REMOTE SENSING FOR ESTIMATING AGRICULTURAL LAND USE CHANGE AS THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Agricultural land use conversion is inevitable to meet the needs of growing population, together with climate change issue which has become global concern. This research aims at investigating the impact of climate change on agriculture by identifying land use conversion in part of Central Java, Indonesia, namely Tegal District. Research was carried out in August 2014 until March 2015. This is a survey research with explorative descriptive method, data processing using ENVI 4.5. and ArcGIS 10.1. The satellite image of Landsat was analyzed by determining and comparing the land use changes of the last 20 years, then the interview data with farmers was analyzed using logistic regression. The results showed that many lands converted into settlement, with increasing rate in 2003-2014 was almost twice than 1994-2003, while the reduce of irrigation rice field lands are lower in the period of 2003-2014 than 1994-2003. It is presumed that the factors encourage irrigation rice field land conversion are erratic rainfall, floods in the 1990s, and water lack in the 2000s. This paper discusses briefly about agricultural land use conversion as the impact of the past and current climate variability on farm land.