Quantitative assessment of urbanization and impacts in the complex of Huế Monuments, Vietnam

• Published in: Applied geography (Sevenoaks) 2019-11, Vol.112, p.102096, Article 102096
• Main Authors: Pham, Van-Manh, Van Nghiem, Son, Bui, Quang-Thanh, Pham, Tam Minh, Van Pham, Cu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Complex of Huế Monuments; Ecosystem services; Environmental impact; Historical monuments; Land cover and land use; Object classification; Remote sensing; Support vector machine; Urbanization; Vietnam
• ISSN: 0143-6228; 1873-7730
• DOI: 10.1016/j.apgeog.2019.102096

Rapid and extensive urban changes in recent decades have inflicted a multitude of challenges in land-use planning and conservation management, especially for the heritage protection of historic areas. This paper describes the results of an integrated approach to analyzing the potential environmental impacts of urbanization that has profoundly transformed land cover and land -use in Vietnam. A combination of remote-sensing techniques and ancillary indices enables a quantitative evaluation of urbanization impacts on 12 sites in the Complex of Huế Monuments, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, from 1968 to 2016. This approach includes classifying satellite images, analyzing urbanization characteristics with land-cover and land-use change and urbanization indices, and quantifying environmental impacts by ecosystem service values. Object-based classification results indicate that the support vector machine algorithm achieves an optimum overall accuracy of 84.78–86.5% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.82–0.84. Quantitative results of the total absolute loss value reveal the largest negative effect at Huế Citadel and the most positive at Tự Đức Tomb, with the overall consequence of urbanization being predominantly negative for the whole complex. The adverse impacts are found primarily from the degradation of agriculture and green space. The negative total loss value also serves as a quantification of impacts from increased urbanization on human well-being. This integrated methodology can be a potentially effective tool to plan for sustainable development in the continual trend toward further urbanization in Vietnam. •Urbanization over 48 years in the Complex of Huế Monuments regions is studied.•Land cover and land use changes, urban growth, and environmental impacts are investigated.•Ecosystem services and urbanization indices from remote-sensing data.•Quantify urbanization impacts on the Huế historical monuments.•Rapid urbanization degrades green spaces have during the entire period.