Quantifying night-time light change drivers in China’s Yangtze River economic zone

Nighttime light (NTL) is a valuable data source for understanding urban sprawl and human activities. Radiometric quantification of NTL data can be used to explain the reasons for changes in NTL. We used average annual NTL data from 2013 to 2020 to investigate the magnitude and distribution of NTL change in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) in China. We found that NTL increased annually, with 93.06% of the area experiencing brightening. The annual NTL in 2020 was 2.42 times higher than that in 2013, and the NTL in the densely populated eastern provinces was 16.17 times higher than that in the west. Therefore, the east-west development of the research area is extremely uneven. Urbanization is often accompanied by dramatic NTL brightening, and the area of cropland being brightened is the largest of all landuse types. Urban development inevitably encroaches on cropland space. To address this issue, future policies should focus on sustainable regional development, for example encouraging urban densification development patterns. This will help to avoid the negative impact of urban expansion on the entire ecosystem.