Landsat observation of urban growth and land use change using NDVI and NDBI analysis

Abstract

Landsat observation has numerous potentials as a quantitative approach in regional scale monitoring of urban growth and environmental change. To achieve this approach, three Landsat data of year 1991 (TM), 2005 (ETM+) and 2019 (OLI-TIRS) has been acquired, classified, and accurately assessed. The research assesses spatio-temporal urban growth, its pattern and land use land cover (LULC) changes of using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Building Index (NDBI) analysis. NDVI were performed for vegetation monitoring especially on loss of vegetation land while NDBI were performed for identification of dense urban and built-up areas. The NDVI and NDBI density results show a significant decreased of vegetation land and a leap up increased of urban and built-up land use. This indicates a significant rapid growth development and a vast transformation of agricultural and forest land into low density development. A rapid urban growth of regional development corridor has significant influence on environment change especially to their periphery. The utilization of both NDVI and NDBI as surrogates has the capability to provide dynamic view and improve the accuracy of land use land cover change analysis. The study showed urban growth has quadrupled from 1991 to 2019 with most rapid growth was from 1991 to 2005 due to greater low-density development and a discontinue growth pattern in the past years compare with much sustainable higher-density development in the recent years.