Class Knowledge-oriented Automatic Land Use and Land Cover Change Detection

Automatic land use and land cover change (LUCC) detection via remotely sensed imagery has a wide application in the area of LUCC research, nature resource and environment monitoring and protection. Under the condition that one time (T1) data is existed land use and land cover maps, and another time (T2) data is remotely sensed imagery, how to detect change automatically is still an unresolved issue. This paper developed a land use and land cover class knowledge guided method for automatic change detection under this situation. Firstly, the land use and land cover map in T1 and remote sensing images in T2 were registered and superimposed precisely. Secondly, the remotely sensed knowledge database of all land use and land cover classes was constructed based on the unchanged parcels in T1 map. Thirdly, guided by T1 land use and land cover map, feature statistics for each parcel or pixel in RS images were extracted. Finally, land use and land cover changes were found and the change class was recognized through the automatic matching between the knowledge database of remote sensing information of land use & land cover classes and the extracted statistics in that parcel or pixel. Experimental results and some actual applications show the efficiency of this method.