Land cover change in Tashkent province during 1992 – 2018

Abstract

Abstract In this research, a specific period in time (from 1992 – 2018) with 8 -10 years’ timescales of Landsat satellite images were used for land cover classification. To detect land cover change combined classification method with clustering study area into 120 classes and further validation by Google Earth was performed. Our findings show significant land cover changes during the whole study period. Especially this related to grassland/scrubland/meadow/agriculture class, which was around 7000 km2 in 1992, and it dramatically fell to 3000 km2 in 2008 and reached 6000 km2 after ten years. Forest/parks/woodlands land cover class shows a tendency to increase and consisted of its maximum area 4000 km2, but then rapidly fell to 1600 km2 within the next ten years. Glaciers, in contrast, covered area of 1825 km2, but then starts steadily decline and finally reaches only 263 km2 in 2018. Bare soil and barren land starts from 3111 km2 and expands to 5640 km2 area in 2018. The same pattern shows urban/asphalt/rocks class started from 1089 km2 and ends with 2677 km2. Only water bodies do not represent any significant change in Tashkent province during the study period.