Impact of Rapid Urbanization on Vulnerability of Land System from Complex Networks View: A Methodological Approach

Rapid urbanization is responsible for the increased vulnerability of land systems and the loss of many crucial ecosystem services. Land systems are typical complex systems comprised of different land use types which interact with each other and respond to external environment processes (such as urbanization), resulting in dynamics in land systems. This work develops a methodology approach by integrating complex networks and disruptive scenarios and applies it to a case study area (Wuhan City in China) to explore the effects of urbanization on land system structural vulnerability. The land system network topologies of Wuhan City during five time periods from 1990 to 2015 are extracted. Our results reveal that the urban land expands at a higher speed than the urban population in Wuhan City; the period of 2005–2010 has witnessed more land area conversions from ecological lands to urban land than other periods; the land system is more vulnerable to intentional attacks on nodes with higher integrated node centrality and larger land area, such as paddy, dryland, and lake; and the network efficiency of the land system would decline sharply if the area shrinkage of paddy, dryland, and lake is larger than 30%, 50%, and 20%, respectively. The results provide some insights into building a resilient urban land system, such as increasing the efficiency of existing urban land and controlling the shrinkage rate of important land use types. This study contributes to existing literature on complex networks by expanding its application in land systems, which highlight the potential of complex networks to capture the complexity, dynamics, heterogeneity, and emergent phenomena in land systems.