Land Use Mapping with ASTER

The archive of ASTER imagery constitutes a useful source of land use information for the Mekong basin. In particular, the freely available ASTER data set along the course of the Mekong River is an excellent and readily available resource for land use assessments. The spatial resolution of these images is 15 m.

The American ‘Global Visualization’ (Glovis) archive, which is available on-line on the Internet at http://glovis.usgs.gov/, contains a comprehensive collection of ASTER images since 1999. The index maps provide an illustration of this very effective search tool. It readily allows for the identification, selection and display of available ASTER satellite images for the Mekong basin. An example a low-resolution thumbnail image is given further below. The data lends itself well for a variety of different land use investigations.

An additional source of ASTER imagery of the Mekong basin is the ‘Protected Area’ archive. This on-line collection contains a selection high-resolution images that can be accessed free of charge. These ASTER images are presented in a ‘natural colour’ format, thus showing vegetation cover in green, unlike the ‘false-colour’ Glovis data, which render vegetation cover in reddish tones. T

To visit the site go to (http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/paa_download.asp).

ASTER images of Cambodia

The image below is a thumbnail version of an ASTER image acquired over the Tonle Sap River area. Although much reduced in terms of size and detail, this type of “quicklook” imagery can be easily and quickly accessed from the growing ASTER archive. On this image, vegetation appears red and most water surfaces and human-made areas appear in shades of blue. Fallow agricultural land appears in greenish-beige tone.

Note the “peanut-shaped” portion of the Tonle Sap River in the upper central portion of the scene (A). This area is shown in greater detail in the following image. Also shown in this image is the city of Phnom Penh, located in the lower right corner of the scene (B).

ASTER image of the Tonle Sap River, Cambodia, showing a variety of land use features

The image below is an enlargement of ‘Area A’ (shown above). The right side of the image shows the Tonle Sap River (dark blue) with the lush flood plain vegetation (red). The left side of the image shows agricultural land with fallow fields, villages, small fish ponds, and roads.

Agricultural land with fallow fields, villages, small fish ponds, and roads is shown in the left half of the scene. The flood plain of the Tonle Sap river occupies the right half of the scene.

The image below is an enlargement of ‘Area B’ (shown above) and shows the city of Phnom Penh with its street pattern and built-up areas (light blue / grey). The city is located at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers in the right half of the scene. The lush floodplain vegetation in this “false colour” image appears in red; ponds of standing water appear in dark blue.

ASTER image of the capital city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, showing a variety of urban and rural land use features.  Note the long runway of Pochentong airport in the lower left part of the scene.

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