Urban environmental changes assessment through fusion of multispectral and multitemporal satellite data

Abstract

Environmental urban changes assessment is providing information on environmental quality for identifying the major issues, priority areas of the policy making, planning and management. Effective planning is based on the completely and precisely understanding of the environmental parameters in urban area. Remote sensing is a key application in globalchange science, being very useful for urban climatology and land use/land cover dynamics and morphology analysis. Multi-spectral and multi-temporal satellite imagery (LANDSAT TM and ETM , and IKONOS) for Bucharest urban area over 1989 - 2009 period provides the most reliable technique of monitoring of different urban structures regarding the net radiation and heat fluxes associated with urbanization at the regional scale. The main objectives of this investigation aimed to develop and validate new techniques for mapping and monitoring land cover and land use within and around Bucharest urban area using satellite sensor images and new digital framework data and to analyze the spatial pattern of land cover and the detailed morphology of urban land cover across the study area as well as to develop an improved information base on urban land cover and land cover change for transportation models, urban development planning, urban ecology and local plans.