Area of interest cover long strip along Irrawaddy River. The maps show status and both man-made and natural changes of cultural landscape at regional scale for Mandalay city area.
Despite most of changes concentrated to the very near surroundings of the Mandalay agglomeration, other areas have been identified which might represent potential future regional centers of development or environmental degradation hot-spots.
Example of regional level land use change mapping
Results
The chart below shows the structure of land cover in years 2000 and 2013 (100% = Service 3 AOI). Proportion of land use classes given in this graph does not indicate significant changes between classes with respect to the total size of the AOI. This is not surprising assuming the area of the AOI. Small decrease in area of tree cover was detected between the reference years, as well as increase in area of agriculture.
Touch or pass the cursor over the chart segment to find out the details.
The chart below shows the land cover flows at level 1 for Service 2 (100% = total changes area).
Majority of land use / land cover changes are related to development of the riverbed (extension at expense of or withdrawal in favour to other classes). If natural land or agriculture are transferred into water or river sand deposits (bare land), it can be supposed as land dagradation.
Extension of agriculture could be supposed as deforestation, if extension occurs at expense of forest. Therefore, the naming of land use / land cover change flows has been re-desinged in case of Service 3 in order to assess the environmental aspect of land development in the area and (sometimes) dual meaning of the change flow.
As evident from this graph the riverbed development amouts to 60% of all changes. It is more or less natural change, though it could be amplified by human activity. In order to make such assumptions, long-term time series of annual changes would have to be compared, assessed and corelated with known (and detectable human induced drivers).
Touch or pass the cursor over the chart segment to find out the details.