A study of land cover changes at Pahang river catchment area using remote sensing and geographic information system (gis) technique

Abstract

The study was conducted in order to determine the temporal and spatial land cover changes from year 2000 to year 20 l O at Pahang river catchment area using remotely sensed data GIS. The combination of satellite data and GIS give an advantage in determination of the changes and also as a tool for monitoring the environmental impact on study area. Landsat ETM+ (2000) and Landsat TM (2010) images were classified using the maximum likelihood classifier to produce the land cover map for each year. The land cover map for both year were then overlay to detect the changes. Seven types of land cover were produced for each land cover map which are forest, palm oil, rubber, cropland, mangrove, rural and open land area. Between 2000 and 2010, the forest area was declined by 1776 km2 and covered 57.9 % of total land cover in study area. The area of rubber plantation also showed the declined over the past ten years to become 4586 km2 from 4921 km2 in area. Mostly area of rubber was converted into palm oil plantation and represent about 73.7 % of total loss of rubber area. Cropland and mangrove covers declined from 625 km2 and 76 km2 in 2000 to 578 km2 and 46 km2 in 2010 respectively. Palm oil plantation in the study area experienced the increasement from 4443 km2 in 2000 to be the second highest land cover type in catchment area, which is 6256 km2 in 20 I 0. The study highlights the importance of integrating remotely sensed and local knowledge to generate the information that could be used to overcome the catchment management problem.