Change detection in rice area using remote sensing data

Information on land use/land cover in the form of maps and statistical data is very vital for spatial planning, management and utilization of land. Satellite images are using in the investigation of changes in land use and land cover as extremely useful tools. The objective of this study was to obtain changing in land use/cover, especially the rice production area is nearly 40% of the production takes place in turkey is located along the Meric river in Edirne province of Thrace region in Turkey. Landsat TM of 2001, 2006 and 2011 were acquired by USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center Site. Rapideye image of 2011 was obtained from Local distributor in order to control classification accuracy of low resolution Landsat image. For this purpose, a supervised classification methodology has been employed using maximum likelihood technique in Erdas 9.3 software. Study area were categorized into six different classes namely, Rice, Forest, Water, Agriculture, Pasture and Roads. The results were validated using ground truth data and long term data of Turkish Statistical Institute (TSI). The results indicate that especially between 2001 and 2006 Rice areas have been great increased as 41% from 25909 ha to 43839.33 ha and decreased to 41021.18 ha in 2011. In addition, as a result of comparison of high resolution Rapideye and low resolution Landsat image, highly good relationship was found in detection of Rice areas. The results show that the Landsat images could potentially be applied at large spatial scales to monitoring of rice on a timely and accurately.