Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Analysis

The analysis of land-use and land-cover changes is one of the fundamental phases in the design, monitoring and evaluation of agro-environmental interventions at landscape-scale. In the design phase, this analysis is essential to understand the socio-ecological context and the landscape history, to plan the acquisition of qualitative and quantitative data in the field, and to develop scenario and decision support models. In the monitoring and evaluation phase, it is a valuable approach to understand the level of implementation of interventions and their medium to long term effectiveness.
The Laboratory aims to introduce the principles of land-use and land-cover change analysis and its applications in land planning and management, as well as to support students in acquiring practical skills and competencies on the management and processing of geospatial data (remotely sensed and from other sources) to conduct the analysis independently. The class includes the development and the discussion of practical case studies.

At the end of the course, the student will be able to:
1. Evaluate which tools and methods to use for land-use and land-cover analysis according to the objectives of the study.
2. Identify data sources (remote sensing satellite data, geospatial data, literature) to conduct the analyses.
3. Process the data in an open-source GIS environment and/or on cloud platforms such as Google Earth Engine.
4. Interpret and discuss analytical results in relation to their usefulness in spatial planning and development cooperation projects