High Temporal Resolution Land Use/Land Cover Change from 1984 to 2010 of the Little River Watershed, Tennessee, Investigated Using Landsat and Google Earth Images

The Little River Watershed (LRW) in Tennessee experienced rapid land use/land cover (LULC) change in recent decades. However, a detailed long-term record of LULC change is still lacking. Here, we examined the pattern of LULC change from 1984 to 2010 in a roughly 2-year interval using the Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) of Landsat TM/ETM+ images. The accuracy of the classification was assessed by comparing classified LULC classes with their corresponding classes identified from Google Earth high resolution imagery (representing “ground reference data”). Change detection of classified LULC maps indicated that urban areas (residential and commercial lands) and forest increased in 1984–2010 from 6.3 percent to 11.1 percent and from 65.0 percent to 69.5 percent, respectively. In contrast, agricultural land decreased from 28.3 percent to 18.9 percent. This detailed long-term record of LULC change would provide valuable information for local land-use planning and management in assessing the potential impacts of LULC change in this critical watershed.