Abstract
Natural land cover information is important for analysing and understanding of the current terrestrial situation, especially in the study area that is facing the environmental deteriorating increasingly. The study combined the remote sensing Aster data and ground truth to improve 2001 land cover map of Guadalteba area in Spain, and increased the accuracy from 47% to 70%. The general land cover map produced about the Guadalteba study area outlines the distribution of the vegetation type and the current natural land cover in the area. Based on this improved general land cover map, the natural cover map gave an indication of the present location of nature and agriculture areas. The shrub land degradation map identified location of various shrub/matorral areas and different levels of degradation. The further analysis and discussion were done. The output maps indicated that much of the natural cover mostly dominated by formations of shrubs has been changed to agriculture and other land uses. It is observed that shrubland covers a small percentage, approximately 9% of the study area, due to land degradation in most parts caused by human interfere.
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Foundation item: This paper was partly sponsored by NFP (Netherlands Feliowship Program) and National Strategic Project “Environmentally Sound Forest Management Techniques and Models in Natural Forest in Northeast China” (2001BA510B0702) respectively.
Biography: XING Yan-qiu (1970-), female, Lecturer, in College of Engi neering and technology Northeast Forestry University. Harbin 150040. P. R. China
Responsible editor: Song Funan
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Yan-qiu, X., Li-hai, W. & Westinga, E. Assessment of degraded mattoral land using remote sensing imagery in Guadalteba Area, Spain. Journal of Forestry Research 15, 145–149 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02856751
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02856751