with socioeconomic statistics and traditional NTL data showed that LJ1-01 NTL data can be used to more effectively quantify the urbanization level since it is more advantageous for reflecting the spatial extent of urban land and describing the spatial structure of socioeconomic activities within urban areas.These advantages are attributed to the high spatial resolution of the data,appropriate imaging time and unaf-fected by saturation phenomena.Thus,the proposed LJ1-01 NTL-based urbanization level measurement method has the potential for wide applications around the world,especially in less-developed regions lacking statistical data.Using this method,we refined the measurement of the TP’s urbanization level in 2018 for multiple scales including the region,basin,prefecture and county levels,which provides basic information for the further urban sustainability research on the TP.