Land Use Land Cover (LULC) Mapping in the Mountain Terrain

This presentation is a modified version of presentation made at the GI-Forum organized jointly by University of Salzburg and Z-GIS Salzburg Austria in 3-6 July 2007. This presentation has been made for the mapping of land use land cover over the topographically complex terrain of southern part of Nepal. Objective of the study was to map the land use land cover in the complex mountain terrain. Visible and Near Infrared (VNIR) bands and constructed DEM of Terra ASTER image acquired in April 2001, Landsat TM image acquired in October 1989 and digital thematic data layers manually digitized from the topographic maps of 1:25,000 scale published by the Government of Nepal in 1994/96 were used. Image data were classified using software tools available in ERDAS Imagine ver 9.1 and was integrated in GIS in ArcGIS 9.1 software environment. Unsupervised, supervised and knowledge-based classifications were adapted. The result of the classification was superimposed on the 1:25,000 topographic thematic data layer where the result of knowledge-based classification scheme was satisfactorily matched.