Assessment of Land Cover Change in Selected Municipalities and Cities of Nueva Ecija Using Geographic Information System and Remote Sensing Technologies

In this study, an effort has been made to assess the changes in land cover in some municipalities and cities of Nueva Ecija. The study was carried out through remote sensing and GIS approach using Landsat Images (Landsat 4 TM, Land Sat 7 ETM+, Landsat 5 TM, and Landsat 8 OLI_TIRS). For this purpose, a supervised classification technique was applied to Landsat images acquired in 1989 to 2018. Results indicated that land cover changes have occurred in agricultural, urban, and forestry areas which happened in the study areas from 1989 to 2018. Urban areas, although covering a much smaller proportion of the landscape/land cover in both time periods, increased at a much higher rate than any other land cover classes. The increase in agricultural and urban areas mostly result in deforestation, which means some forest areas were removed and converted to agriculture and settlement in the municipalities/cities.