Vegetation Dynamics under Rapid Urbanization in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area Urban Agglomeration during the Past Two Decades

Detection of long-term vegetation dynamics is important for identifying vegetation improvement and degradation, especially for rapidly urbanizing regions with intensive land cover conversions. The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) urban agglomeration has experienced rapid urbanization during the past decades with profound impacts on vegetation, so there is an urgent need to evaluate vegetation dynamics across land use/cover change (LUCC). Based on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) during 2001–2020, we used coefficient of variation, Theil–Sen median trend analysis, and Hurst exponent to analyze the spatiotemporal change and future consistency of vegetation growth among the main LUCC in the GBA. Results demonstrated that low NDVI values with high fluctuations were mainly distributed in the central urban areas, whereas high NDVI values with low fluctuations were primarily located in the peripheral hilly mountains. The area-averaged NDVI showed an overall increasing trend at a rate of 0.0030 year⁻¹, and areas with vegetation improvement (82.99%) were more than four times those with vegetation degradation (17.01%). The persistent forest and grassland and the regions converted from built-up to vegetation displayed the most obvious greening; NDVI in over 90% of these areas showed an increasing trend. In contrast, vegetation browning occurred in more than 60% of the regions converted from vegetation to built-up. Future vegetation change in most areas (91.37%) will continue the existing trends, and 80.06% of the GBA was predicted to develop in a benign direction, compared to 19.94% in a malignant direction. Our results contribute to in-depth understanding of vegetation dynamics during rapid urbanization in the GBA, which is crucial for vegetation conservation and land-use optimization.