This report aims to analyze land cover change of Metro Manila from 2009 to 2018. Major drivers of land cover change are urban development, agriculture and mining as their rate exceeded reforestation rate.

This part aims to analyze land cover change of Metro Manila from 2009 to 2018. We collected and pre-processed multi-temporal satellite images from Landsat 5, 7, and 8 and Sentinel 2. The pre-processed images were classified using pixel-based supervised classification techniques including Support Vector Machine (SVM), Neural Network (NN), Random Forest (RF) and Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC). The average overall accuracy of NN was roughly 1% higher than SVM and RF and about 8% higher than ML. Less than 33% of the study site’s land cover changed. Built-up area gained 10.3 % in nine years with urban expansion rate doubling in the past four years. Vegetation cover lost 12.4% in the same period. Tree cover dropped from 48.9% in 2009 to 42.64% in 2014 but slightly recovered to 43.4% in 2018 which is slightly higher than the 42.8% built-up cover in 2018. Major drivers of land cover change here are urban development, agriculture and mining as their rate exceeded reforestation rate. Our results call for strengthening of the implementation of the UMRB Protected Landscape law to protect and preserve the vegetal cover in the study site. This also calls for equitable land use planning for the watershed and proper implementation for sustainable resource use as less space becomes available for the competing demands.

RELATED STUDIES

Geospatial II 🔗 | Assessment of Land Cover Changes to River Runoff and Scenario-based Flooding

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Geospatial III 🔗 | Land use classification over a highly-urbanized region using multi-resolution images

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Geospatial IV 🔗 | Using GIS to Visualize Risk in Metro Manila

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Geospatial V 🔗 | Informal Livelihoods Survey along Commonwealth, Quezon City

RELATED SITES

Ateneo Innovation Center →

Climate and Disaster Resilience Laboratory →

SOSE Arise →

Department of Physics →

Department of Environmental Science →

DR. CELINE VICENTE
MS. FLORDELIZA DEL CASTILLO