Land use and land cover change analysis using satellite images in Gua Musang, Kelantan

Abstract

The use of multisensor remote sensing to characterise forest structure has significant promise for mapping and understanding forest biological processes, making remote sensing an effective technology in detecting deforestation for forest management and monitoring. The aim of this study is to detect land use and land cover (LULC) changes due to deforestation at Gua Musang, Kelantan using satellite images. The Landsat 8 OLI satellite images were obtained from United State Geological Survey (USGS) for year 2017 to 2019. The supervised classification with maximum likelihood algorithm was applied for image classification to generate land use land cover categories. Then, LULC change detection between 2017, 2018 and 2019 were conducted to analyse the change and pattern. Based on the results, it shows the percentage of each land use changes within three (3) years from 2017 to 2019 for Landsat 8 OLI. Percentage of deforestation due to logging areas for year 2017 to 2019 is 5.95%. Percentage of forest area is 5.57%. For water bodies, the percentages just only cover 0.36% in 3 years. The highest land use change is no changes which is 88.12% happened towards the land from 2017 and 2019. This shows within three years there is no great changes at the area. The overall accuracy for each map is more than 80% which are acceptable. From the analysis, there were no significant changes of LULC during this period due to the increased of timber extraction, agricultural land expansion, urban growth, and poor governance structures.