Land cover change modeling to identify critical land in the Ciletuh Geopark tourism area, Palabuhanratu, Sukabumi Regency.

Abstract

Ciletuh Geopark is one of UNESCO’s tourist attractions as one of the Global Geopark located in Sukabumi Regency, West Java, one of the most visited tourist destinations because of its beauty and role in knowledge development. It caused Geopark Ciletuh to have significant growth in facilities and accessibility, which generated land cover change that triggered the critical land. This study aims to analyze the land cover change in Ciletuh Geopark until 2030 to identify essential land. The method used in this study is Cellular Automata-Markov Chain to detect the land cover change and predict its transformation in the future with several driving factors built based on fuzzy logic. The variable contains proximity to the road, the settlement, the coastline, slope, and population density. Land cover map obtained processing Landsat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS 2010, 2015, and 2020. This study proves that land cover changes are mainly due to housing and facilities’ need to support tourism activities. The conversion from the agricultural area that abandoned becomes shrubs. This research was expected to become a medium that will move the government and local people to make the land used well and still be the sustainable geopark.