Abstract:
Expansion of urbanization into agricultural and mangrove areas in Bangkhuntien district has not onlycaused a decrease of those areas but also a deterioration of the environment. The goal of this study was to establish a spatial database and monitor landuse changes between 1967 and 2001, as well as water quality between 1997 and 2001, by using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS).Four databases, including landuse maps obtained from Arial photographs, IRS1C satellite image,topographic maps and ground survey data, were processed and analyzed using SPANS GIS softwareand then used to detect landuse changes through matrix overlay techniques. The study found thatbetween 1967 and 2001 all paddy fields, which comprised 54% of the study area in 1967, had beenchanged into : miscellaneous lands (37.1%), fisheries (34.4%), orchard and horticulture (15.0%), urbanand builtup land (11.4%), industrial land (1.4%) and nypa forest (0.4%). Industrial lands increasedfrom zero in 1967 to 0.83 sq.km. in 1997 and 2.88 sq.km. in 2001 which represented 0.7% and 2.4%respectively of the total study area. The 2.88 sq.km. of industrial lands came from : paddy field (37.5%), fisheries (30.9%), urban and builtup land (9.7%), miscellaneous land (9.0%), orchard and horticulture (7.3%) and nypa forest (5.6%). From 1967 to 2001 the mangrove area has decreased continuously at a rate of 1.8% per year to the current area of 1.29 sq.km., 39.3% of the original mangrove area. This study shows that of 86.4% of total lost mangroves were changed to fisheries and 13.6% were transformed to coastline by natural disasters. Water quality evaluation using Water Quality Index (WQI), combined with GIS, found that between 1997 and 2001 water quality of canals in Bangkhuntien district tended to decrease due to contamination of coliform bacteria and heavy metals. In 2002 the quality of water in the Yai Phean, Bangkadee and Cheang Ta Pae canals, and the canals in between, was very bad and corresponded to class 5 of the surface water quality standard of the Ministry of Science Technology and Environmental (1992). The important factors affecting the water quality in this district might be landuse / cover in terms of residential and industrial areas.