Abstract:
Land use/cover change is a major global environmental change issue and projecting
these changes is essential for the assessment of environmental impacts. In this study,
a combined use of satellite remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS),
and markov chains stochastic modelling techniques were employed in analysing and
projecting land use/cover changes. The results indicate that there has been a notable
and uneven urban growth and substantial loss in forest land, and that the land use/
cover change process has not stabilized. The study demonstrates that the integration
of satellite remote sensing and GIS can be an effective approach for analyzing the
spatial-temporal patterns of land use/cover change. Further integration of these
two techniques with Markov modelling was found to be beneficial in describing,
analysing and projecting land use/cover change process. The projected land use/
cover for 2015 show substantial increase in urban and agricultural land uses.
