Land use/land cover change analysis for Li River Basin, China with multitemporal landsat data

The Li River Basin in Guangxi Province, China forms the world-famous Guilin landscape. However, the eco-environment of Li River Basin deteriorated in last decades. To monitor the land use/land cover (LULC) changes in this area, the study area was classified into five land cover types: urban area, grassland, forest, farming area, and water body. Based on the training samples manly collected, we applied a supervised classifier to the two adjacent Landsat scenes covering the entire Li River Basin. The classification images were generated in 1991, 2000 and 2008 respectively. By analyzing the dynamic changes of these LULC types from 1991 to 2008 with a post-classification method, several conclusions can be drawn. The areas of grassland and urban have increased, while forest and farmland decreased ad different rates during the last two decades. The main reasons for the change of vegetation and water source areas can be attributed to urbanization expansion, deforestation, soil erosion and other factors.