land Article Urban Type Classification and Characteristic Analysis through Time-Series Environmental Changes for Land Use Management for 31 Satellite Cities around Seoul, South Korea Jin-Hyo Kim 1, Oh-Sung Kwon 2,* and Jung-Hwa Ra 3 1 Division of Forestland Spatial Planning, Korea Forest Conservation Association, Daejeon 35262, Korea;
[email protected] 2 Department of Ecology and Environment, Gyeonggi Research Institute, Suwon 16207, Korea 3 Department of Landscape Architecture, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +82-31-250-3252 Abstract: The objective of the present study was to determine changes in land coverage for 31 satellite cities surrounding Seoul and changes in values of MSPA (Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis) for a time period of about 30 years (from 1988 to 2018). Cities that showed similar environmental changes were grouped utilizing a hierarchical cluster analysis. The results of this study are summarized as follows: First, as a result of analyzing changes in land coverage, urbanized areas in all 31 cities greatly increased, whereas areas of forest, grassland, farmland, wetland, etc., greatly decreased. Second, as a result of carrying out MSPA for green areas in each city, the number of Cores, Islets as stepping-stone green areas, and Branches greatly decreased. As a result of analyzing factors in cluster analysis, 12 variables were classified into four groups. After performing a cluster analysis, the 31 cities were classified into six clusters. Cluster-6 showed the biggest decrease in wetland areas. These results Citation: Kim, J.-H.; Kwon, O.-S.; could be used as basic data for establishing differentiated environmental policies for clusters of cities Ra, J.-H.