ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Study of Environmental Change Detection Using
Remote Sensing and GIS Application:
A Case Study of Northern Shaanxi Province,
China
You Yanli, Mushtak T. Jabbar, Jing-Xuan Zhou
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Environmental Science and Engineering College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
1037 Luoyu Road, 430074 Wuhan, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2012;21(3):783-790
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
This research focuses on the environmental change indicators in the northern part of Shaanxi Province,
China. Remote sensing and GIS software were used to classify Landsat TM of 1987 and Landsat ETM+ of
2002 imagery into five land use and land cover (LULC) classes. Supervised classification and change detection
techniques were adopted in this research and used, respectively, to retrieve its class boundary. The results
showed that 7,867.3 Km2 (28.4%) of land had high environmental change, 9,474.1 Km2 (34.2%) had moderate,
and 1,0360.6 Km2 (37.4%) of land had low environmental change. In conclusion, the study location is
exposed to a high risk of environmental change.