Spatio-temporal Land use/land cover dynamics and its driving forces in the Mekong Basin using Landsat imageries from 1988 to 2017

Abstract

As one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, Mekong Basin has experienced a dramatic change in land-use and land-cover (LULC) over the past three decades, which could have a profound effect on regional biodiversity patterns. However, LULC dynamic and their driving forces in the Mekong Basin are still not well understood due to the complex geographical environment and the lack of efficient approaches to consistently produce accurate and timely LULC maps. In this study, we divided the Mekong Basin into three geographical units based on topographic and landscape heterogeneity. Then a rule-based method was employed to map LULC for each geographical unit from Landsat images. Finally, LULC dynamics and associated driving forces in the Mekong Basin from 1988 to 2017 were analysed. The results showed that: (1) the rule-based classification framework could accurately produce time series of LULC maps with overall accuracies over 86% for all single-year classifications. (2) Forest (49.92%) and cultivated land (34.89%) were the dominant LULC types in the Mekong Basin during the study period. Between 1988 and 2017, about 20.98% of the study area experienced LULC changes, in which the artificial surface increased by 3980.31 km2, mainly at the expense of forest and cultivated land. (3) Human disturbances were identified as the major driving forces of LULC changes. This study present essential source of information for policymakers to formulate sustainable natural resources management policies in the study site. In addition, this rule-based classification provides an insight into improving the accuracy of LULC mapping in complex geographical environment.