Land use

Over many centuries, farmers and settlers have transformed parts of the natural landscape of the Mekong Basin into a cultural landscape. Today, agricultural areas, urban and rural settlements, over-land transportation networks and man-made ponds and embankments occupy much of the basin, particularly its lower portions.

Keeping track of growing development pressures on the land and natural land use dynamics is a task that is well suited for satellite imaging. The size of the Mekong Basin may favour regular land use surveys from space over more conventional means for reason of cost and timeliness alone. There are several Examples of earth observation satellites capable of providing valuable land use information are Landsat, Aster, Spot, Jers- 1 or Ikonos.

Click on the list of satellites/sensors (lower left-hand menu) to discover how they can be used for this application

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