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Land Cover Mapping in Cable Bay with Sentinel 2 from 2018 to 2024 Zeng, Yuetong

Description

The Cable Bay area, south of Nanaimo, British Columbia, is an ecologically rich region with diverse ecosystems, including rare Garry oak meadows, increasingly threatened by urban expansion. This study mapped and analyzed land cover changes across six classes—Broadleaf, Conifer, Cropland, Developed, Meadow, and Water—from 2018 to 2024. We applied a Random Forest classifier to high-resolution Sentinel-2 imagery within a hybrid Python-R workflow, achieving classification accuracies of 97.0-98.6%. Spatiotemporal analyses, including transition matrices and hotspot detection, revealed a significant decline in Broadleaf forests and a net increase in Developed land. These shifts reflect urbanization’s pressure on natural habitats, threatening biodiversity and ecosystem services. The findings underscore the urgency of conservation efforts and informed land-use planning to preserve Cable Bay’s ecological integrity.

Item Metadata

Title	Land Cover Mapping in Cable Bay with Sentinel 2 from 2018 to 2024
Creator	Zeng, Yuetong
Contributor	Zeng, Yuetong
Date Issued	2025-04-22
Description	The Cable Bay area, south of Nanaimo, British Columbia, is an ecologically rich region with diverse ecosystems, including rare Garry oak meadows, increasingly threatened by urban expansion. This study mapped and analyzed land cover changes across six classes—Broadleaf, Conifer, Cropland, Developed, Meadow, and Water—from 2018 to 2024. We applied a Random Forest classifier to high-resolution Sentinel-2 imagery within a hybrid Python-R workflow, achieving classification accuracies of 97.0-98.6%. Spatiotemporal analyses, including transition matrices and hotspot detection, revealed a significant decline in Broadleaf forests and a net increase in Developed land. These shifts reflect urbanization’s pressure on natural habitats, threatening biodiversity and ecosystem services. The findings underscore the urgency of conservation efforts and informed land-use planning to preserve Cable Bay’s ecological integrity.
Subject	Earth and Environmental Sciences; land cover classification; Sentinel-2 imagery; Random Forest; spatiotemporal analysis; urbanization impact; coastal ecosystems
Geographic Location	Nanaimo; BC
Type	Dataset
Date Available	2025-04-10
Provider	University of British Columbia Library
License	CC-BY 4.0
DOI	10.14288/1.0448479
URI	https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/VAUR28
Publisher DOI	https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/VAUR28
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Country	Canada
Aggregated Source Repository	Dataverse

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CC-BY 4.0