SPATIO TEMPORAL MAPPING AND MONITORING OF LAND COVER DYNAMICS OF ISLAMABAD USING MULTI-TEMPORAL REMOTE SENSING DATA

Abstract

Land cover resources are changing continuously both spatially and temporally whereas the accurate and timely information regarding their dynamics is very important. Spatial growth is an expected phenomenon particularly in fast growing metropolitan areas like Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. In this study spatial and temporal dynamics of land cover changes were quantified from 1975 to 2010 using Landsat images, a supervised classification algorithm and the change detection technique with Geographical Information Systems were used. The overall accuracy of the land cover derived from satellite images was from 80 to 95%. The land cover maps showed that between 1975 and 2010 the amount of urban or developed land increased from 50 km2 to 332 km2 of the total area, while vegetation, including Margalla Hills National Park decreased from 465 km2 to 145 km2. The results quantified the land cover change pattern in the city and showed a potential of multitemporal Landsat data to provide an accurate, cost-effective means to map and analyze changes in land cover over time