Asian countries have experienced rapid population growth and continue to grow. In response to the growth the people have tried to expand agricultural land although the resources such as land and water were limited. Then, serious environmental problems have occured in those regions. Fore establishing a sound environmental management system understanding the charcateristics of land use change will be in dispensable. In this study, we examined the change of vegetation cover in Central Luzon. the Philippines using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index information for 1982-2000 produced by NOAA/NASA Pathfinder AVHRR Land Program. The Landsat 7 satellite image of 2002/03/18 and Landsat satellite image of 1989/01/09 were also used to study the land use change. For both images, unsupervised classification was implemented and whole area was classified into 30 classes. Using the land use maps and photographs, 30 30 classes were integrated to 4 land cover types; water area, built-up area, grassland and forest, then two mapswere compared to each other. The results of both examinations indicated that deforestation happened intensively around rivers and streams. The study on the land use change revealed that agricultural development occured in the area where the land was steeper than the old agricultural land. Those findings mean that the establishement of a strategy for water resource management is strongly needed for the region.
