|
Land Use Dynamics from Multi-temporal Remotely Sensed Data: A Case Study Northern Thailand  Suthinee Dontree Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University 239, Huai Kaew Road, Amphoe Mueang, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand suthinee@soc.cmu.ac.th
1. Introduction
The land conflicts in northern Thailand has increased since the past. The causes of the conflicts came from the government policies to give forest concessions to private and governmental companies, promulgation of national reserve forests, watershed classification and classification of national reserve forests. These policies have provoked unequal access to natural resources and illegal land occupation despite the fact that several households have already occupied upland and highland areas for field crop cultivation before the quoted enactment. During the last 20 years and especially after Thailand’s economic collapse, there is significant increasing rate that local middlemen, landless farmers have encroached more and more into forestlands. The study area is focused at the agricultural areas of Tho Saman village in Phrae province, North of Thailand covering an area of 292.3 km2. The village was established over 100 years ago at the vicinity of the Song national reserve forest, enacted in 1973. The majority of the villagers’ agricultural plots are situated in the national reserve forest, considered to be illegal predicament. The topography comprises of three landform types. The first, the lowland area or the Song lower flood plain, with an elevation less than 240 MSL. It is situated in the south and southwestern parts of the Song reservoir. There are two agricultural types in the lowland: irrigated and rainfed. The second, the uplands or undulating hills are defined as the north-eastern and south-western parts of the reservoir, going from the flat flood plain until the nearest mountain ridge before the Nam Sai Song valley, these areas lie at elevations between 240-500 MSL. The major land use types are mixed deciduous forest and upland field. The last landform type is the highland area, defined as the area east of the upland area, located on the north-eastern parts with an elevation of 500- 1,200 MSL. The highland area is divided in several parts by narrow valleys of many small streams. Forestlands are major land use composing of mixed deciduous and dry dipterocarp. The objective of the study is to apply remotely sensed data to investigate land use dynamics concerning the land utilization in the study area in each period from forest concession to modern market-oriented agriculture effected by some government strategies on forestlands and the construction of Song reservoir. The reservoir construction has severely altered the conditions for agriculture in the Song watershed. Since the dam construction obscured the old road to the highland agricultural fields and increased the possibility for intensive farming due to a larger irrigated area downstream from the reservoir, large changes in land use have occurred. The following analyses will quantify the changes that can be observed primarily with the use of available aerial photos and satellite images. Finally, the observed changes will be analysed in combination with other sources of data in an attempt at offering causal explanations for the changed land use.
Page 1 of 5
| Next | |