Temporal analysis on the transition of land cover change and growth of mining area using landsat TM/+ETM satellite imagery in Tuv, Mongolia

Abstract

Recently, the land degradation and pasture erosion in Tuv, located around Ulaanbaatar of Mongolia, have been increasing sharply due to escalating developments of mining sectors, well as the density of populations. Because of that, we have chosen the urban and mining area of Tuv for our study target. During the study, the temporal changes of land cover in Tuv, Mongolia were observed by the Landsat TM/+ETM satellite images from 2001 to 2009 that provided the fundamental dataset to apply NDVI and K-Mean algorithm of Unsupervised Classification and Maximum likelihood classification(MLC) of Supervised Classification in order to conclude in land cover change analyzation. The result of our study implies that the growth of mining area, the climate change, and the density of population led the land degradation to desertification.