Analyzing the impacts of topographic factors and land cover characteristics on waterlogging events in urban functional zones

Wen Liu; Xin Zhang; Qi Feng; Tengfei Yu; Bernard A Engel

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166669

Analyzing the impacts of topographic factors and land cover characteristics on waterlogging events in urban functional zones

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Dec 15:904:166669. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166669. Epub 2023 Aug 30.

Authors

Wen Liu¹, Xin Zhang², Qi Feng³, Tengfei Yu³, Bernard A Engel⁴

Affiliations

¹ Key Ecological Safety and Sustainable Development in Arid Lands, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China; Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette 47907, IN, USA. Electronic address: liuwen@lzb.ac.cn.
² Key Ecological Safety and Sustainable Development in Arid Lands, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ Key Ecological Safety and Sustainable Development in Arid Lands, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China.
⁴ Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette 47907, IN, USA.

PMID: 37657550
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166669

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and climate changes result in frequent occurrence of urban waterlogging disasters, which cause serious economic damage and pose a threat to residents' safety. Understanding the spatial characteristic and the key influencing factors of urban waterlogging has significant implications for mitigating waterlogging. In this study, the officially issued representative waterlogging points were obtained, as well as the topographic factors and land cover characteristics were selected to compare their impacts on the waterlogging event density in a highly urbanized area at urban functional zone (UFZ) scale, and to quantify the contributions of the key influencing factors on urban waterlogging events. Results showed the average density of urban waterlogging events in the study area is 9.2 points/km², and 38.4 % of the waterlogging events are distributed in REZ. The distribution of waterlogging points in the study area revealed a significant multi-core and multilevel spatial aggregation pattern, and 12.1 % of the study area was high-density waterlogging area. In the total UFZs, the correlation coefficients of topographic indices with waterlogging density were relatively weaker than the other land cover characteristic metrics. The impervious surface ratio had significant contributions in all UFZ types. The larger ratio of impervious surface significantly increased the density of waterlogging events. The increase in the ratio of green space can effectively decrease the density of urban waterlogging. In the total UFZs, the top 3 key influencing factors of urban waterlogging were PR (35.9 %), COHESION (32.5 %) and DIVISION (11.8 %). The higher connectivity of landscape patches in REZ, INZ and COZ, as well as the increase of landscape dispersion or diversity in REZ, EGZ, INZ and GSZ can effectively reduce the occurrence of urban waterlogging. This study provides a better understanding of the formation mechanism of urban waterlogging disasters and potential implications for prioritized waterlogging mitigation strategies.

Keywords: Key influencing factors; Land cover composition; Landscape pattern; Topographic factors; Urban functional zones; Urban waterlogging.