Land Degradation Model Based on Vegetation and Erosion Aspects Using Remote Sensing Data

Abstract

The study of land degradation in various geographic conditions in the world using remote sensing is still become a concern amongst researchers because it has been proven as one of the most effective ways. In Indonesia, East Kalimantan province is one of the experiencing land area degradation due to intensive exploitation of natural resouces since 1970. The degradation model proposed in this study is modeled using a combination of ASTER and Landsat ETM+ imagery, both taken on February 27, 2001. The model composed of both two aspects: erosion aspect and vegetation aspect. Vegetation aspect is a function of suppression of vegetation from Crippen and Blom method and spectral angle a of Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) algorithm. The erosion aspect is calculated from erosion prediction and depends on the constant factors of b as well, and the latter is said as a function of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) value. Based on the validation using spectral based degradation map and Land Degradation Index of Chikhaoui et al, our model proves the ability to map land degradation, especially to better distinguish the classification of land degradation at very-slightly to very-severe intensity and the ability to differentiate water body, swamp or river.