remote sensing for mapping and monitoring land-cover and land-use change
TRANSCRIPT
Abstract
Remote sensing for mapping and monitoring
land-cover and land-use change
Paul Treitz*
Department of Geography, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada K7L 3N6
Information about land cover and land use is a very important component of the planning
process as it can contribute to the debate on the current arrangements and patterns and the
need to modify land use as part of a regional plan, a resource development or management
project, an environmental planning exercise, or as a baseline study of a region. Planners
may seek to suggest modifications to land-use patterns to achieve some social or economic
outcomes, or as part of an environmental conservation or sustainability project, or to avoid
some predicted future unwanted consequences. Access to accurate land-use maps can
assist planners and the enterprise of planning. It is in this context that remote sensing is
able to contribute. The purpose of this monograph is to present an overview and critique of
the growing field of remote sensing as it applies to the mapping and monitoring of land-
cover and land-use at a range of spatial and temporal scales. The ability of remote sensing
to contribute to the mandate of planners and managers has changed significantly over the
last decade. Satellite data are now available that can be used to map and monitor change
from continental to local scales and over daily to weekly temporal scales. With the recent
launch of satellites capable of collecting data that is comparable to aerial platforms, there
is an enhanced capability of identifying change at small spatial scales. Similarly, advances
in image processing, database management and spatial analysis tools have enhanced our
ability to analyse these data for depicting land-cover and land-use change. Here, remote
sensing technologies are described along with methods of analysing remote sensing data
for detecting change at local, regional and continental scales. It is this diverse range of
scales of observation and analysis that are now key to mapping and monitoring both
anthropogenic and natural, and dramatic and incremental change. These aspects are
demonstrated using case studies with different objectives and applied at different scales.
0305-9006/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elseiver Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0305-9006(03)00062-X
Progress in Planning 61 (2004) 267
www.elsevier.com/locate/pplann
* Corresponding author. Fax: þ1-613-533-6122.
E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Treitz).