Regional land cover mapping of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan using satellite image: An approach to understand the dynamics of land use and land cover change
Sushil Pradhan
Mountain Environment and Natural Resources Information Systems (MENRIS)
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)
G.P.O. Box 3226, Kathmandu, Nepal
Tel.: 977-1-525313
Fax: 977-1-524509
E-mail: sushil@icimod.org.np
Abstract
During the past few decades, mountain areas throughout the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region have
experienced rapid change. Expansion in education and health services, the development of roads and
electricity, improvements in irrigation and agricultural and related technologies, and the penetration of
commercial forces are drastically affecting land cover and ecosystems of many parts of the mountain
areas. Each of these factors contributes with varying degree to the change dynamics of mountain areas.
A contributory factor may be applicable in one area, but not in another. It is therefore important to study
and understand the dynamics of land use and land cover change and determine which factor contributes
significantly in a specific area before proper land use planning can be done. This process, first, required a
standard methodology to understand and explain the pattern of land cover of the region. With this
concept, ICIMOD formulated and initiated a project for land cover mapping of the region in 1999. A
methodological study for the land cover mapping of the region has been carried out and developed. The
methodology, which is based on GIS and remote sensing (RS), has been tested for the land cover
mapping of Bhutan and Nepal using IRS-WiFs data. The study mainly focused on how to generate
reliable and good training samples, those are spectrally homogenous and spatially significant, for the
accurate classification of the image. The study also integrated other information, e.g. DEM (Digital
Elevation Model), rainfall, and temperature, with the land cover map classified from the image for the
detailed forest type classification. Accuracy assessment of the result was done to validate the
methodology and showed a satisfactory accuracy of 83 and 88 percent for Bhutan and Nepal,
respectively.
Introduction
The global environmental change community has increasingly recognised the significance of land-use
and land-cover change and the need for an interdisciplinary research approach to the subject, basically in
improving our basic understanding of the dynamics of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change globally, with a
focus on improving our ability to model and project such change..The Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) (Figure 1) is
the mandated area of ICIMOD covering eight
regional member countries: Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar,
Nepal, and Pakistan. The HKH region contains
world’s highest, largest, and most populated
mountain systems. ICIMOD has great challenge
in maintaining environmental degradation and
managing natural resources of the region for the
beneficial of mountain peoples. During the past
few decades, mountain areas throughout the
region have experienced rapid change. Soil
erosion, deforestation, landslides, land
degradation, and water resources are common
problems of the region. Expansion in education and health services, the development of roads and
electricity, improvements in irrigation and agricultural and related technologies, and the penetration of
commercial forces are drastically affecting land cover and ecosystems of many parts of the mountain
areas. Each of these factors contributes with varying degree to the change dynamics of mountain areas.
A contributory factor may be applicable in one area, but not in another. It is therefore important to study
and understand the dynamics of land use and land cover change of the region and to determine which
factor contributes significantly in a specific area before proper land use planning can be done. With this
knowledge, policy makers and planners will be able to predict the availability of food and other natural
resources for the coming years. Land use/land cover change study is a diagnostic tool for determining
sustainability and is therefore important that this tool can be done carefully and properly for the
sustainable development of the HKH region.
To study the land use and land cover dynamics of the region, the linking of social and biophysical
information with spatial component is important. In other hand, there is increased interest today in making
scientific progress through use of remotely sensed data in social science research, i.e. linking people and
pixels. Remotely sensed data have potential value for the study of human-environment interactions,
especially land-cover and land-use change, and it also have potential scientific value for addressing
questions in other areas of social science, including human population dynamics.
