Received: 14-11-2013 / Accepted: 21-02-2013
The study was conducted to assess land useand land cover change in Tien Yen district in the 2000 -2010 period using SPOT images which were acquired in years 2000, 2005 and 2010. The object –oriented approach which was applied in this research includedtwomain steps: firstly, SPOT image was fragmented to vary objects by eCognition software, and, secondly,the segmentation images were classified by Maximum Likelihood approach using training dataset. The samples consisting of nineland usetypeswere collected by handheld GPSdevice. The overall accuracy of 3 image classifications in 2000, 2005, 2010 were 82.74%, 80,97% and 89.33%, respectively. Land useand land cover mapand land use/land cover change map were produced by ArcGIS (version 10.0) software to assess the land use change of the study area. Within 10 yearsperiod, the forest area and mangrove forest increased 3916.91ha and 1720.57ha, respectively. Meanwhile, the swidden and shrublanddecreased 4200.16ha. The increase of forest area in Tien Yen might be explained bybetter awarenessof local people about the benefits and the importance of forest as well as by thethe implementation of national and international projects which support Tien Yen in protecting and developing forest resource.