Use of landsat tm to detect change in tropical forest types after fire Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand

Abstract

Multitemporal change detection was undertaken to investigate whether tropical evergreen forests in Huai Kha Khaeng Sanctuary, Thailand have declined as a result of wildfire. Unsupervised isodata classification was performed on four dry- season Landsat images. Two of the images, 1989 and 2000, were found to be radiometrically comparable with similar cluster classes identified and a near equidistant shift between cluster class means. Image spectral class recoding and subsequent union operation between the two images produced 36 change classes. Results show a significant net change of 14% between spectral classes of significance. The change detection process maps a clear decline in the area of evergreen forest and a shift to deciduous forest types.