Land Cover Change in Three Selected Areas under Direct Influence of the “egnatia” Highway, in Greece

The Egnatia highway, a modern closed motorway 670 kilometres long, is one of the largest road construction projects in Europe, running across Northern Greece. In order to record and analyze the spatial and environmental effects that inevitably the Egnatia highway has caused to its surroundings, the need for effective and efficient integration of land cover dynamic information is becoming more and more essential. Facing this need, this project aims at the analysis of multi-temporal spaceborne images for the detection of land cover changes in selected areas under direct influence of the Egnatia highway. This is accomplished with the estimation of two specific impact indicators, in order to assess the interaction between the Egnatia road axis and the developmental procedure and physical planning in its impact area. The first indicator monitors the pressure for land use changes that have occurred over the decade 1998-2007, and the second monitors the changes in residential areas for the same period of time. The data used are for the base year 1998: three multispectral orthoimages SPOT, with spatial analysis 20 m, and for the check year 2007: three synthetic images IKONOS, with spatial analysis 1 m. The images mentioned above depict the region of three junctions of “Egnatia” highway. With the intention to estimate the indicators mentioned above, a change detection method is applied and thematic maps are produced, portraying land use variations for the areas of interest.