Evaluation Land Use Cover Changes Over 29 Years in Papua Province of Indonesia Using Remote Sensing Data

Land use/cover change (LUCC) observation and determination have been extensively discussed in natural resources management, biodiversity and ecosystem preservation, land management also climate changes studies. An evaluation of the LUCC in Merauke, the easternmost city of Indonesia, was conducted to gain relevant information in agriculture and forestry based on historical data from remotely sensed land cover data. To obtain the historical dynamics of the LUCC, a supervised classification algorithm was implemented to the Landsat images of 1990, 1996, 2009, 2015, and 2019 as well as statistical analysis Wilcoxon signed-rank. This study aims to investigate and analyze the LUCC over a period of 29 years. The results show a significant decline in the forest area by around 7% in 2019. As compared to the LUCC in 1990, agriculture sectors such as dry-land agriculture, shrub-mixed dry land and paddy field gained an area higher than 50%, while the area of the water body is a declined by 0.61 % over the period. The evaluation of LUCC will help government development plans in the protection of commodities in this Province and the promotion for biomass and bioenergy resources.