Land use change modelling based on Remote Sensing, GIS and Fractal analysis: a case study of Vietnamese coastal zone

Abstract

The last decades has seen the emergence of landscape/land use change as one of the key driving forces in global changes, especially climate change, environmental change, and ecological economic change. This change, from landscape ecological perspective, has a tendency of altering landscape mosaic pattern which may well lead to ecosystem function change over time, and could be seen at global, regional and local scales altogether. By using multiscale approach, at regional scale, in addition to landscape change dynamic, almost of important impacts of climate change and sea level rise were completely analyzed throughout Vietnam coastal zone. At local scale, land use change, landscape dynamic, the correlation between spatial pattern and ecosystem function was particularly clarified over a selected case study area of Tien Lang district, a specific coastal area nearby Gulf of Tonkin, North of Vietnam. There were four main studying results obtained, including environmental impact assessment of sea level rise on Vietnamese coastal zone, reconstructing landscape changes since 1989 by using satellite remote sensing data, landscape change modelling and proposing scenarios of landscape ecological planning (LANDEP) for the case study area. A final report was designed with six chapters (in English), into which involved a key collection of 10 thematic maps by digital format and 3 papers submitted in international conferences/world congress. The results of this research, theoretically, pointed out the major problems of clarifying landscape pattern in the past, understanding trends of landscape change in the future, and analyzing dynamic of landscape change along transects. Practically, these not only helped detect such spatially explicit landscape patterns, but improved the ability of planners to integrate ecological and environmental considerations in territorial planning.