Using multitemporal night-time lights data to compare regional development in Russia and China, 1992–2012

ABSTRACT Multitemporal remotely sensed night-time lights data are often used as a proxy for population and economic growth, with China the most commonly researched area. Less is known about how lights respond to socioeconomic decline. Russia, a depopulating neighbour of China that experienced severe economic turmoil following the Soviet Union’s disintegration in 1991, provides a useful case study to investigate the relationships between lights, depopulation, and economic contraction at national and provincial scales. We use the U.S. Air Force Defence Meteorological Satellite Program-Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) V4 annual stable lights composites to compare changes in lights in Russia and China from 1992 to 2012. These two countries share a history of communist planning but have experienced divergent development patterns since the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. At the national scale, the total amount of lights in Russia declined between 1992 and 2012, while China’s lights more than doubled. At the provincial scale, Russia exhibited an increase in inequality of lights per federal subject, while China’s provinces became more equal to one another, particularly as Western China caught up to the more developed East Coast. To understand what may have driven these changes in lights, relationships with population and gross domestic product (GDP) are examined from 2000 to 2012 using panel regression models. While changes in population and GDP explain 81% of change over time in lights within China’s provinces, they explain only 6% of change within Russia’s provinces. The strong relationships found between changes in lights, population, and GDP in rapidly growing, urbanizing China appear to break down in areas undergoing depopulation and economic contraction.