Assessment Of Land Use Cover Changes Using Ndvi And Dem In Puer And Simao Counties, Yunnan Province, China

Change detection is the technique, which is used for the assessment of resources, where multi-date images are compared to find out the type and amount of change have occurred. The various applications of change detection are in agricultural, hydrological, forestry, environmental and ecological field. The rapid growth of Puer-Simao area and its agricultural area have probably resulted very rapidly and have had an unfavorable effect on the environment and therefore multi-temporal Landsat TM imagery for assessment land cover change has proven to be the best tool in this study. The performance of image classifiers that utilize only the remote sensing data may deteriorate, especially in mountainous regions, payable to the presence of shadows. In our study, a multisource classification approach to map land cover in Puer_Simao counties with high mountain peaks having elevations up to 2800 m above mean sea level has been adopted. Remote sensing data from Landsat TM image along with NDVI and DEM data layers have been used to perform multi-source classification using Maximum Likelihood Classifier. The change detection method used was NDVI differencing. From the results the forest or shrub land and Barren land cover types have decreased by about 6% and 23% from 1990 to 1999 respectively, while agricultural land, built-up and water areas have increased by about 19%, 4 % and 7% respectively. During the study period the change detected in reference with the location of LUC types in the different regions with up mentioned altitude and slope ranges was not significantly important. (World Rural Observations 2009;1(2):1-11). ISSN: 1944-6543 (print); ISSN: 1944-6551 (online).