Analysis of Land Cover Changes Occurred in Brazzaville between 2001 and 2012 Using Landsat Images

Kempena Adolphe, Boudzoumou Florent, Nganga Dominique

Abstract: The analysis of the land use and land cover changes has a great importance to obtain fundamental information for management and land use planning at different scales and environmental studies; natural hazards and disasters. An essential tool for pertinent results is satellite images providing on the same scale a greater number of data to assess the land use and land cover changes all over the years. From the comparison of classified Landsat images (TM and ETM+) it was obtained changes occurred between the years 2001 and 2011 for the city of Brazzaville. This research corresponds to the digital image processing and supervised digital classification; where it is shown the significant changes; using the values of observed and expected change between classes. One obtained maps of different kinds of land use and land cover for different periods; which produced a table of the dynamism of land use and land cover.

Keywords: land use, land cover, supervised digital classification, significant changes, Landsat TM and ETM + image