Assessing land use of lower Mekong basin using multi-temporal MODIS imagery

Assessing land use of lower Mekong basin using multi-temporal MODIS imagery

Among rice producing regions of the world, Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) can be ranked as the most important region due to the huge population it feeds. About 60 million people are engaged in agriculture and freshwater fishing activates in LMB where produce enough food for over 300 million people annually. Food consumption in LMB is also increasing and studies have found it to be doubled by 2050. This socio-economic background has attracted many researchers to work on various aspects of the LMB. To collaborate with these research interests, the present study is designed to assess the land use conditions of the massive LMB, using multitemporal MODIS imagery. The authors have previously produced the land cover map of LMB in 2005 (edited in 2008) using MODIS data at 250m spatial resolution. The present land use assessment will be used the old map and a new map produced in 2014 using the same land cover classification. The investigation on land use conditions is based on the trends on land cover changes, with a focus on food production aspects of the basin, in order to supply a GIS database for food production assessment studies. Annual devastating floods in south and frequent droughts in central regions are also counted in the assessment. The expected results of the study will be GIS data layers of the basin in raster format comprising old and new land cover data, natural disaster hotspots, together with an assessment of the land use.

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