The monitoring of land use and land cover change of Sichuan province and Chengdu district, China

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) is necessary to explore the factors leading to heavy drought and rainy-flood disaster in some districts of Sichuan province. A method based RS, GIS, GPS and Google earth (GE) is presented to establish LUCC database in Sichuan province and Chengdu district. At first, LUCC is interpreted based on the new temporal images and the land use and land cover database from TM in 2000.Secondly, some ground objects, which could not be identified in the new temporal images, were interpreted utilizing GE with some higher spatial resolution images. Thirdly, the new interpreted LUCC was validated in the field with GPS handheld receiver. Then, LUCC of Sichuan province was updated. A comparative analysis of LUCC between in Sichuan province and in Chengdu district was conducted and the result showed: (1) a large amount of farmland in Sichuan Province was occupied from 2000 to 2005 and the area is 84 573 ha. While construction land gained obviously and the area was 35 828 ha. The dynamic degree of construction land was 111.10
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from 2000 to 2005. The LUCC demonstrated that the economy of Sichuan province continued to develop, the cities were overspreading and the urban heat island effect was deteriorated from 2000 to 2005. (2) A large amount of farmland was also occupied in Chengdu district from 2000 to 2005, the area amounted to 12 989 ha. The farmland lost was mainly changed to construction land, amounting to 93%. And the dynamic degree was 117.41
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from 2000 to 2005, which was bigger than that in Sichuan province.