Change detecting and timely updating of residential areas is widely recognized as one of the most challenging tasks for an operational GIS. High spatial resolution satellite data provide an efficient source of information. This paper describes a hierarchical object-oriented approach for extracting residential areas from IKONOS and SPOT5 images acquired in 2001 and 2004, respectively. Hierarchic...

A recent judgment of the Lands Tribunal has set an important precedent which should decrease the potential for restrictive covenants to thwart the development of the government's care in the community programme. In 1989 a Worthing couple were permitted to convert their own house into a residential care home for former psychiatric patients. Judge B Marder, QC, ruled on 12 January 1993 that the "...

Urbanization is developing unprecedentedly on a global scale. One of the chief repercussions of urbanization, caused by man-made alterations in land-use/land-cover (LULC), is the formation of urban heat islands. Albeit, differences among landscape structures and its accompanied effects on the environment are mostly neglected. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to survey the variou...

A large amount of cultivated lands in China is occupied by vacant residential areas, thereby wasting land resources and placing local food security at risk. Therefore, transforming vacant rural residential land back to its previous form is urgently required to maintain the amount of cultivated land and guarantee food security. We comprehensively analyzed the willingness of farmers to participat...

Caspian Sea coastline in the Mazandaran province has been altered as a result of activities of developers attracted to aesthetic and coastal recreational aspects of forest ecosystems. Advances in GIS and RS techniques, has made it possible to study the coastal areas for better management. Hence, the present study was undertaken to determine land cover changes via applying cross classificat...

containing protected areas (i.e., national parks, national monuments, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas) are growing more rapidly than counties without such areas (Rasker et al. 2004). Undeveloped private lands adjacent to these protected areas are especially vulnerable to economic growth, particularly rural residential development. Between 1970 and 2000, rural residential development in t...

the image of most iranian cities like mashhad as a metropolis indicates not only the contrast between old and new urban textures but also illustrates a new texture of not more than 50 years old whose design is disorganized and disordered. despite enjoying a detailed plan (1956-91), piroozi boulevard in rezashahr area with residential land use, low density and plots of over 500 m2 is really in a...

Hydrological status and water table fluctuations are directly related to land use and/or land cover (LULC) changes in each area. In this research, the impact of LULC changes on groundwater quantity and quality of Khan-Mirza Plain, in the northern Karun watersheds, was investigated. For this purpose, Landsat 5, 7 and 8 satellite images and ETM and OLI sensors were employed to prepare the L...

land use change may influence many natural phenomena and ecological processes, including runoff, soil erosion, sedimentation and soil conditions. decreasing of forest area in the north of iran is one of the critical problems in recent years. the aims of this study are to detect land use changes between 1967 to 2002 using satellite images of land sat 7 etm+ (2002), aerial photos and digital topo...