Landuse Changes Tendency and Environmental Quality Indicators Development for Air and Water Pollutions Monitoring in Chiang Mai Comprehensive Plans Boundary, Thailand

Abstract

Urbanization is a growing process in both developed and developing countries as the proportion of the world’s population is increasing. Land use changes are dynamic process that linked to natural and human systems especially in build-up regimes including Chiang Mai Comprehensive Plans boundary (CMCP) of northern Thailand. Consequently, the measurement of land use transitions and environmental effects are needed and the environmental quality indicator models for air and water pollutions monitoring and implementation for the CMCP boundary were developed for this study. The main objective of this study is to clarify the causal relationship between technocracy urbanization processes within CMCP boundary and their environmental consequents. Accordingly, the research methodology was developed to apply and analyze the results from spatial dynamics simulation of cellular automata models which have been effectively used to predict physical urbanization trends in correlation with environmental quality indicators development which is also hypothesized to be effective co-technique in order to understand the spatial dynamics impact from urbanized area of interested. The study result showed a tendency of CMCP urban growth to increase over time. The environmental indicators conclusive prediction trends from this study during 2000 to 2030 inform long-term deteriorate environmental qualities of air, water, and landuse changes while seasonal patterns revealed diverse characteristic for each indicator. The future aspect from this study is to enable the city’s administrators to implement the model as additional reference in decision making which are anticipated toward sustainable patterns of the CMCP environmental monitoring and enhancement strategies.