Survey on Land Use/Land Cover (LU/LC) change analysis in remote sensing and GIS environment: Techniques and...

The surface of the earth is rapidly changing every day due to certain natural reasons and other impacts by society. Over the last few decades, the hottest topics in the field of remote sensing and GIS (geographic information system) environments have evolved from observing the nature of the earth. Owing to the enlargement of several worldwide modifications related to the nature of the earth, land use/land cover (LU/LC) change is considered as the matter of utmost importance in the natural atmosphere, and it has also become an interesting area to be studied by the researchers. As there is a lack of review articles in the land use/land cover change analysis process, we presented a comprehensive review which may help the researchers to proceed further. This paper deals with the most frequent methods used by researchers on various processes like pre-processing, classification, and prediction of time series satellite images for analyzing the LU/LC changes using satellite images. The generic flow of the LU/LC change analysis process and the challenges faced during each process by the researchers are discussed. Varied resolutions of the environmental image captured by remote sensing satellites for analyzing the LU/LC changes are discussed. Various LU/LC classes depending on change in the earth's surface are also studied and the constraint used in each application is stated. The importance of this review lies in the motivation for future researchers to work on the LU/LC change analysis problem effectively.