Utilization of multi-temporal landsat imagery for analyzing land Use/Cover changes and urban expansion of Nakhon Rachasima City

Abstract

One of important causes to climate change is land use/ land cover changes due to their important role in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which directly relate to a solution to the problem of global warming. Analysis of land use/ land cover changes is thus very important for developing countries such as Thailand, especially to study the trend of land use/land cover changes that can be used for investigation of theirs driving forces. In addition, during these four decades, land use/cover in Nakhon Ratchasima city, a metropolitan city in Northeastern Thailand, has been rapidly changes because of rapid economical growth together with its location situated in the central of Northeastern Thailand. This study aims to determine land use/cover changes pattern of the Nakhon Ratchasima city. We employed unsupervised classification approach coupled with GIS analyses was employed to generate land use/cover maps for 1972, 2002 and 2013 with four classes; vegetated areas, settlement areas, barelands and water resoures. The results indicate that urban areas have increased based on economic and population growth as well as road network extension and consequently the urban growth affected environmental conditions. In the study, with multi-temporal Landsat data, we successfully used remote sensing techniques together with information technology as a tool for effectively monitoring urban growth.