@phdthesis{Antwi2009, author = {Antwi, Effah Kwabena}, title = {Integrating GIS and remote sensing for assessing the impact of disturbance on habitat diversity and land cover change in a post-mining landscape}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:co1-opus-7825}, school = {BTU Cottbus - Senftenberg}, year = {2009}, abstract = {Human influence on the biosphere has transformed natural land cover (LC) into modified LC. Shifting focus from individual species study to large-scale assessment is therefore needed to restore the damaged ecosystem. The hypotheses were: (a) the post-mining landscapes are getting more diverse over time (b) GIS, remote sensing and patch analyst can generate LC information and landscape characterization statistics for assessing habitat diversity and monitoring land cover change (LCC) in a disturbance-dominated area (c) relationship exist between habitat diversity and field based species richness/LCC and environmental conditions/LCC and biodiversity losses. The general aims of this research were (a) to assess the impact of disturbance on LCC and habitat diversity (b) to identify how accurately patterns of habitat diversity, complexity, fragmentation, primary production and LCC can be assessed or predicted with GIS and remotely sensed data. LC maps of 1988, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2003 were produced from LANDSAT TM images of Schlabendorf Nord and Schlabendorf S{\"u}d. These images were used to survey the changing landscape. After classifying the images based on dominant land cover types, the area and perimeter of all patches were defined. Landscape characterization metrics were generated using patch analyst. LCC statistics were estimated for each LC map year. Change detection extension was used to identify changes among vegetation or land cover types into "negative change", "no change" and "positive change". DCA ordination technique (CANOCO) was used to study similarity among the distribution of land cover types. Other relevant analysis made include soil pH analysis and climate data evaluation. The outcome of the research shows that the process of LCC takes place at the interface between environmental and human systems. Land cover transformations in most cases in Schlabendorf were as a result of progressive and reversed plant succession. Overall changes in both landscapes showed increased area of pine afforestation, deciduous trees afforestation, lake and mixed grassland with trees. The LCC s were predominantly caused by harvesting of afforested pine, restoration related construction activities or other land cover management practices, reverse succession, low soil pH especially along the path of the mine strip, loss of soil fertility, human decisions and policies. There was increase in habitat richness, heterogeneity, fragmentation, and shape complexity due to decrease in habitat size, increased land use intensity etc. Lower habitat diversity in Schlabendorf S{\"u}d was due to the comparatively large landscape area, high patch number and higher habitat richness in most cases which confirms the claim that relationship between habitat diversity and habitat heterogeneity varies according to scale (Tews et al., 2004). Increase in biomass accumulation particularly in Schlabendorf S{\"u}d contributed to the exchanges for greenhouse gases between the forest cover, soil and the atmosphere, hence changing the climatic condition on terrestrial ecosystems, biodiversity and LCC. Unlike Schlabendorf Nord, Schlabendorf S{\"u}d still undergoes more active reclamation activities resulting in less similarity between the two post-mining landscapes over time. Within a given ecosystem, any change in habitat diversity can change the number of species in the resulting habitats types, in other words habitat diversity can be used to predict the species richness in a given ecosystem. The approach to this work provides a beneficial trade off between expensive ground vegetation or LCC survey and low-priced image processing analysis. It requires less manpower and less time but greatly reliable for assessing LCC, habitat diversity/richness and heterogeneity in large inaccessible areas such as dunes in post-mining landscape.}, subject = {Landschaftsbewertung; Landschaftsanalyse; Fernerkundung; Geoinformationssystem; GIS; Fernerkundung; Landschaft; Fragmentierung; Reklamation; GIS; Remote sensing; Landscape; Fragmentation; Reclamation}, language = {en} }