Integrating Spatial Heterogeneity to Identify the Urban Fringe Area Based on NPP/VIIRS Nighttime Light Data and Dual Spatial Clustering

The precise recognition of urban fringes is vital to monitor urban sprawl and map urban management planning. The spatial clustering method is a prevalent way to identify urban fringes due to its objectivity and convenience. However, previous studies had problems with ignoring spatial heterogeneity, which could overestimate or underestimate the recognition results. Nighttime light can reflect the transitional urban–rural regions’ regional spatial characteristics and can be used to identify urban fringes. Accordingly, a new model has been established for urban fringe identification by combining spatial continuous wavelet transform (SCWT) and dual spatial clustering. Then, Nanjing City, China, as a case study, is employed to validate the model through the NPP/VIIRS nighttime light data. The identification of mutated points across the urban–rural gradient is conducted by utilizing the SCWT. By using dual spatial clustering in the urban fringe identification, it transmits the mutation points’ spatial patterns to the homogeneous spatially neighboring clusters effectively, which measures the similarity between mutation points regarding spatial and attribute domains. A comparison of the identified results by various spatial clustering approaches revealed that our method could be more suitable for the impacts of mutation points’ local spatial patterns on different density values over the whole density surface, thus leading to more accurate spatial boundaries featured by differentiating actual differences of mutation points between adjacent clusters.