Forest Cover and Land Use/Land Cover Mapping
of Mazandran Province, using Remote Sensing
Satellite Tm Data, to Prepare Atlas of Study Area
Majid Ghiassi far, R.S. specialist, Ali Reza Majid
Head of division
Agricultural Statistic and info. Dept.
(ASID) Ministry of Agriculture Tehran Iran
Abstract
Land information is important to a wide variety of human activities such as agriculture, forestry, water resources as well as other type of land resources management.
Landsat thematic mapper ™ data with high resolution particularly the unbroken scope and detailed view (repeated coverage) can be considered in indentification and extent of a variety of land use/landcovers.
The production of various thematic maps together with an up-to-data base map is an proper way to document land use potential. This paper summarizes the results of land use/land cover mapping compiled in the (ASID) Ministry of agriculture.
Main objective of this project is to investigate uniqual characteristics of land units by applying landsat imageries of band 2,3,4 of different dates (190-1) and interpretationof digital data, in addition to the mentioned data crop calendar of related crops was considered as auxiliary data along with collection of ground truth information. The study area cover Mazandaran province with an area of about 45656 square km located in northern part of Iran, to produce land use/land cover maps of the above province, analog and digital interpretation of TM images was taken into consideration and as a general view, the different steps of project could be explained as below.
-
defining a comprehensive legend regarding to the scale of TM images
- Geographical modeling and provision of standard sheets
- visual and digital interpretation of TM images.
- Ground checking and necessary improvement of the primary maps.
- Using the auxiliary data and extant maps to promote the information depicted on the land use maps.
- Land unit surface measurement by using GIS facilities. To accomplish the above project the total of 19 TM quadrants have been interpreted and 39 sheets (50x70cm) and 30 by 30 minutes of geographic coordinates) were produced. To make the wide use of such maps possible beside the maps already mentioned. Another collection (1:200,000) named land use atlas were produced in which a brief description on the applied procedure is followed by 1:2000,000 scale land use/land cover maps.
Introduction
The thematic mapper ™ data from landsat satellite have been utilized in Ministry of Agriculture for the last few years to recongnize and assess, land use/land covers in various ways, proving their efficient performances as a good tool, especiallyfor land use mapping and land deduction general. However the advent of the thematic mapper ™ data with high resolution has made the mapping work faciliate better in visual interpretation and analysis of the required object, as such this paper an attempt has been made to extract various information of forest covers and land resources of mazandaran province.
Area
Mazandaran province, with an area of about 46o,456' sq.km, lies between 50, 15' and 56o,15' eastern longitudes and between 35o,45' and 38o,15' northern latitude in northern Iran. Due to the proximity of the Caspian sea on the north and Alborz mountain on the south and also its abundant superficial water resources, the province enjoys a quasi-Mediterranean climate which makes, it favorable to agriculture, Rice, Cotton, and Forest, Citrous fruits, constitute the main crops of Mazandaran province.
