Land-use/land-cover change analysis in part of Ethiopia using Landsat Thematic Mapper data

摘要

Land cover and human or natural alterations of land cover play a major role in global-scale patterns of climate and biogeochemistry of the Earth's systems. Land-use and land-cover changes have a direct impact on land management practices, economic health and social processes of concern at the national and global level (Ojima et al. 1994). Global assessment of changes in physical characteristics of land cover is therefore a fundamental input for models of global climate and terrestrial hydrology (Lambin and Strahler 1994). Several researchers have attempted to use digital satellite sensor data to address the land-use and land-cover change detection problem (Fung 1990, Lambin and Strahler 1994, Heo and FitzHugh 2000, Rogan et al. 2003). Several procedures including comparison of land-cover classifications, multi-data classification, image differencing/ratioing, vegetation index differencing, principal component analysis and change vector analysis have been employed for land-use and land-cover change detection (Singh 1989). We report here a study that was carried out (ⅰ) to derive information on spatial distribution of land use/land cover in. part of Ethiopia, and (ⅱ) to study its temporal behaviour during the period 1994 and 1997 using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data.