LAND USE/COVER CHANGE AND LANDSCAPE FRAGMENTATION ANALYSES IN KHON KAEN CITY, NORTHEASTERN THAILAND

The aim of this study is to determine the land use and land cover changes in Khon Kaen city, Thailand, using landscape fragmentation analysis together with multi-temporal Landsat data acquired during 1990-2015. Using support vector machine techniques, multi-temporal Landsat imagery was classified to derive a map of land use and land cover change and subsequently analyze the landscape fragmentation to determine the factors driving this change. The results showed that most of the built-up area was converted from an agricultural area, illustrating the expansion of the urban area over the past twenty-five years. Consequently, the landscape has become more highly fragmented as indicated by an increase in the patch number and a decrease in the mean patch size of the agriculture land cover class. Economic development, education system development, population growth and the improvement of traffic infrastructure are main factors driving land use and land cover change in Khon Kaen city.