An integrated geographical information system´s approach to land cover change assessment

A new methodology has been developed for the land cover change assessment using the integrated GIS approach. Inherent shortcomings of raster change detection techniques have been identified for use with vector formatted land cover data. There was a need for an established procedure for the assessment of land cover change using a vector based GIS. In this paper, a methodology using mathematical concepts of sets and groups has been developed. Such a methodology was successfully implemented for the analysis of historical land cover change from 1931 to 1989 in the River Glen catchment, UK. Algorithms have been developed for automatic derivation of dynamic statistics of land cover. It has been demonstrated that this approach can be efficiently adopted for an operational use incorporating the products derived from both the coarse and fine resolution remotely-sensed satellite images.