Abstract: To better understand the driving mechanisms of urban growth, a multiscale analysis was made on the changes of the settlements in the urban fringe area of Nanjing and the driving mechanisms of the spatial differentiation in the urban growth rate, by using the spatial analysis and generalized linear models and based on the Landsat TM images in 1998, 2003, and 2008. In 1998-2008, the settlement coverage in the urban fringe area of Nanjing had a continuous increase, and there existed significant differences in the settlement distribution and its growth rate among different locations and time periods. The settlement growth in the urban fringe area was affected by a variety of factors, which depended on the spatial and temporal scales of interest. In 1998-2003, the main affecting factors were the water body’s coverage, bus stop number, nearest distance to main roads, and forest coverage. In 2003-2008, the affecting factors included nearest distance to main roads, public green land, and bus stop number. Overall, the transportation accessibility and the quality of living environments affected the urban growth rate at all studied scales, but the specific factors were scaledependent. Transportation accessibility generally had the highest relative importance in affecting urban growth. The negative effects of urban infrastructure and public green land reflected the constraint of growing space, and the constraining effect only occurred at a small scale in 1998-2003 but turned to be significant at both small and large scales in 2003-2008.

Key words: long-term fertilization, wheat continuous cropping, alfalfa continuous cropping, soil enzyme activity, chemical property.