Abstract
Land Use/Cover changes are crucial for the use of sustainable resources and the delivery of ecosystem services. They play an important contribution in the climate change mitigation due to their ability to emit and remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. These emissions/removals are subject to an inventory which must be reported annually under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This study investigates the use of Sentinel-2 data for analysing lands conversion associated to Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector in the Wallonia region (southern Belgium). This region is characterized by one of the lowest conversion rates across European countries, which constitutes a particular challenge in identifying land changes. The proposed research tests the most commonly used change detection techniques on a bi-temporal and multi-temporal set of mosaics of Sentinel-2 data from the years 2016 and 2018. Our results reveal that land conversion is a very rare phenomenon in Wallonia. All the change detection techniques tested have been found to substantially overestimate the changes. In spite of this moderate results our study has demonstrated the potential of Sentinel-2 regarding land conversion. However, in this specific context of very low magnitude of land conversion in Wallonia, change detection techniques appear to be not sufficient to exceed the signal to noise ratio.
Highlights
Land Use/Cover changes (LULCC) lie on a scale of severity that ranges from no alteration through modifications of varying intensity to a full transformation
This study investigates the potential of Sentinel-2 data for detecting lands conversions associated to the Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector in southern Belgium
The selection of the bands of interest has been made through a principal component analysis (PCA) (Section 2.1.1)
Summary
Land Use/Cover changes (LULCC) lie on a scale of severity that ranges from no alteration through modifications of varying intensity to a full transformation. The rate of change and the nature of the transitions differ in time and space. Some regions are relatively stable (e.g., permanent forest); whereas others areas are subject to rapid and persistent transformation (e.g., urban expansion of previously agricultural land). There is extensive literature on sudden land cover conversion resulting from manmade or natural phenomenon such as forest deterioration, agricultural magnification, natural disaster or urban sprawl. Few studies focus on subtle land changes. The study of LULCC relies on both subtle and abrupt transitions and an improved understanding of the complex dynamic processes underlying the former would allow for more reliable projections and more realistic scenarios of future changes [4]
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