Monitoring Land Cover Changes in the Tropics using Satellite Remote Sensing Data
Ummi Kalsom Mohamad Hashim1, Asmala Ahmad2, Hamzah Sakidin3, Suliadi Firdaus Sufahani4, Abd Rahman Mat Amin5
1Asmala Ahmad, Senior lecturer , Department of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) located in Perak, Malaysia.
2Hamzah Sakidin, Associate Professor , Fakulti Teknologi Maklumat Dan Komunikasi (FTMK), Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) located in Melaka, Malaysia.
3Ummi Kalsom Mohamad Hashim, Senior lecturer , Department of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) located in Perak, Malaysia.
4Suliadi Firdaus Sufahani, Senior lecturer , Faculty of Applied Science and Technology, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn (UTHM) located in Johor, Malaysia.
5Abd Rahman Mat Amin, Senior lecturer, Faculty of Applied Science, University Technology Mara, Terengganu, Malaysia
Manuscript received on September 13, 2019. | Revised Manuscript received on 24 September, 2019. | Manuscript published on October 10, 2019. | PP: 3631-3636 | Volume-8 Issue-12, October 2019. | Retrieval Number: L3809081219/2019©BEIESP | DOI: 10.35940/ijitee.L3809.1081219
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Changes in land cover are inevitable phenomena that occur in all parts of the world. Land cover changes can occur due to natural phenomena that include runoff, soil erosion and sedimentation besides man-made phenomena that include deforestation, urbanization and conversion of land covers to suit human needs. Several works on change detection have been carried out elsewhere, however there were lack of effort in analyzing the issues that affect the performance of existing change detection techniques. The study presented in this paper aims to detect changes of land covers by using remote sensing satellite data. The study involves detection of land cover changes using remote sensing techniques. This makes use satellite data taken at different times over a particular area of interest. The data has resolution of 30 m and records surface reflectance at approximately 0.4 to 0.7 micrometers wavelengths. The study area is located in Selangor, Malaysia and occupied with tropical land covers including coastal swamp water, sediment plumes, urban, industry, water, bare land, cleared land, oil palm, rubber and coconut. Initially, region of interests (ROI) were drawn on each of the land covers in order to extract the training pixels. Landsat satellite bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 were then used as the input for the three supervised classification methods namely Support Vector Machine (SVM), Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Neural Network (NN). Different sizes of training pixels were used as the input for the classification methods so that the performance can be better understood. The accuracy of the classifications was then assessed by analyzing the classifications with a set of reference pixels using a confusion matrix. The classification methods were then used to identify the conversion of land cover from year 2000 to 2005 within the study area. The outcomes of the land cover change detection were reported in terms quantitative and qualitative analyses. The study shows that SVM gives a more accurate and realistic land cover change detection compared to ML and NN mainly due to not being much influenced by the size of the training pixels. The findings of the study serve as important input for decision makers in managing natural resources and environment in the tropics systematically and efficiently.
Keywords: Change Detection, Classification Accuracy, land Cover, Remote Sensing, and Supervised Classification.
Scope of the Article: Classification.