Measuring rural settlement expansion in Uzbekistan using remote sensing to support spatial planning

A calibration routine based on indices of segmentation quality enabled the selection of optimal segmentation parameters. After GIS-based refinements of the RF classification results, the overall accuracy (OA) of the building layers of both years exceeded 95%. The OA of the change map was 92.7%. The results revealed that the building area increased by 20%, whilst settlement expansion amounted to 10% in 2006-2011. Settlements widely expanded in accordance with the existing rules prohibiting the conversion of agricultural land to housing areas. Nevertheless, about 20% of the settlement growth occurred on agricultural production areas, also on those with highly productive soils. The results indicated both, the pressure on land resources for settlement growth and - in face of continuous population growth - an increasing demand for comprehensive spatial planning in rural Uzbekistan. The elaborated methodological approach can be extrapolated to regions throughout Central Asia with similar environmental conditions.