Using remote sensing and GIS to analyse land cover change and its impacts on regional sustainable development

Policy and decision making in the context of sustainable development requires rapid, effective and efficient access to and integration of appropriate current information from a wide range of sources and disciplines, including land cover dynamic information derived from remotely sensed data. The analysis of data from high spatial resolution satellite sensors has potential in land cover monitoring. In this paper, a post-classification method is used to detect land cover change from multi-temporal satellite data, and particular attention is given to the selection of an appropriate method for land cover classification. The use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) allows further spatial analysis of the data derived from remotely sensed images and analysis of the impact of land cover change on regional sustainable development. The satellite-derived data used in this study are Thematic Mapper (TM) data acquired by Landsat-5 on 14 May 1985, 20 May 1987, 26 April 1990 and 20 May 1993 in Ansan City, Korea. The results obtained show that land cover change in the west coastal zone of Korea has occurred in the past decade as a result of both natural forces and human activities, which has in turn impacted on the regional sustainable development. The results thus provide very useful information to local government for decision making and policy planning.