Prediction of Land Use and Land Cover Changes for North Sumatra, Indonesia, Using an Artificial-Neural-Network-Based Cellular Automaton

Han Soo Lee,Muhammad Hadi Saputra

doi:10.3390/su11113024

Abstract

Land use and land cover (LULC) form a baseline thematic map for monitoring, resource management, and planning activities and facilitate the development of strategies to balance conservation, conflicting uses, and development pressures. In this study, changes in LULC in North Sumatra, Indonesia, are simulated and predicted using an artificial-neural-network-based cellular automaton (ANN-CA) model. Five criteria (altitude, slope, aspect, distance from the road, and soil type) are used as exploratory data in the learning process of the ANN-CA model to determine their impacts on LULC changes between 1990 and 2000; among the criteria, altitude and distance from the road have strong impacts. Comparison between the predicted and the real LULC maps for 2010 illustrates high agreement, with a Kappa index of 0.83 and a percentage of correctness of 87.28%. Then, the ANN-CA model is applied to predict LULC changes in 2050 and 2070. The LULC predictions for 2050 and 2070 demonstrate high increases in plantation area of more than 4%. Meanwhile, forest and crop area are projected to decrease by approximately 1.2% and 1.6%, respectively, by 2050. By 2070, forest and crop areas will decrease by 1.2% and 1.7%, respectively, indicating human influences on LULC changes from forest and cropland to plantations. This study illustrates that the simulation of LULC changes using the ANN-CA model can produce reliable predictions for future LULC.

Highlights

Land use refers to the purpose that land serves, for example, recreation, wildlife habitat, or agriculture
Identification of land cover establishes the baseline from which monitoring activities can be performed and provides the ground cover information for baseline thematic maps
Land use applications involve both baseline mapping and subsequent monitoring, since timely information is required to know what current quantity of land is involved in what type of use and to identify the land use changes from year to year

Summary

Introduction

Land use refers to the purpose that land serves, for example, recreation, wildlife habitat, or agriculture. Land cover refers to the surface cover on the ground, whether vegetation, urban infrastructure, water, bare soil or other. The meanings of the terms are distinct, land use and land cover (LULC) are often used interchangeably. Identifying, delineating and mapping land cover is important for global monitoring studies, resource management, and planning activities. Identification of land cover establishes the baseline from which monitoring activities (change detection) can be performed and provides the ground cover information for baseline thematic maps. Land use applications involve both baseline mapping and subsequent monitoring, since timely information is required to know what current quantity of land is involved in what type of use and to identify the land use changes from year to year. Issues can be identified from LULC studies, such as the removal or disturbance of productive land, urban encroachment, and the depletion of forests suitable for species distribution [1]

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