C4

Research Abstracts on Spatial Information Science
CSIS DAYS 2006

Land Use Change Analysis Using Remote Sensing and GIS:
A Case Study of Kathmandu Metropolitan, Nepal
Rajesh Bahadur THAPA and Yuji MURAYAMA
Division of Spatial Information Science, University of Tsukuba
Email: <thaparb@yahoo.com> Web: <http://giswin.geo.tsukuba.ac.jp/sis/>(1) Introduction: The urban environment represents
one of the most challenging areas for remotesensing analysis due to high spatial and spectral
diversityofsurfacematerials.
However,
multi-temporal Landsat and IRS satellites imageries
are found useful to detect the major land usechanges thematically in the Kathmandu valley.
(2) Objective: As a result of business opportunities andsecurity risk created by active Maoist insurgentsafter restoration of democracy in 1990, the people
movement to the valley from other areas in Nepal
increased significantly. The population density in
the Kathmandu metropolitan city was increased
from 8370 persons/km2 in 1990 to 13235
persons/km2 in 2001. High population influx may
cause a significant pressure to the limited resourcesin the valley. The main objective of this paper is toidentify the spatial changes of major urban land usesin the valley using multi-temporal satellite images.
(3) Database and Methodology: Kathmandu valley isselected as a study area. Two images of Landsat
satellite acquired in 31st October, 1989 and 04th
November, 1999 and an image of IRS LISS III
acquired in 18th December 2005 were processedusing ERDAS Imagine 9.0 software. The images
were subset to 10x10 km covering the Kathmandu
metropolitan city. All the images are cloud free andhave no seasonal variances. Road map as a GISlayer was used for correcting the geometricdistortions in the images. The LISS III image wasspatially enhanced from 24-meter to 30-meter tosynchronize the resolution with Landsat images.
Supervise classification technique using maximum
likelihood classifier was applied while preparing
thematic urban land use map for 1989, 1999 and2005. More than 40 training samples for each image
were prepared for the classification. Hundred
random spatial points were generated for eachthematic map for accuracy assessment.

(4) Results: The Fig.1, Fig.2 and Fig.3 represent theland use patterns in 1989, 1999 and 2005
respectively. Five land use classes namely Urban
Builtup Area, Cultivated Land, Orchard, Water andNatural Vegetation are identified. The accuracy ofclassification results are 91% (K=0.87), 92%(K=0.88) and 91% (K= 0.86) for the year 1989,
1999 and 2005, respectively. The quantitative result(Fig.4) shows very low existence of water andnatural vegetation. The degradation of theseproperties also seems to be very low as compared toagriculture area. The spatial extent of orchard issignificantly decreased until 1999 but the urban
builtup area is increased almost in same extent
reversely. In this study, the land used by orchard
indicates gardening near by the urban houses,
horticulture, parks and bare land. However, theactivities on orchard are being expanded in the later
years. After 1999 the cultivated land is abruptly
decreased which may be replaced by the urban
builtup area as well as orchard activities. The urban
built up area was accounted for 23% of the total
land in 1989 which was increased by 17% until
2005 whereas the cultivated land was decreased
from 36% to 22% in the same period. The overall
result shows rapid expansion of urban builtup areaand shrinkage of the cultivated land.
(5) Conclusion: The composition of urban environment
is very complex where the Landsat and LISS III
images are not enough to delineate detail urban
information but good enough to extract thematic
information. As concerned to the detail urban
mapping, very high spatial resolution satellite
images such as IKONOS and QuickBird areavailable in recent years. In this paper, we wanted toobserve the urban spatial expansion in Kathmandu
metropolitan after restoration of democracy. This
paper is able to identify the urban expansion
thematically and accurately. Land use conversion
matrix should be prepared for analyzing urban land
use change in detail.

In hectare

Land use change in Kathmandu Me tro, Nepal
4000
2000
01989
Urban Builtup Area
Orchard1999
Year2005
Cultivated Land
Water

Natural Vegetation

Figure 1: Land use 1989 Figure 2: Land use 1999
Builtup Area
Cultivated Land

Figure 3: Land use 2005
OrchardWater- 22 -Figure 4: Land use change
Natural Vegetation