Land Cover Change Monitoring Using Landsat MSS/TM Satellite Image Data over West Africa between 1975 and 1990

Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) launched in the early 1970's provides unique opportunities to monitor land cover dynamics based on medium to high resolution imagery. Although the image availability from the initial period of satellite record is relatively good, spatial coverage, radiometric, geometric and optical properties of the images remains unknown. While most of the existing studies using MSS data were focused on regional level or covered more recent time periods, this study examines the quality of these satellite images and exploits them for land cover monitoring at large scale. To examine the availability of Landsat MSS data and its suitability for land cover changes monitoring, a systematic sampling of image dataset is applied over West Africa. Sampling sites taken as boxes of 20 x 20 km at each one degree latitude and longitude intersect are processed and analyzed. Images are examined and used along with Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) as a primary data source for the classification process. Results of the study provide a first large scale estimation of land cover changes from Landsat MSS sensor for the period 1975 – 1990. The most remarkable changes over study area were loss of tree cover, tree cover mosaic, other wooded land and gain of other vegetation cover. The study gives the opportunity for further spatial extension land cover dynamics to the continental scale and shows the importance of combining systematic data processing methods with targeted image acquisition procedures.

VITTEK Marian;  BRINK Andreas;  DONNAY Francois;  SIMONETTI Dario;  DESCLÉE Baudouin; 

2014-01-10

MDPI AG

JRC82643

2072-4292,   

http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/6/1/658,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC82643,   

10.3390/rs6010658,