A Prolonged Artificial Nighttime-light Dataset of China (1984-2020)

Lixian Zhang; Zhehao Ren; Bin Chen; Peng Gong; Bing Xu; Haohuan Fu

doi:10.1038/s41597-024-03223-1

A Prolonged Artificial Nighttime-light Dataset of China (1984-2020)

Sci Data. 2024 Apr 22;11(1):414. doi: 10.1038/s41597-024-03223-1.

Authors

Lixian Zhang^#^{1

2}, Zhehao Ren^#^{3

4}, Bin Chen^{5

6

7}, Peng Gong^{3

8}, Bing Xu^{9

10

11}, Haohuan Fu^{12

13

14

15}

Affiliations

¹ High Performance Computing Department, National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
² Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
³ Ministry of Education Ecological Field Station for East Asian Migratory Birds, Department of Earth System Science, Institute for Global Change Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
⁴ International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, Beijing, 100094, China.
⁵ Future Urbanity & Sustainable Environment (FUSE) Lab, Division of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China.
⁶ Urban Systems Institute, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China.
⁷ HKU Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China.
⁸ Department of Geography, Department of Earth Sciences and Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
⁹ Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China. bingxu@tsinghua.edu.cn.
¹⁰ Ministry of Education Ecological Field Station for East Asian Migratory Birds, Department of Earth System Science, Institute for Global Change Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China. bingxu@tsinghua.edu.cn.
¹¹ International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, Beijing, 100094, China. bingxu@tsinghua.edu.cn.
¹² Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China. haohuan@tsinghua.edu.cn.
¹³ Department of Geography, Department of Earth Sciences and Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. haohuan@tsinghua.edu.cn.
¹⁴ Tsinghua University (Department of Earth System Science)-Xi'an Institute of Surveying and Mapping Joint Research Center for Next-Generation Smart Mapping, Beijing, 100084, China. haohuan@tsinghua.edu.cn.
¹⁵ Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China. haohuan@tsinghua.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Nighttime light remote sensing has been an increasingly important proxy for human activities. Despite an urgent need for long-term products and pilot explorations in synthesizing them, the publicly available long-term products are limited. A Night-Time Light convolutional LSTM network is proposed and applied the network to produce a 1-km annual Prolonged Artificial Nighttime-light DAtaset of China (PANDA-China) from 1984 to 2020. Assessments between modeled and original images show that on average the RMSE reaches 0.73, the coefficient of determination (R²) reaches 0.95, and the linear slope is 0.99 at the pixel level, indicating a high confidence in the quality of generated data products. Quantitative and visual comparisons witness PANDA-China's superiority against other NTL datasets in its significantly longer NTL dynamics, higher temporal consistency, and better correlations with socioeconomics (built-up areas, gross domestic product, population) characterizing the most relevant indicator in different development phases. The PANDA-China product provides an unprecedented opportunity to trace nighttime light dynamics in the past four decades.

Publication types

Dataset
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Grants and funding

No. 41871331, 41801343, T2125006, U1839206/National Natural Science Foundation of China (National Science Foundation of China)