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THE INTEGRATION OF SATELLITE IMAGE AND GIS DATABASE FOR MOUNTAIN AREA LAND USE 
MONITORING 
Hsueh-Cheng Chou, Associate. Professor, Dept. of Geography, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan, R.O.C. 
Tien-Yin Chou, Associate Professor, Dept. of Land Management, Feng Chia University, Taiwan, R.O.C. 
KEY WORDS: Land Use, Monitoring, Database, GPS 
ABSTRACT 
The Der-chi watershed experienced a conflict between water resource sue and farming practice. This research used 
remote sensing technique image to produce urgently needed land use data for land use management. The rugged terrain 
in this region caused great variations in spectral value of satellite images. Band ratio and two sets of training sites, one 
for the shadowed region and another for the unshaded regions, were used to classified the images. Satellite images and 
other data are put into a coherent environmental database using GIS data integration capability. A decision support 
system was build based on the database to help decision makers better understand the situation of environment and 
making better decisions. 
INTRODUCTION 
The 60,000 hectare Der-Chi Reservoir Watershed is the 
most important water resources for central Taiwan. 
Because its altitude, the climate of the region is similar 
to temperate zone. It has become the major framing areas 
for temperate fruits and vegetables in Taiwan since 1970s. 
Many sloped lands had been transformed into farm lands 
in the two decades. The farming practice on these sloped 
lands had long been suspected to induce serious soil 
erosion and to create eutrophication in the reservoir. The 
conflict been these two types of land use had created 
extensive debate among local interest group, academic 
community and policy makers. 
Although many data had been collected by various 
agencies in the past two decades, these data have not 
been integrated in a coherent manner to support scientific 
study and policy making. In this research, GIS, GPS and 
Remote Sensing techniques were used to construct an 
environmental monitoring database and to develop an 
environmental decision support system. It is hoped that 
the database and the system will help scientists in 
studying this area and assist decision makers to better 
manage the Der-Chi area. 
RESEARCH PROCEDURES 
The research consisted of three phrases: Satellite Image 
analysis, environmental database ‘construction and 
environmental decision support system development 
(figure 1). 
131 
  
Satellite Image Analysis 
  
  
  
  
Environmental Database Construction 
  
  
  
  
  
Evnironmental Decision Support System Development 
  
Figure 1 Research Procedures 
The first phrase of this research was to determine whether 
satellite images were suitable for producing land use data 
for environmental monitoring. If satellite images had 
proven to be useful, a standard procedure for processing 
satellite image would be proposed for continuous 
monitoring. 
In addition to the image data, other data were digitized 
from paper map or converted from digital sources. The 
quality of these data had been cross checked. Field 
survey was taken to further verify the data. The data was 
then put into an environmental database. 
After the database is constructed, an environmental 
decision support system was built using Arcview and 
Avenue in MS window environment. The purpose of the 
system was to assist researchers and decision makers 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B7. Vienna 1996