Assessment Of Land Use And Land Cover Change In Dong Na Tard Provincial Protected Area , Savannakhet Province, Lao PDR

The aim of the present study is to assess land use and land cover change in Dong Na Tard Provincial Protected Area (DNT PPA), Savannakhet Province, Lao PDR. The study was applied the integrated approach of remote sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) for the land cover change detection. Historical land use and cover data of the Dong Na Tard PPA were obtained from a classification of Landsat ETM+ imagery obtained from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Explorer. Land use and land cover classification maps of 2007 and 2017 were extracted from Landsat TM/ETM images. Satellite images were preprocessed before classification. Layer stacking was performed to combine bands and then the images were performed radio-metrically corrected. The supervised classification was carried out using the Maximum Likelihood and a composition of bands 2, 3, 4 for Landsat 5 and bands 3, 4, 5 for Landsat 8. Kapa statistics were applied for accuracy assessment of images classification and magnitude of change were analyzed. The study shown that the percentage of land use and land cover change (LULCC) from 2007 to 2017, the agriculture area had the highest positive value indicating a high expansion of 175.88% from its initial 3955.23 has, followed by plantation area with a percentage increase of 155.77% and urban and built-up area had escalated by 100.51%. On the contrary, mixed deciduous forest, dry dipterocarp forest and bare land had negative values indicating a reduction in the size by 20.51%, 3.00% and 75.68%, respectively. The aid of GIS and RS technology with change detection and change analysis of land cover were helpful and best described. The outcome of the present study has provided useful information for managers and decision makers in sustainable management the protected area.

Available for download

Journal Article