Urban expansion and archaeological sites of Wat Chulamani, the oldest temple in Muang Phitsanulok, Thailand

Abstract

Wat Chulamani is one of the oldest and the most important Buddhist temples located on the eastern bank of Nan River in Muang Phitsanulok, Thailand. This research aimed to study land use changes of Wat Chulamani itself and surrounding areas in three periods of time: 1997, 2007 and 2017 by using Remote Sensing and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Survey (UAV The satellite data sets derived from LANDSAT–5 TM and LANDSAT–8 OLI systems. To classify land use, supervised classification methodology has been employed using the maximum likelihood algorithm. Land use is classified into 5 classes, which are agricultural land, forest land, urban land, water land and miscellaneous land. The Geographical Information System (GIS) was used to process satellite images and to detect changes over time. The result shows that Wat Chulamani and surrounding areas have been changed because of urban expansion which was mainly induced by Naresuan University establishment in 1990. The observed change shows a reduction of agricultural land and an increase in urban land in the past two decades. This paper demonstrates the potential and usefulness of UAV for mapping and monitoring the archaeological sites. It has been found that Wat Chulamani has experienced a number of changes and renovations.