ASSESSMENT OF AGRICULTURAL LAND-COVER CHANGE IN NUEVA ECIJA USING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM AND REMOTE SENSING TECHNOLOGIES

摘要

Land cover is a significant element in understanding the relation of human activities with the agriculture and therefore to maintain a sustainable agriculture, change detection is necessary. The study was carried out through Remote Sensing and GIS approach using Landsat Imageries (Landsat 4 TM, Land Sat 7 ETM+, Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI_TIRS) to assess the changes in land cover of the province of Nueva Ecija. For this purpose, unsuperVIsed, superVIsed and object-based image classification technique were applied to the satellite imageries acquired from 1989 to 2018. Results indicate that land cover changes have occurred in agricultural, urban and forestry areas which have been experienced in the study areas from 1989 to 2018. Urban areas, although covering a much smaller proportion of the landscape/landcover in both time periods, it increased at a much higher rate than any other land cover classes. The increase in agricultural and urban areas mostly result in deforestation which means some forest areas were removed and converted to agriculture and settlement in the Province.