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Research on the effect of urban expansion on agricultural land in Ho Chi Minh

City by using remote sensing method

Article · January 2008

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VNU Journal of Science, Earth Sciences 24 (2008) 104‐111

Research on the effect of urban expansion on agricultural

land in Ho Chi Minh City by using remote sensing method
Tran Thi Van*

Institute for Environment and Resources, VNU‐HCMC

Received 11 April 2008; received in revised form 13 July 2008

Abstract. Ho Chi Minh City is a one of the biggest cities of Vietnam. Before 1945, there were about
400,000 inhabitants living in the city. During the last two decades, it became the biggest industrial
and commercial center of the country. According to the statistics in 2005, its population was about
6.2 million people. In the suburban areas of the city, particularly in the northern part, agricultural
activities produce the main income of these local residents. Within the last 15 years, due to
urbanization and emigration from other provinces, the population explosion became a serious
problem. The conversion of agricultural land into residential areas has increased more and more,
causing the change of land‐use structure. This paper describes the capability of remote sensing for
detecting and analyzing spatial changes as well as quantifying results to show the urban growth
process, and its impact on the land‐use distribution in the northern part of Ho Chi Minh City.

Keywords: Agricultural land; GIS; Remote sensing; Suburban; Urban expansion.

1. Introduction* result, an extreme stress to the environment

has occurred. This is particularly true in Ho
Over the world, the cities cover only Chi Minh City where agricultural land has
about one percent of the earth’s surface, but been gradually disappearing each year,
most of the issues happening in the cities converted into urban or related uses.
greatly impact on the environment and global Furthermore, because of the lack of
change [7]. Urbanization leads to urban appropriate land use planning and the
spatial expansion due to the demand for measures for sustainable development,
development and housing growth, as well as rampant urban growth is creating severe
facilities areas to serve human life. environmental consequences.
In Vietnam, land use and land cover Although Ho Chi Minh City has a history
patterns have undergone a fundamental of establishment and development over 300
change due to rapid economic development years, urbanization has just started from few
under its reformative economic policies. last decades. Industry began to play an
Urban growth has been speeding up; as a important role merely in 1960 – 1970 years
[6], and then some urbanized regions were
_______ obviously on the rise. However, the war had
* Tel.: 84‐8‐8651132.
E‐mail: [email protected] caused the constrained situation of

104
 Tran Thi Van / VNU Journal of Science, Earth Sciences 24 (2008) 104‐111 105

urbanization with the great concentration of change detection and database development.
huge population, while the industry slowly Remote sensing technology can acquire on
developed and living standard was still low. the ground objects without touching them.
From the end of the 1980s, Ho Chi Minh City Satellite remote sensing collects multi‐
has really entered into the period of spectral, multi‐resolution and multi‐temporal
urbanization and was speeded up by data and turns them into valuable
industrialization with fairly strong progress [6]. information for understanding and
Agriculture and rural areas belong to monitoring urban land processes and for
general socio‐economic structure of Ho Chi building urban land cover datasets [8].
Minh City with their advantages of Especially, it is useful to consider the
geographical location exist as a suburban of historical development of a region. This study
the big scientific, technological, industrial and uses the Landsat TM and ETM+ to extract the
commercial city. The city has taken full built‐up land in the city and evaluate the
advantages of location, exploited strength of change of agricultural land under
industry, service, science and technology to urbanization in Ho Chi Minh City.
serve the development of agriculture and
rural areas. In recent years, due to the
requirements of city expansion, a part of 2. The study area
suburban agricultural land was urbanized.
According to developing strategy for a Ho Chi Minh City has a very favorable
civilized, modern and environmental geographical location in the centre of the rich
sustainable city, suburban agriculture has Southern region with many resources. The
intended to transform into ecological and city has the common administrative
high‐tech agriculture. boundary with Long An, Tay Ninh, Binh
If the urban and urbanization issues had Duong, Dong Nai, and Ba Ria – Vung Tau
been studied for a long time in the world and provinces. Its natural surface area is about
then still have been continued to study, in 209,502ha, among them 45% is the
Vietnam this problem merely is on research agricultural land. The land of the city is
focus from the middle of 90s [2]. The formed by old and recent alluvions, having
monitoring of temporal and spatial changing poor fertility of soil, not suitable for
issues in urban is usefull for managers and development of annual crop production [5].
planners to draw up a strategy for urban For historical conditions, Ho Chi Minh
suitable development. Traditional methods City was formerly a kind of monocentric city.
requiring extensive labour do not bring the Before 1975, activities of economy, finance,
effectiveness in the regional scale because of culture, education, commerce were mainly
high cost of field measurements. Remote concentrated in District 1, 3 and a part of
sensing and geographic information systems District 5. Ho Chi Minh City has the fairly
(GIS) has been widely applied and has been rapid speed of urbanization. According to
recognized as a powerful and effective tool in statistics, the population density has
detecting urban land use and land cover increased from 552 people/km2 in 1985 to
change [4]. GIS technology provides a flexible 2,601 people/km2 in 2002 (in urban areas
environment for entering, analyzing and about 10,076 people/km2, in rural areas about
displaying digital data from various sources. 602 people/km2). Non‐agricultural population
It is necessary to identify urban features for rate has significantly increased from 83.3% in
106 Tran Thi Van / VNU Journal of Science, Earth Sciences 24 (2008) 104‐111

1985 to 95.2% in 2002. The population growth data (satellite images), along with fields check
causing population overload in the city has and existing maps. Land cover patterns for
been shown not only by the natural increase 1989 and 2002 were mapped by using
on the spot, but also by the mechanical Landsat TM and ETM data (Dates: 16 January
movement from other provinces. 1989 and 13 February 2002). Five types of
As a result, there is an indispensable need land cover are identified and used in this
to improve, expand and develop the old study, including: urban, agricultural land,
urban areas in this situation. In addition, the bare land, shrub/grass land and water.
city sometimes has not controlled unplanned As the first step, the data pre‐processing
constructions and urban encroaching was initiated for two images. The images
expansion on suburban agricultural land in were geometrically rectified and registered to
the northern part. Therefore, the study area is the same map projection to lay them over
focused on this part. This is a region with a each other for change detection. The image
lot of advantageous conditions for registration was carefully carried out with the
developing infrastructure for residential, RMS errors less than 0.3 pixel to guarantee
commercial and industrial areas. Here is the the two coincident images. Due to lack of
place where the urbanization process is atmospheric measures during image
happening fairly strong in the recent years acquisition, the atmospheric correction was
(Fig. 1). ignored. However, these images were
acquired in dry season (in January and
February) in the study area, so they appeared
very clear and cloud free. In this context, the
atmospheric effects on these images were not
significant.
In order to obtain a high accuracy for the
interpretation results, we selected the training
samples for each group of specific object. For
each group (e.g. water) some types of sample
were selected by the spectral signatures in the
images (e.g. water 1, water 2, etc.). The
Maximum Likelihood Classification was
carried out for each image. After testing
Study area several times to carrying out the classification
as well as adding samples for achieving
higher accuracy, the final results were
accepted. Further activity is the post‐
classification to group the fragmentary results
in five main types of land cover as initial
Fig. 1. The study area.
determination. The confusion matrix was
calculated for the study area after masking
3. Methodology the unnecessary outside. The overall accuracy
was about 88% for the year of 1989, and 86%
This study was based on remotely sensed for 2002. Then, for analyzing the nature, rate
 Tran Thi Van / VNU Journal of Science, Earth Sciences 24 (2008) 104‐111 107

and location of urban expansion in compared abundant employment opportunities caused

with loss of agricultural land; an image of influx of labor immigration. According to
urban‐residential area was extracted from general demographic investigation to 1st
each original land cover image. April 2004, Ho Chi Minh City had 1.8
The urban expansion image was further millions immigrants in the population total of
overlaid with some geographic reference 6.11 millions. Local increase of population
images to analyze the patterns of urban plus immigrants made the city become too
expansion, including image of district stuffy. According to statistics, the urban
boundary, major roads. population has increased 2 times from 1990 to
2005. The population density in urban
districts in 2005 was reported around 10,608
4. Results and discusions people per square kilometers [1]. Due to
housing demand and city development,
4.1. Urban expansion during the period of 1989‐2002 agriculture land was transformed into land
for houses, roads, industrial and commercial
The research results showed that areas.
population explosion was the main cause of From the source of the Department of
urban expansion. Ho Chi Minh City is the Natural Resources and Environment, the
biggest industrial and commercial center of main land use structure in Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnam. The high economic growth and is shown in Table 1 and Fig. 2.

Table 1. Main land use structure in Ho Chi Minh City over years

Land use / Year 1995 (ha) 2000 (ha) 2005 (ha) 1995 (%) 2000 (%) 2005 (%)
Total 209,376.00 209,502.00 209,554.00 100 100 100
Built‐up land 31,196.34 38,571.07 50,523.72 14.90 18.41 24.11
Agricultural land 100,366.37 97,247.78 89,659.21 47.94 46.42 42.79
Forest 34,657.58 33,472.15 33,857.86 16.55 15.98 16.16
Water 34,153.02 34,011.29 33,250.02 16.31 16.23 15.87
Unused land 9,002.96 6,199.54 2,263.67 4.30 2.96 1.08

12

10

8
Area (ha)
6

0
Built-up land Agricultural Forest Water Unused land
land
1995 2000 2005

Fig. 2. The changes between built‐up land and agricultural land from 1995 to 2005 by statistics.
108 Tran Thi Van / VNU Journal of Science, Earth Sciences 24 (2008) 104‐111

Over the whole city, the land North, West and East of the city and along
transformation was realized mainly in the the mainroads.
northern part of the city as shown by the Result of Landsat image interpretation
results from remote sensing data. Fig. 3 shows that during 13 years, from 1989 to
shows that the dense settlement presented a 2002, agricultural land was decreased by
rapid expansion and concentrated in urban 39,329 ha, among which 6,045 ha were
districts and along the main roads in the changed to urban residental land, and 23,065
suburban areas, where the agricultural land ha appeared as bare land since the local
yielded to property development Although farmers sold their lands. They will be used
built‐up areas have increased in all for future built‐up purposes (see Table 2).
directions, it was mainly concentrated in the

1989 2002

Fig. 3. Results of urban expansion in the northern part of Ho Chi Minh City
in 1989 and 2002 from remotely sensed data.

Table 2. Land use transformation from 1989 to 2002 in the northern part of Ho Chi Minh City (ha)

Agricultural Shrub / grass Row total

Urban Water Bare land Class total
Land land (2002)
Urban 5,150.88 6,045.48 687.96 84.15 892.26 12,860.73 12,860.73
Agricultural land 393.93 52,577.37 2,200.86 1,550.52 17,276.22 73,998.90 74,060.10
Water 98.82 1,556.01 5,297.04 18.99 982.62 7,953.48 7,963.02
Bare land 851.76 23,065.65 351.45 1,120.59 3,378.15 28,767.60 28,767.78
Shrub / grass land 81.63 8,661.87 310.23 69.30 9,584.10 18,707.13 18,731.16
Class total (1989) 6,577.02 91,906.38 8,847.54 2,843.55 32,113.35
Class changes 1,426.14 39,329.01 3,550.50 1,722.96 22,529.25
Image difference 6,283.71 (17,846.28) (884.52) 25,924.23 (13,382.19)
 Tran Thi Van / VNU Journal of Science, Earth Sciences 24 (2008) 104‐111 109

By history, due to intensive urbanization general demand of city development through

in the suburban districts, such as Tan Binh, different stages with mission of supplying
Go Vap, Binh Thanh and District 8, residental fresh foods and a part of raw materials for
land becomes more and more cramped. industrial processing. Nowadays, rural areas
Under the force of circumstances, some have been charged with production of high‐
suburban areas were changed into five new economic‐value agricultural goods,
urban districts from 1997. Districts 2, 9 and accommodated market and export. In recent
Thu Duc have been divided from Thu Duc years, due to the needs of expansion of the
suburban district; District 7 from a part of city, a part of suburban agricultural land has
Nha Be and District 12 from a part of Hoc been urbanized. Suburban agriculture has a
Mon. Beside that, the development of the new tendency to transform into ecological and
urban areas such as Nam Sai Gon helped to high‐tech agriculture, according to
extend Ho Chi Minh City in all directions. developing strategy of a civilized, modern
As it is shown by the analysis of remote and environmental sustainable city.
sensing data in 1989 and 2002, the built‐up However, due to uncontrollably rapid
land increased most in districts Tan Binh, Go urban expansion in the year’s 1990, loss of
Vap, Binh Thanh and District 8, where the agricultural land in rural areas has made a
population is densely located (see Table 3). change of the unplanned city. Agricultural
land in Ho Chi Minh City is not only limited
Table 3. Built‐up land increase with population in the size but also is poor on quality due to
the alum‐salted effect plus unfavourable
District Increased Increased Increased
area in population population
conditions on topography and water. This has
built‐up total per km2 influenced land exploitation potential on
land (km2) goods orientation. As consequence, the
Tan Binh 20.34 324,904 14,517.61 effectiveness of agricultural land use in
Go Vap 13.49 205,656 10,418.24 suburban areas has a lower level in
Binh Thanh 11.07 83,864 4,039.69
comparison to the whole country. In addition,
District 8 8.25 88,423 4,610.17
the average norm of agricultural land
The change of agricultural land has distribution for each household was very low:
happened in the areas with available 0.32 ha per household, just equal 2/3 of the
infrastructure, near main roads, in the average norm of the South‐East Region and
gateway areas of the city, especially in the equal 1/3 of the Mekong Delta. This situation
areas planned for residential, industrial, is a pressure on suburban farmers in keeping
commercial zones. agricultural production [6].
According to the investigation of Institute
4.2. Effect of loss of agricultural land due to urban of Economic Research in June 1996, the
expansion number of farmers owned the crop land was
decreased by 23% compared with the total
Agricultural activities in suburban areas land in urbanized areas [6]. Due to the above
belong to general socio‐economic structure of limitations, plus the impacts of urbanization,
Ho Chi Minh City. From the Day of these farmers would not hesitate to sell land
Liberation in 1975, agricultural fields as the in order to make capital for another type of
city’s green belt have been changed on investment. They hoped for higher profits or
110 Tran Thi Van / VNU Journal of Science, Earth Sciences 24 (2008) 104‐111

improvement their life in the short term. As a directions, but it was mainly concentrated in
result, this circumstance caused the rapid the North, West and East of the city and
reduction of agricultural land. Most of the along the main roads. In the upcoming years,
yielded land has been changed into the urban due to trend of expansion, Ho Chi Minh City
uses. A lot of new urban areas has rose for will become a special urban with population
satisfaction of housing demand from more than 10 millions by 2010 year [3]. Urban
population explosion. This made the city expansion supplied conditions to disperse the
facing problems of ecological unbalance and habitants from excessive concentrated areas
loss of traditional agricultural villages. of inner city districts. However, the
Typically, Go Vap floricultural village was uncontrolled sale of agricultural land makes
disappeared, now a few points of decorative difficulty in land management under
plant trade exist as the reminder of this sustainable development
tradition. Low land areas cultivating wet rice In the future, it is required a huge amount
(such as in District 2) naturally were places of investment to improve the productivity
for balance of the drainage, but constructing and effectiveness of agriculture in the
and concretization process made flow to situation of less remained agricultural areas
convergent narrow sewerages; or the altitude with bad fertility plus unfavourable
raise of new urban areas caused conditions on topography and water
concentration of water flow in lower old resources. Finally, although urban expansion
urban areas and instant inundation was cannot be stopped, with proper management
unavoidably happening in the city centers. and planning it can be directed in a desirable
However, it is worth to mention that after and sustainable way, protecting fertile
land selling, the situation of fallowing agricultural land and ecological areas,
agricultural land has becomes widespread in creating green belt for the city.
suburban districts. This causes the prodigality
in land use of the city.
Acknowledgements

5. Conclusions This paper was completed within the

framework of Fundamental Research Project
In this study, remote sensing and GIS 719706 funded by Vietnam Ministry of
method was developed for evaluation of Science and Technology.
rapid urban expansion and loss of
agricultural land. Results revealed a notable
increase in urban land cover between 1989 References
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 Tran Thi Van / VNU Journal of Science, Earth Sciences 24 (2008) 104‐111 111

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