Assessment of urban land cover change base on Landsat satellite data: A case study from Hanoi, Vietnam

Abstract

Rapid urbanization process is accelerating the dramatic transformation of urban land cover, creating strong economic, social and environmental impacts. Many studies have achieved significant achievements in the application of Landsat satellite data to assess the land cover change. Remote sensing images of contain the necessary spectral and spatial features of the various objects. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is utilized to analyze remote sensing images of landsat satellite data and is one of the most widely used numerical indicator for calculating the visible (VIS) and near-infrared bands (NIR) of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this study, the NDVI based classification has indicated about significant change in land cover in Hanoi, Vietnam from 2001 to 2017. The study results show that a major change has been found in the vegetation cover area where about 56 km2 (accounts for 12.3%) area has been lost during the period from 2001 to 2017. This study demonstrates the importance of considering land cover change to improve the quality and optimizing the model of land use in urban areas.