Abstract
The main objective of this study is to assess the spatio-temporal dynamics of land cover/land use changes in the lower Mekong Delta over the last 40 years with the coastal Tran Van Thoi District of Ca Mau Province, Vietnam as a case study. Land cover/land use change dynamics are derived from moderate to high spatial resolution (Landsat and SPOT) satellite imagery in six time intervals ranging from 1973 to 2011. Multi-temporal satellite images were collected, georeferenced, classified using per-pixel method, validated, and compared in post classification for the land use/land cover change detection in decades. Seven major land cover/land use classes were obtained, including cultivated lands, aquaculture ponds, mangrove forest, melaleuca forest, built up areas, bare lands, and natural water bodies. The accuracies of the land cover/land use maps for 1973, 1979, 1989, 1995, 2004, and 2011 were 81%, 82%, 86%, 87%, 89%, and 89%, respectively. The results show that the area of cultivated lands reduced over the period 1973–2011, however, it still represents the dominant land use in the case study. Aquaculture ponds were almost absent in 1973 but greatly increased from 1995 to 2004, to represent 20% of the land surface in 2011. Overall, from 1973 to 2011, bare lands, cultivated lands, mangrove forest, and melaleuca forest decreased by 104 km2, 77 km2, 61 km2, and 5 km2, respectively. In contrast, aquaculture lands and built up areas increased by 123 km2 and 120 km2, respectively. Temporal analysis highlights that these changes took place mostly between 1995 and 2004. This study is a first step to identify the main drivers of land use changes in this delta region, which include economical policies as well as demographic, socio-economic, and environmental changes.
Highlights
Land cover/land use conversions are due to human activities, socio-economic, biophysical and environmental factors [1]
The mangrove and melaleuca forest changed a lot to aquacuture and cultivated lands, especially in the north, the west and the south of province
A wide area of cultivated lands with the main of paddy rice converted to aquacuture in the middle and in the eastern part of the region
Summary
Land cover/land use conversions are due to human activities, socio-economic, biophysical and environmental factors [1]. A number of studies have attempted to detect and describe the land cover/land use changes in several different districts of Ca Mau Province—the southern-most part of the delta in Vietnam (Figure 1) [13,14,15] or in the Mekong Delta [16,17,18,19,20]. These studies, analyzed changes over a short time periods or at low spatial or temporal resolution. No study addressed these issues in details in the Tran Van
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