Monitoring Changes in Ecological Quality of Land Cover Using Landsat-8 OLI Imagery in Semarang City

Abstract

The establishment of industrial and trade areas has implications for economic growth, which is associated with an increase in population and creates larger urban areas. The urban expansion that results from this process will lead to ecological problems such as land degradation, pollution, and other ecological problems. Ecology can be defined as the combination of quality and quantity of ecological elements in the aspects of climate, land, and water that affect humans. Ecology, which can be assessed in terms of quality, is a complex relationship that is linked to social and economic sustainability. This research will assess RSEI-based ecological quality and its influence on land cover in Semarang City in 2013-2023. A total of four indicators, such as NDVI, WET, NDBSI, and LST, are used to assess ecological quality integrated with PCA, as well as land cover data with the acquisition of 9 classes to determine the dynamics of ecological quality on land cover. From this study, it can be seen that (1) the ecological quality in Semarang City in the span of 2013-2023 tends to decrease as evidenced by the mean value of 0.69 for 2013, 0.68 for 2018, and 0.66 for 2023. (2) In the green zone and built-up land zone, the area with stable ecological quality shows a higher value among other statuses, however, in the interval of 2013–2023, the area of degradation exceeds the area of improvement by more than 20%. In the water zone, especially coastal areas that tend to experience turbidity, the status of ecological quality improvement is higher, with the respective proportions of 76.04%, degradation 12.13%, and stable 11.84%.