Kalemie is a small city on the shore of Lake Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in central Africa. It is located approximately 300 kilometers south of Rwanda. In the mid-1990’s, several large conflicts broke out in the DRC, started mostly by the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Due to its geographic location and resources available, Kalemie became heavily involved in the conflict. This study aims to analyze how the forest and urbanization has changed in Kalemie and the surrounding areas throughout the conflicts between 1994 and 2003 using historical Landsat imagery. Introduction Datasets and software platforms used Outputs Methodology Based on literature reviewed, data trends found in change detection and class statistics reflect the changing patterns of land cover one would expect to observe in a conflict area. There is a clear increase in urbanization shown at the time of the Rwandan Genocide, during which thousands of refugees flooded into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is to be expected, as the city of Kalemie is near the border with Rwanda. This increase in urbanization – and population – is accompanied by a decrease in forest cover, likely due to the increased agricultural needs of the growing population. [1] As the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo began in 1996, urbanization slowed, and began to fall, as Kalemie became a source of refugees. The forest began some regrowth from the decreased agricultural requirements, although its peak would come after the eventual end of the conflict. As the conflict wound down, the urban cover of the city began to slowly increase, a trend that continued until the end of the study period. [2] While the city of Kalemie was largely free of clouds, surrounding areas were not. Masking techniques using the FMASK band provided by USGS allowed for some improvement, however this resulted in some misclassification and representation of non-urban land cover being artificially lowered in some years. References [1] Baumann, M., Radeloff, V. C., Avedian, V., & Kuemmerle, T. (2015). Land-use change in the Caucasus during and after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Regional Environmental Change, 15(8), 1703–1716. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-014-0728-3 [2] Butsic, V., Baumann, M., Shortland, A., Walker, S., & Kuemmerle, T. (2015). Conservation and conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo: The impacts of warfare, mining, and protected areas on deforestation. Biological Conservation, 191, 266–273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2015.06.037 Satellite data used for this project was derived mostly from the Landsat 5 sensor, but some gaps from 1998 to 2001 were filled using Landsat 7 prior to the scan line corrector (SLC) device failing. Data was acquired from Google Earth Engine, and the specific dataset used was the USGS Landsat 5 TOA Reflectance (Orthorectified) with Fmask dataset. The corresponding dataset for Landsat 7 was used as well. Two images from each year between 1990 and 2009 were selected for a 40 image timeseries analysis. ArcGIS was used for masking of images, and ENVI was used for the classification methods as well as the change detection. Input Landsat tiles Mask cloud and cloud shadow Classify scenes using MLC Derive training classes using false colour composite Accuracy assessment using confusion matrix Accuracy assessment report Thematic change detection analysis Final maps, graphs and results Results and Discussion Change in land classification from 1990 to 2009 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 Year of image Percentage of pixels classified as urban Percentage of pixels classified as heavy vegetation 0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% 35.00% 40.00% 45.00% 50.00% 0.00% 2.00% 4.00% 6.00% 8.00% 10.00% 12.00% 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 Change in urbanization and heavy vegetation cover over time Classified imagery from every four years over the study area. Study area Location of Kalemie in relation to Rwanda. Basemap courtesy of National Geographic.