Cropland information system in Mongolia using Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System: Case study in Tsagaannuur, Selenge aimag

Remote sensing and geographic information system technologies have been of great use to planners in planning for efficient use of natural resources at national, regional and sub regional levels. The role of space geoinformatics in finding new resources for agriculture development for optimally managing the already available resources in order to maximize agriculture production is recognized world wide and is found to be highly potential. We compare estimates of sub provincial cropland area of Tsagaannuur in Mongolia from cropland cover maps derived from remote sensing data. The objectives of this study to develop crop land information system; and monitor in the crop land cover changes in the Tsagaannuur, Selenge aimag as there is important agricultural producing area in Mongolia. In this study, maximum likelihood supervised classification methodology was applied to Landsat TM and ETM images acquired in 1989 and 2000, respectively supplemented by fieldwork and use of other existing data. A supervised classification was carried out on the six reflective bands (bands 15 and band 7). Cropland use change detection has shown that the cropland area decreased between 1989 and 2000 by 13.4 percent from 521377 pixels to 451724 pixels. From this, land cover and farmland maps at 1:10,000 with attribute data were prepared in this area.