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QUANTIFYING LAND USE/COVER CHANGE AND LANDSCAPE FRAGMENTATION 
IN DANANG CITY, VIETNAM: 1979-2009 
N. H. K. Linh ?*, S. Erasmi?, M. Kappas * 
* Dept. of Cartography, GIS & Remote Sensing, Georg-August-University Goettingen, Goldschmidtstr 5, 37077 Goettingen, 
Germany — (nlinh, serasmi, mkappas)@uni-goettingen.de 
? Faculty of Land Resources & Agricultural Environment, Hue University of Agriculture & Forestry, 102 Phung Hung, Hue City, 
Vietnam 
Commission VIII, WG VIII/8 
KEY WORDS: Land use/cover, Landsat, ASTER, change detection, radiometric normalization 
ABSTRACT: 
Studying temporal changes of land use and land cover (LULC) from satellite images has been conducted in Vietnam several years. 
However, few studies have been done to consider seriously the relationship between LULC changes and the fragmentation of 
landscape. Hence, analysing the changes of LULC and landscape pattern helps revealing the interactions between anthropogenic 
factors and the environment, through which planning actions could be effectively supported. The present study aimed to examine 
these changes in the surroundings of Danang City, Vietnam from 1979 to 2009 based on Landsat Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS), 
Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and ASTER satellite images. The Multivariate Alteration Detection (MAD) 
approach was employed for processing and postclassification change detection, from which key landscape indices were applied by 
using FRAGSTATS. The results showed that during the whole study period, there was a notable decrease of forestland, shrub, 
agriculture and barren while urban areas expanded dramatically. Further spatial analysis by using landscape metrics underlined the 
evidence of changes in landscape characteristics with an increase in total number of patches and patch density while the mean patch 
area decreased during the span of 30 years. Consequently, the landscape structure of Danang city became more fragmented and 
heterogeneous. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Urbanization is believed one of the most prevalent 
anthropogenic causes of the losing arable land, devastating 
habitats, and the decline in natural vegetation cover (Dewan and 
Yamaguchi, 2009). As a consequence, rural areas have been 
converted into urban areas with an unprecedented rate and 
making a noted effect on the natural functioning of ecosystems 
(Turner, 1994). Consequently, a profound understanding of 
land use change is very important to have a proper land use 
planning and sustainable development policies (Braimoh and 
Onishi, 2007). 
According to Myint and Wang (2006), to fulfil such a 
sustainable urban development, urban and regional planners 
have to summarise from numerous decisions. However, these 
decisions must be extracted from huge data sources which 
represent physical, biological and social parameters of urban 
areas in the continued spectrum of spatial and temporal 
domains. Hence, it is important to have an effective spatial 
dynamic tool, which is used to understand urban land-use and 
land-cover change (LULC) for predicting future change. 
Compared with various methods used to collect land use data, 
remote satellite technologies has proven its capacity in 
providing accurate and timely information on the geographic 
distribution of land use, especially for regional size areas (Sun 
et al., 2009). With the support of Geographical Information 
Systems (GIS), satellite images can effectively estimate and 
analyse changes and LULC trends (Hathout, 2002). 
Due to the fact that the rapid LULC change of one certain area 
is the driving force of change in ecological environment, which 
is continuously transforming landscape structure, thereby a need 
for comprehensive assessing and analyzing the change in 
landscape at broad scales is required. Importantly, 
understanding the changes in spatial contribution of landscape 
pattern helps revealing the critical implication of complex 
relationship between anthropogenic factor and environment 
(Ning ef aL, 2010). To describe fragmentation and spatial 
distribution, a range of landscape metrics was calculated for 
each land use/cover class from satellite classification results by 
FRAGSTATS (Kamusoko and AniYa, 2006). 
After the adoption of the “DOI MOI” policy in economy of the 
national assembly in 1986, Danang city has developed in many 
aspects. In addition, it was separated from Quang Nam Province 
in 1997 and has officially become an administration unit that 
directly belongs to the government. Since then, Danang city has 
asserted as the important position in nation level and the crucial 
factor of the main region economy of Middle area. This has 
caused the incessant land use/cover change in Danang for over 
past 20 years. Through exploring the land use map extracted 
from satellite data of different periods, the aims of the present 
study were to detect, quantify and characterise the changes of 
land use/cover and landscape fragmentation in Danang region. 
2. STUDY AREA 
Danang city is located in Middle Central of Viet Nam, between 
the 15°55”19” to 16?13'20"N and 107?49'11" to 1089?20'20"E 
(Figure 1). It is a long-stretching narrow region and well known 
as a dynamic city of the Key Economic Zone in central Viet 
Nam. The area consists of hills and mountains in the northwest 
and the Eastern Sea in the east. The altitude varies from 400m to 
1524m above sea level; next to is the upland with low 
mountains and the delta takes % areas in the southeast; it covers 
an area of 1,283.42km? including Hoang Sa island district of 
305 km’.