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Land cover change has become a central component in current strategies for managing natural resources and monitoring environmental changes. The advancement in the concept of vegetation mapping has greatly increased research on land use land cover change. Geographic Information System and Remote Sensing are now providing data for advanced ecosystem management. The collection of remotely sensed data facilitates the synoptic analyses of Earth - system function, patterning, and change at local, regional and global scales over time. Therefore, this book helps to show the application of GIS and remote sensing on land use land cover changes and methods how to document the area coverage and management plan of forests. In recent times, the dynamics of land cover change and particularly settlement and cultivated land expansion in the area requires a more powerful system such as GIS and Remote Sensing data, which provides a general extensive synoptic coverage of large areas than area photography. So that planners and decision makers can have a basic tool for planning and to devise controlling mechanism for the expanding cultivated land and deforestation.

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Efrem Kidane Getahun, MSc: Tropical Land Resources Management at Mekelle University. BSc degree from Mekelle University in the field of Soil and Water Conservation. TSF/EOS project, Area Coordinator, Tigray Region Bureau of Agricultur and Rural Development, Ethiopia.

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