I looked at the use of QSCAT (Quick SCAT satellite) data, and how it can be used to judge of amount of urbanization that has occurred in an area and its environmental impact. The specific study I looked at used decadal level L1B Ku-Band (at the frequency of 13.4 GHz and wavelength of 2.24 cm), recorded by the QSCAT, to generate radar backscatter data. Even though QSCAT data has high temporal resolution, it has low spatial. To account for this, a DSM (dense sampling method) is applied to the data, which takes the mean values of the backscatter intensity over time, about a year in this study, to generate a higher resolution map of the QSCAT data. In addition, the researchers use the night light intensity of Beijing to isolate urban areas. They use a 10% frequency threshold to include only lights that persist over time, meaning that events such as fire and gas flare-ups are not included in the data. The DSM data is then presented in a grid fashion, with each individual component being the mean of the samples for that specific location in the region being studied. Ten years’ worth of data was collected and compared to show the increase in urbanization. This DSM data can measure the urbanization of a region by measuring the intensity of the emitted light, since the light is a higher intensity when refracted off large structure, and metallic or glass structures as opposed to wood. Increases in the number of vehicles present also increases the amount of backscatter present in the region. High backscatter data may not only reflect urban areas, but natural areas such as forests or mountains as well. Also, rural vs urban areas could be determined by the variance in the backscatter of a cell in the model, since urban areas would have a high variance in light intensity over time, while rural areas would have a low variance in light intensity over time. NO2 density was retrieved from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) spectrometer on the European Remote Sensing Satellite 2 (ERS-2) and compared to the backscatter data to determine the relationship between the environmental impact of the urbanization. Beijing was shown to have quadrupled urbanization from 2000-2010. NO2 concentrations in the air also greatly increased and had a correlation of .9063 with urbanization. This suggests that urbanization and environmental impact were related in the study of Beijing. This method can be applied to much more than just Beijing, it can serve as a way to model the impact of urbanization all over the world, and help us to determine how to proceed with urban development while trying to mitigate our effects on the environment.