Changes in land use/land cover in the Sarajevo valley from 2000 to 2018 – CLC based analysis

Abstract

Land cover changes primarily result from urbanization and city expansion. Cities are dynamic structures that constantly change, develop and expand from year to year, and these processes are driven by a number of economic, technological, political and cultural factors. In order to better investigate and predict the current and future changes in land use, remote sensing data is used. Corine Land Cover (CLC) is leading the way in this sense, and so far, a total of 5 data sets have been collected since 1990. This paper focuses on the Sarajevo valley, a highly urbanized area in the Sarajevo Canton, as a case study that is used in this paper in order to analyze the changes that have occurred over the last 18 years and determine the degree of urbanization and expansion of the city agglomeration. According to the CLC coverage type, the Sarajevo basin encompasses 16 of 44 coverage classes, and a considerable number of changes occurred during the analyzed period, notably the expansion of unconnected urban areas at the expense of agricultural areas. The analysis was done in a timely manner, taking into account all relevant data in order to identify changes in the way the land is used and to single out the „hot spots“ where these changes are most evident.