Urban Growth Modelling of Herat, Afghanistan Using Geospatial Technology
- Pathum Thani, Thailand : Asian Institute of Technology, 2017
- 1 online resource
- Thesis ; no. RS-17-13 .
- Asian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no. RS-17-13 .
A thesis report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Engineering in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems
Thesis (M. Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2017
To avoid the problems derived for land use/cover change due to rapid increasing of population and urban growth, it needs to understand land use/cover patterns in the past. Also, land use/cover prediction is very essential for better urban development planning. Thus, land use/cover change Herat city of Afghanistan both in the past (2002, 2008, 2013 and 2016) and future (2030 and 2050) were analyzed. Supervised classification method was conducted for identifying four land use classes. Then Markov chain analysis with Terr Set software was used for predicting urban land use in 2030 and 2050. The results of classification was good acceptable according to Kappa coefficients statistic. The results revealed that urban vegetation cover area decreased 13.67% as count 24.5 km2while built-up area increase 24.67% during 14 years. City green had the majority of changed in this period that lost 66.8% to built-up area. The predicted land use show that urban vegetation will continuously decrease under two scenarios. To increase the urban vegetation especially city green area, decision makers should take more actions to increase urban vegetation areas for the reason of sustainable urban land use/cover. This can aggravate urban ecological problems in future. The strong conservation policies should establish in this case. Furthermore, the peoples awareness of the importance of urban vegetation should be more concerned. Thus, this study may provide the useful information to better understand the past land use/cover change and to potentially improve the basis of future decision making.