Abstract
In this digital era, high-resolution imagery offers a rapid and inexpensive means of monitoring land use changes. Digitally monitoring dynamic landscape change is a versatile way of facilitating rapid strategic decision making in a sustainable manner in a world of increasing complexity. Whilst a cadastral land information system is useful as a database, its use is limited for research purposes involving the manipulation of images – such as in studying flood-prone areas or land erosion susceptibility. In this paper, we report a land cover map for Mauritius Island (1859 km2), in the Indian Ocean, at a scale of 1:100,000 (A1-size paper). Inputs used to create the map are a SPOT satellite image, published map series at 1:25,000 scale, and selected ground truth surveys for validation. In total, 11 feature types, which are representative of the island's surface cover, have been mapped.
Highlights
The State of Mauritius extends over 2 million km2, its surface land area is quite small, barely around 0.1% of that total area
We report a land cover map for Mauritius Island (1859 km2), in the Indian Ocean, at a scale of 1:100,000 (A1-size paper)
Mainland Mauritius, which is situated in the southwest of the Indian Ocean at latitude 20810′S and longitude 57830′E, has a surface area of 1859 km2
Summary
To cite this article: Rody Nigel, Soonil D. Rughooputhb and Ravi Boojhawonb aEau Terre Environnement, INRS, Quebec, Canada; bFaculty of Science, University of Mauritius, Reduit, Mauritius (Received 12 September 2012; resubmitted 16 May 2014; accepted 16 May 2014). In this digital era, high-resolution imagery offers a rapid and inexpensive means of monitoring land use changes. We report a land cover map for Mauritius Island (1859 km2), in the Indian Ocean, at a scale of 1:100,000 (A1-size paper).
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