Characterizing land use with night-time imagery: the war in Eastern Ukraine (2012–2016)

Abstract

The ongoing military conflict in Eastern Ukraine has resulted in significant land use changes as well as economic shifts particularly in agricultural and industrial activities. The day/night band detectors on-board the Suomi-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite provides an opportunity to assess socio-economic impacts of human conflicts based on physical radiometric measurements. In this study, we show a near 50% decrease in night-time light activity in Donetsk and Luhansk (Donbass Region) from 2012 to 2016. Furthermore, by separating night-time light losses between areas inside official city boundaries and those outside, we illustrate the sensitivity to residential land-use types. A 43.5% of night-time light loss inside cities was attributed to residential areas and 17.5% registered outside of cities. Additionally, this separation showed considerable differences for night-time light losses attributed to industrial land-use types with higher losses occurring in regions outside of cities (36.5%) than regions inside cities (24%). The separation of night-time light losses inside and outside cities reveal considerable discrepancies in night-time light losses showing that considerable activity occurs outside of traditionally targeted urban activities. The results demonstrate night-time light losses are sensitive to proximity to civilian-residential populations, and highlight discrepancies between urban cores and their attached peripheries.

Keywords

• land cover land use change
• remote sensing
• night-lights
• VIIRS
• Earth observation