Land Suitability for Afforestation and Nature Conservation Practices Using Remote Sensing & GIS Techniques

Monitoring the locations and distributions of land cover changes is important for establishing linkages between policy decisions, regulatory actions and subsequent land use activities. Given the importance of land cover changes in conservation plans, adequate scenarios and efficient multi temporal remote sensing techniques were desired for implementation in the study area. The study is located at the south western corner of Crete Island, Greece. Two temporal Landsat images acquired in 1984 (Landsat TM-5) and 2006 (Landsat ETM-7) were used to generate Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) change detection map. Visual interpretation of color composite Landsat images is used to obtain suitability map. To keep the concept of sustainability, the involvement of human dimension in landscape multi dimension space is considered. Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) is then implemented to assure to guide the selection of the most satisfactory alternatives. Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) is used for compromising conflicts and to show how two different criteria are diverge or converge according to the analysis. Different suitability maps were produced and the most suitable areas for the two different practices were conducted. Areas less than 1800 m(2) were neglected and the areas with common interest were buffered with 100 m.