Using satellite data to monitor land-use land-cover change in North-eastern Latvia

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), especially those caused by human activities, is one of the most important components of global environmental change (Jessen 3(rd) edition: 1-526 2005). In this study the effects of geographic and demographic factors on LULCC are analyzed in northeastern Latvia using official estimates from census and vital statistics data, and using remotely sensed satellite imagery (Landsat Thematic Mapper) acquired from 1992 and 2007. The remote sensing images, elevation data, in-situ ground truth and ground control data (using GPS), census and vital statistics data were processed, integrated, and analyzed in a geographic information system (GIS). Changes in six categories of land-use and land-cover (wetland, water, agriculture, forest, bare field and urban/suburban) were studied to determine their relationship to demographic and geographic factors between 1992 and 2007. Supervised classifications were performed on the Landsat images. Analysis of land cover change based on “change-to” categories between the 1992 and 2007 images revealed that changes to forest were the most common type of change (17.1% of pixels), followed by changes to agriculture (8.6%) and the fewest were changes to urban/suburban (0.8%). Integration of population data and land-cover change data revealed key findings: areas near to roads underwent more LULCC and areas far away from Riga underwent less LULCC. Range in elevation was positively correlated with all LULCC categories. Population density was found to be associated with most LULCC categories but the direction of effect was scale dependent. This paper shows how socio-demographic data can be integrated with satellite image data and cartographic data to analyze drivers of LULCC at multiple spatial scales.