Analysis of Land use and Land Cover Changes in the Coastal Area of Bangladesh using Landsat Imagery

Abstract

Coastal land use across the globe has experienced remarkable rapid change over the recent decades because of extraordinary anthropogenic pressure and climate variability and change. Therefore, quantitative information about coastal land use change is imperative for effective management and planning resources for sustainable development. We analysed the quantitative land use and land cover changes during 1989-2000-2010 periods in three important agroecological zones of the most vulnerable coastal region of Bangladesh using Landsat images (Thematic Mapper/Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus). In the Ganges Tidal Floodplain, the area under shrimp cultivation greatly increased at the rate of 2·05% per annum. The majority of the shrimp area gained from conversion of single cropland. In the Meghna Estuarine Floodplain, decreased mudflat and water bodies were observed, which was predominantly converted into cropland. In Chittagong Coastal Plain, salt pan-shrimp area increased with the expense of single and/or double cropland. In all the study areas, settlement area considerably increased over time. The dynamics of land use change have been attributed to low and unstable food production in the coastal region. The approach adopted in study and the results obtained from the study would likely be useful for policy making and identifying direction for future studies on the coastal land use in Bangladesh.

Effects of reclamation and natural changes on coastal wetlands bordering China's Yellow Sea from 1984 to 2015

“…According to the national MFZ for 2011-2020, a total area of 2,496 km 2 of land will be reclaimed from 2011 to 2020 in CYS (Wang et al, 2014), which is only one half of our estimates based on the digitized data. Moreover, compared with other land use types, such as aquaculture and port, the industrialization and urbanization areas only account for a small proportion (10%) of the reclaimed land (Islam, Miah, & Inoue, 2016), which means that the scale and extent of coastal wetland reclamation in the next few years may far exceed our estimates. Meng et al (2017) suggested that neither economics nor population density but policies are the direct driving forces of China's reclamation of wetlands.…”

Future Impact of Land Use/Land Cover Changes on Ecosystem Services in the Lower Meghna River Estuary, Bangladesh

“…Hence, as a result of rapid economic activity along with high population pressure and environmental degradation, LULC in Bangladesh has changed very rapidly [15,16]. Empirical investigations [8,14,15,[19][20][21][22][23] have shown that along with factors like rapid population growth and economic development, land degradation, and sea-level rise are some of the other driving forces in the coastal region of Bangladesh that have led to rapid LULC transformations over different periods, and that these have been arguably more widespread and intense than in any other areas of the globe, and that these conditions continue to worsen, leading to ongoing degradation and damages in the ecological value of these vulnerable environments [8,20,23].…”

sUAS and their application in observing geomorphological processes

“…The use of remote sensing is today a key strategy to research the soil and the soil processes (Aucelli et al, 2016;Holleran et al, 2015;Kaiser et al, 2015;Van Eck et al, 2016). Throughout remote sensing we can observe the "behaviour" of the environment we live in -changes of soil, vegetation, landforms, land uses, and land management; what is the cause for these changes; and mainly what effects these changes have on the environment (De Mûelenaere et al, 2011;Gong et al, 2015;Islam et al, 2015;Zucca et al, 2014). All these changeswhether natural or anthropogenic -can be effectively and easily monitored with the use of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS).…”