The effects of land use change and climate change on water resources in the eastern region of Thailand

Abstract

Thailand changed the paradigm of development from agricultural to industrialization in the Eastern Seaboard Development Programme was first introduced under the Fifth National Plan: 1982-6. Rapid industrialization development processes to achieve this affluence as a result to the change of land use pattern and utility in the area, as well as the growth in water demand, conflicts in using water is emerged. There are few studies explicitly account for interactive effects of land use and climate change on water resource and its challenge in this area. The degree and depiction to which land use change and climate change affects to water resources, key challenges to the eastern region of Thailand, are indicated and summarised. In this paper, the effects of land use and climate change are explored by using the simplified normalized difference vegetation index method, which the special analysis are particularized by Remote Sensing (RS) on the visible (band 5, 6 and 4) and thermalinfrared (TIR) channel (band 10) that located in the Landsat-8 Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor and Geographic Information System (GIS), based on data in 2011 to 2016. The result demonstratie significant increasing trends in temperature and change of land use cover and utility in the eastern. Data from year 1998 to 2016 show land use change pattern by the decreasing of agricultural area (64.87 % to 64.76 %) whereas there are increasing of building area/urban (6.68 % to 7.61%), water area (2.81 to 2.87 %). The change of Land use types effected to land surface temperature (LST) and water resources and rainfalls, an average LST of the eastern between 2011 and 2016 is about 28.51 and 29.27 °C. However, the hotspot of LST has its maximum during 38.1-56 °C that located in some areas by midApril in many eastern provinces mostly in some part of urban and industrial area. In sum, the eastern of Thailand is affected by land use change and climate change, including higher surface temperatures, floods, and droughts. The consequences of its effects will have enormous impact to environmental of the area (air, water), agriculture, forest, economic, and social.