Analysis of urban land use change in the Las Vegas metropolitan area using multi-temporal satellite imagery

Urban development has expanded rapidly in Las Vegas, Nevada, over the last fifty years. To assess urban land use change in the area, a sub-pixel change detection approach has been used to map urban extent and its temporal changes by determining sub-pixel level impervious surface areas from Landsat satellite remote sensing data in conjunction with digital orthophotography. Sub-pixel percentages of imperviousness are mapped from the 1980s to the 2000s for the Las Vegas metropolitan area using a regression tree model. The spatial-temporal distribution of vegetation in the urban area has also been quantified using the same approach. Analysis suggests that spatial and temporal changes in impervious surface are useful indicators of spatial extent, intensity, and potentially, the types of urban land cover and land use change. Results indicate that areas of 40–60% imperviousness have experienced the largest increase in Las Vegas, suggesting that areas of medium to high development density areas represent the major urban land uses in the region. Urban area fractional vegetation cover has the highest coverage in medium-density urban areas of Las Vegas.