A land cover monitoring system for Cambodia: preliminary results

A monitoring system using coarse satellite data integrated into a geographic information system (GIS) has been developed to assess the land cover change in Cambodia. The present case study focuses on the assessment of land cover variables involving the issues of deforestation, slash and burn practices and variation in water levels of the Tonle Sap lake. The baseline of the monitoring is defined from the comparison of the existing maps. The NOAA AVHRR data provide the information on an annual basis for the vegetation variable and every two months for the water-level variable. The main mapping outputs are an updated version of the evergreen forest map and the map of the burnt areas of Cambodia. Valuable information has also been found at the seasonal and annual scale of the water-level change of the Tonle Sap