Monitoring Impervious Surface Area Dynamics to Assess Urbanisation of a Catchment: Msimbazi River Valley Dar es Salaam, 1989 - 2015

This work examined the effects of land use and cover change on the impervious surface as a measure of urbanisation together with its driving factors such as population growth and economic development. The spatial and temporal variations of the impervious surface area were extracted from the Landsat images of the years 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2015. Data analyses involved the selection of the endmember through Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) and Linear Spectral Mixed Analysis (LSMA) on the images. Four dominant land cover types were mapped as results, which are forest, non-forest vegetation, bare-land, and built-up area. The non-forest vegetation and bare land were dominant cover classes in the catchment in 1989, occupying over 80% of the land use and cover. The built-up environment increased from 11% in 1989 to 53% in 2015, encroaching other covers. This correlates with the growth of population and gross domestic product as measures of economic development and driving forces for the growth. Keywords: Land use; Impervious Surface Area; Urbanisation; Msimbazi River; Minimum Noise Fractio

FCD Application of Landsat for Monitoring Mangrove in Central Kalimantan

A large amount of tropical mangrove forest in Indonesia has been lost due to rapid development in coastal areas, such as, aquaculture, industry, housing, and etc. Assessment of mangrove still mostly used conventional methods. It involves labor intensive, time consuming, high costs and impractical for use in large area. To answer these problems, this study aims to study accuracy and effectiveness of forest canopy density (FCD) model of Landsat for monitoring mangrove changes with large area ±2.600 hectares during periods 2002 and 2014 in Central Kalimantan. The result showed that FCD is capable to classified mangrove changes with overall accuracy 89.75%, and known that mangrove changes during approximately 12 years divided into four groups, i.e. deforested areas 11.11%, degraded areas 12.98%, regrowth areas 23.29% and not change areas 52.62%. Concluded that FCD model is quite accurate and effective used to monitor mangrove changes such as deforestation, degradation and regrowth

접근불가지역인 북한의 시계열 토지피복도 매핑 및 산림 변화 동향 분석

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 농업생명과학대학 생태조경·지역시스템공학부(생태조경학), 2021.8. 이동근.North Korea, as an inaccessible area, has little research on land cover change, but it is very important to understand the changing trend of LULCC and provide information previously unknown to North Korea. This study therefore aimed to construct and analyze a 30-m resolution modern time-series land use land cover (LULC) map to identify the LULCCs over long time periods across North Korea and understand the forest change trends. A land use and land cover (LULC) map of North Korea from 2001 to 2018 was constructed herein using semi-permanent point classification and machine learning techniques on satellite image time-series data. The resultant relationship between cropland and forest cover, and the LULC changes were examined. The classification results show the effectiveness of the methods used in classifying the time series of Landsat images for LULC, wherein the overall accuracy of the LULC classification results was 97.5% ± 0.9%, and the Kappa coefficient was 0.94 ± 0.02. Using LULC change detection, our research effectively explains the change trajectory of North Korea’s current LULC, providing new insights into the change characteristics of North Korea’s croplands and forests. Further, our results show that North Korea’s urban area has increased significantly, its forest cover has increased slightly, and its cropland cover has decreased. We determined that North Korea’s Forest protection policies have led to the forest restoration. Thus, as agriculture is one of North Korea’s main economic contributors, croplands have been forced to relocate, expanding to other regions to compensate for the land loss caused by forest restoration.북한은 세계에서 가장 심각하게 황폐화된 산림 중 하나를 포함하고 있지만 최근에는 산림 복원을 강조하고 있다. 산림 복원이 일어나는 정도를 이해하기 위해서는 토지 이용과 토지 피복 변화 경향 (LULCC)을 이해해야 한다. 따라서 본 연구는 30m 해상도의 현대 시계열 토지 이용 토지 피복 (LULC)지도를 구성 및 분석하여 북한 전역의 장기 LULCC를 식별하고 산림 변화 추세를 이해하는 것을 목표로 한다. 2001 - 2018 년 기간 동안 국가의 LULC지도는 30m 해상도 위성 이미지 시계열 데이터를 기반으로 반영구적 포인트 분류 및 기계 학습을 사용하여 구성되었으며, 이는 GEE (Google Earth Engine)에서 수집 한 현상 학적 정보와 함께 사용되고 있다. 또한 LULCC 탐지기 법과 경작지 변화와 고도의 관계를 고려하여 2001 - 2018 년 북한의 산림 변화를 평가하였다. LULC 맵 결과의 전체 분류 정확도는 97.5 % ± 0.9 %이고, Kappa 계수는 0.94 ± 0.02 이다. LULCC 탐지는 또한 2001 - 2018 년에 북한의 산림 면적이 약간 증가한 것으로 나타났다. 일반적으로 산림 피복 면적은 크게 변하지 않았으나 남부와 중부 지역의 산림 복원과 북부와 서부의 경작지 상대적 증가 측면에서 뚜렷한 공간적 변화가 관찰되었다. 북한의 특성과 산림 정책 문서를 검토 한 결과 북한 근대 산림의 일부 지역이 복원되고 있음을 확인하였다.Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Study Area 7 Chapter 3. Materials and Methods 8 3.1. Study overview 8 3.2. Data Collection 9 3.3. Data Processing 11 3.4. Classification Process 12 3.5. LULCC Analysis 14 3.6. Reference Data Collection and Classification Accuracy Validation 15 Chapter 4. Results 17 4.1. LULC Classification Accuracy Assessment 17 4.2. LULC Classification Results 20 4.3. LULC Change Detection 22 4.4. Relation with mountainous cropland and elevation 26 Chapter 5. Discussion 28 5.1. Interpretation and explanation of the forest change in North Korea 28 5.2. Importance of spatial analysis and future research directions 30 5.3. Limits and Advantages 32 Chapter 6. Conclusion 34 Bibliography 36 Appendix 44 Abstract in Korean 51석

Land Cover Change in the Andes of Southern Ecuador — Patterns and Drivers

In the megadiverse tropical mountain forest in the Andes of southern Ecuador, a global biodiversity hotspot, the use of fire to clear land for cattle ranching is leading to the invasion of an aggressive weed, the bracken fern, which is threatening diversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services. To find sustainable land use options adapted to the local situation, a profound knowledge of the long-term spatiotemporal patterns of land cover change and its drivers is necessary, but hitherto lacking. The complex topography and the high cloud frequency make the use of remote sensing in this area a challenge. To deal with these conditions, we pursued specific pre-processing steps before classifying five Landsat scenes from 1975 to 2001. Then, we quantified land cover changes and habitat fragmentation, and we investigated landscape changes in relation to key spatial elements (altitude, slope, and distance from roads). Good classification results were obtained with overall accuracies ranging from 94.5% to 98.5% and Kappa statistics between 0.75 and 0.98. Forest was strongly fragmented due to the rapid expansion of the arable frontier and the even more rapid invasion by bracken. Unexpectedly, more bracken-infested areas were converted to pastures than vice versa, a practice that could alleviate pressure on forests if promoted. Road proximity was the most important spatial element determining forest loss, while for bracken the altitudinal range conditioned the degree of invasion in deforested areas. The annual deforestation rate changed notably between periods: ~1.5% from 1975 to 1987, ~0.8% from 1987 to 2000, and finally a very high rate of ~7.5% between 2000 and 2001. We explained these inconstant rates through some specific interrelated local and national political and socioeconomic drivers, namely land use policies, credit and tenure incentives, demography, and in particular, a severe national economic and bank crisis

Examining Land Use and Land Cover Spatiotemporal Change and Driving Forces in Beijing from 1978 to 2010

Land use and land cover (LULC) datasets for Beijing in 1978, 1987, 1992, 2000 and 2010 were developed from Landsat images using the object-oriented classification approach. The relationships between social-economic, demographic and political factors and time-series LULC data were examined for the periods between 1978 and 2010. The results showed the effectiveness of using the object-oriented decision tree classification method for LULC classification with time series of Landsat images. Combined with anthropogenic driving forces, our research can effectively explain the detailed LULC change trajectories corresponding to different stages and give new insights for Beijing LULC change patterns. The results show a significant increase in forest and built-up areas, but a decrease in arable lands, due to urbanization and reforestation. Large ecological projects result in an increase of forest areas and population, and economic conditions result in urban expansion. The anthropogenic driving forces analysis results further prove that both population increase and economic development played important roles in the expansion of built-up areas. Both the qualitative and quantitative anthropogenic driving forces analysis methods were helpful for better understanding the mechanisms of LULC change

Spatial Analysis of Air Particulate Pollution Distributions and Its Relation to Real Property Value in Beijing, China

Air particulate pollution contributes the major air pollution in Beijing, China. In this research, concentrations of air particulate pollutants were measured at a total of twenty-three field locations in the urban districts of Beijing applying a laser particle counter in June and December 2015. Geographic Information System (GIS) was utilized to study the two and three-dimensional spatial distributions of air particulate pollution (PM0.5, PM1.0, PM2.5, PM5.0, PM10). Geostatistical or spatial statistical models were applied to interpolate the spatial distributions of air particulate pollution and real property values in the study area. Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) was applied to analyze the spatial relationships of air particulate pollution and distribution of real property values. The three-dimensional analysis was conducted to illustrate vertical spatial distributions of air particulate pollution for each of the twenty-three field survey profiles in ArcGIS. Temporal distributions of air particulate pollution within 10 hours daytime at two field survey locations were analyzed. The results show that the concentrations of different sizes of air particulate pollutants in urban areas of Beijing distribute differently with different spatial patterns. The spatial distributions of real property values indicate that the highest value occurred in the northwestern and the central parts of Beijing both in the June and December 2015. There is no significant relationship of real property values and the intensity of air particulate pollution. Therefore, we suggest that the spatial distribution factors of air particulate pollution in Beijing is not a major factor for people to purchase real properties as homes

Land cover change from national to global scales:A spatiotemporal assessment of trajectories, transitions and drivers

Changes in global land cover (LC) have significant consequences for global environmental change, impacting the sustainability of biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and food security. Different forms of LC change have taken place across the world in recent decades due to a combination of natural and anthropogenic drivers, however, the types of change and rates of change have traditionally been hard to quantify. This thesis exploits the properties of the recently released ESA-CCI-LC product – an internally consistent, high-resolution annual time-series of global LC extending from 1992 to 2018. Specifically, this thesis uses a combination of trajectories and transition maps to quantify LC changes over time at national, continental and global scales, in order to develop a deeper understanding of what, where and when significant changes in LC have taken place and relates these to natural and anthropogenic drivers. This thesis presents three analytical chapters that contribute to achieving the objectives and the overarching aim of the thesis. The first analytical chapter initially focuses on the Nile Delta region of Egypt, one of the most densely populated and rapidly urbanising regions globally, to quantify historic rates of urbanisation across the fertile agricultural land, before modelling a series of alternative futures in which these lands are largely protected from future urban expansion. The results show that 74,600 hectares of fertile agricultural land in the Nile Delta (Old Lands) was lost to urban expansion between 1992 and 2015. Furthermore, a scenario that encouraged urban expansion into the desert and adjacent to areas of existing high population density could be achieved, hence preserving large areas of fertile agricultural land within the Nile Delta. The second analytical chapter goes on to examine LC changes across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a complex and diverse environment, through the joint lenses of political regions and ecoregions, differentiating between natural and anthropogenic signals of change and relating to likely drivers. The results reveal key LC change processes at a range of spatial scales, and identify hotspots of LC change. The major five key LC change processes were: (i) “gain of dry forests” covered the largest extent and was distributed across the whole of SSA; (ii) “greening of deserts” found adjacent to desert areas (e.g., the Sahel belt); (iii) “loss of tree-dominated savanna” extending mainly across South-eastern Africa; (iv) “loss of shrub-dominated savanna” stretching across West Africa, and “loss of tropical rainforests” unexpectedly covering the smallest extent, mainly in the DRC, West Africa and Madagascar. The final analytical chapter considers LC change at the global scale, providing a comprehensive assessment of LC gains and losses, trajectories and transitions, including a complete assessment of associated uncertainties. This chapter highlights variability between continents and identifies locations of high LC dynamism, recognising global hotspots for sustainability challenges. At the national scale, the chapter identifies the top 10 countries with the largest percentages of forest loss and urban expansion globally. The results show that the majority of these countries have stabilised their forest losses, however, urban expansion was consistently on the rise in all countries. The thesis concludes with recommendations for future research as global LC products become more refined (spatially, temporally and thematically) allowing deeper insights into the causes and consequences of global LC change to be determined