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A METHODOLOGY OF LUCC CHANGE DETECTION 
BASED ON LAND USE SEGMENT 
Ning Shu a ,Hong Zhang a ’ *, Xue Li a , Yan Wang a 
a School of Remote Sensing Information Engineering, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China 
Email: nshuwu@126.com, hongzhangwh@163.com 
KEY WORDS: land use segment; feature extraction; Index of regional similarity; change detection; 
ABSTRACT: 
As a key element for land use cover change research, change detection technique is of urgent demands and has great potential in 
scientific applications. However, there are still some problems that could not be solved properly by traditional methods in change 
detection, such as concentration of change information on all channels to produce temporal difference images, extraction of changed 
areas, identification of change types, etc. under such circumstances, the investigations are carried out around the issues related to 
how to extract other features such as texture feature and shape feature based on land use segment besides the spectral feature, as well 
as the land use classes and their sensitivity to these features. It should be pointed out that the researches must be focused on the land 
use segments other then the pixels. In detail, firstly, by means of the sample segments according to land use map in time Tl, the 
features of each type of the land use classes are obtained in time Tl. Secondly, each samples are analysed, if the index of regional 
similarity between the image segments of Tl and T2 is accepted, the samples in time T2 could be remained, otherwise the new 
samples around that sample are selected and are judged by the similarity between the samples of Tl. Thirdly, each segments of T2 
will be classified according to the minimum Euclid distance to the T2 sample segments accepted, and the corresponding land use 
type will be assigned to the current segment. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can cut down the 
computational costs and improve the accuracy. In one word, the new method is an attractive and effective method, which 
outperforms the traditional change detection methods. 
1. MANUSCRIPT 
Being the main cause and the vital issue in the global 
environment change and sustainable development disciplines, 
studies on land use/ land cover change (LUCC) has gained 
increasing attention in China. Change detection in remotely 
sensed imagery is defined as the procedure of quantitatively 
analyzing and identifying changes occurred on the earth’s 
surface from remotely sensed imageries acquired at different 
times. Land use change survey with remote-sensed imagery has 
been one of the important methods for the land manage 
apartment to understand and accommodate land resources, and 
has attracted universal attention. As a key element for many 
applications of RS such as resource inventory, environment 
monitoring, update of fundamental geographical database, etc, 
change detection technique is of urgent demands and has great 
potential in scientific applications. 
Land use change survey with remote-sensed imagery has been 
one of the important methods for the land manage apartment to 
understand and accommodate land resources, and has attracted 
universal attention. Now change detection techniques such as 
image arithmetic differencing, change vector analysis, 
vegetation index differencing, PCA analysis, post-classification 
comparison method, and so on, are widely used, but their ability 
are limited. In the land use map-updating field, manual work 
has been the main way, which quantitative and automatic level 
of change detection is not high. But from the angle of people’s 
investigation of the world, the targets’ feature is multi 
attributive and the targets’ implication is often subjective. In 
this condition, the way based on pixel is hardly afford 
satisfaction in target recognition, and homogeneous-regions 
give a more rich expression to the targets, so that, the 
* Corresponding author. Hong Zhang, hongzhangwh@163.com. 
methodology of LUCC change detection based on 
homogeneous-region is advantageous. 
This paper mainly researches change detection method based on 
land use spans. The land use span is expressed by vector 
polygon along with raster region. The dissertation focused on 
Land Use/Cover Change Detection Using Feature Database of 
basical Types Based on Land Use segment, and abstracted 
standard land type’s gray character, texture character, and shape 
character within boundary of polygon which belongs to 
“Features” of LUCC. 
It should be pointed out that the researches must be focused on 
the land use segments other then traditional methods of the 
pixels. Recent analysis methods are commonly based on pixels, 
which thinking way confirm land surface type through every 
pixel’s spectral feature. In this way, many methods appeared 
which were represented by spectral-match and multi-dimension 
spectral feature classification. Many worthy research results 
were accumulated and pushed forward the development of 
hyperspectral remote sensing applied technology. 
2. A METHODOLOGY OF LUCC CHANGE 
DETECTION BASED ON LAND USE SEGMENT 
2.1 Theoretical background 
The actual situation of land use change detection different from 
the ordinary remote monitoring : the department of Land 
use/Land cover change detection (LUCC) possess the former 
phase of the land use vector data, under this particular 
circumstance the LUCC investigations are carried out between