Applications of GIS and Very High-Resolution RS Data for Urban Land Use Change Studies in Mongolia

摘要

The aim of this study is to analyze the urban land use changes occurred in the central part of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, from 1930 to 2008 with a 10-year interval using geographical information system (GIS) andveryhigh-resolution remote sensing (RS) data sets. As data sources, a large-scale topographic map, panchromatic and multispectral Quickbird images, and TerraSARsynthetic aperture radar (SAR)data are used. The primary urban land use database is developed using the topographic mapof the study areaand historical data about buildings. To extract updated land use information from the RS images, Quickbird and TerraSAR images are fused. For the fusion,ordinary and special imagefusion techniques are used and the results are compared. For the finalland use changeanalysis andRSimage processing, ArcGIS and Erdas imagine systems installed in a PC environment are used. Overall, the study demonstrates that within the last few decades the central part of Ulaanbaatarcityis urbanized very rapidly and became very dense.