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Due to rapid urbanization and increasing energy consumption, human society poses increasing pressure on the surrounding ecosystems that it depends on. As a result, evaluation of urban development should view cities as complex ecosystems including human and natural elements. This paper establishes a carbon balance index (CBI) for an urban ecosystem based on its socio-economic development and land use and land cover change in Xiamen, a rapidly urbanizing coastal city in southeast China. Dynamic changes in CBI can quantitatively indicate the sustainability of the urbanization process from a carbon cycling perspective. Results show that Xiamen's carbon balance condition experienced three stages: the period 1987–2002 where CBI decreased slightly, 1992–2002 where CBI moderately increased from 1.4 to 4.2, and 2003–2011 where CBI rapidly increased from 5.2 to 17.3. The carbon imbalance increased with the expansion of urban scale and urbanization. By stepwise multiple regression analysis, it was found that the main influencing factors of CBI are urbanization rate, industrial coal consumption, length of roadway network and forest area, and city managers should take these factors into consideration to achieve low-carbon city development. Finally, the CBI for the year 2030 is predicted based on CO2emissions and sequestration scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since there is an increasing demand for integrating landscape ecology and urban planning theories to study complex urban ecosystems and establish rational and ecological urban planning, we introduced a new concept-urban functional landscapes which can be reclassified based on detailed land use data to fulfill the various urban functions, such as residential, commercial, industrial, and infrastructure purposes. In this paper, urban functional landscapes were defined based on urban land use data produced from Pleiades images, and then landscape metrics and population density were combined to identify the urban functional zones along an urban–rural gradient. The features of urban functional landscape patterns and population density were also analyzed, and their relationship has been explored. The results showed that the pattern of urban functional landscapes and population density in the urban functional zones (Urban center, Urban peripheral area, Landscape barrier, Satellite city and Far-suburb) along the urban–rural gradient in Xiamen doesn't totally conform to the classical theories in spatial and social aspects. Urban functional landscapes is potential of acting as bridges between the landscape ecology and urban planning theories, providing scientific support for rational urban landscape planning and urban land use policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]