Applying Google Earth Engine for geospatial analysis of land use/land cover change in Can Gio district, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

As a gateway of Ho Chi Minh City to the sea, Can Gio district plays an important role in economy, society, defense, environment and international integration with a famous Can Gio biosphere reserve forest area. In the coming time, Can Gio district will have many large national projects. The development of Can Gio will also be associated with tasks and solutions to protect the biosphere. Therefore, monitoring land use/land cover (LULC) changes contributes to support sustainable Can Gio planning. In this study, multi-temporal Landsat satellite image data was used to extract land use information by Google Earth Engine (GEE). At the same time, the Geographic Information System (GIS) method was also used to process data layers and calculate LULC changes in 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2024. Research results showed that, from 1990 to 2024, the bare land or wasteland in Can Gio has been effectively converted. That had increased the area of land types such as: forest, residental- contructional and aquacultural land. Because of the forest restoration and forest protection policies of Government, local officials, youth volunteers and residents, the area of mangrove forest had been increased in Can Gio (1.8 times with 15,441 ha). Besides, the increase of population and economic development led increasing residental and constructional land areas (4.2 times with 875 ha). Study results also showed that GEE geospatial processing service is a useful solution for LULC analysis on a large scale such as Can Gio district. It contributes to quickly and effectively support the supervision of local authority in master planning, land use planning… where comprehensive and sustainable development is needed.