Use of Earth observation for monitoring soil sealing trends in Flanders and Brussels between 1976 and 2013

The on-going growth of urban area in Flanders and in the Brussels Capital Region over the past decades has resulted in a highly sprawled urban tissue, consisting of large and smaller urban agglomerations, connected by a well-developed transportation network. The conversion of open land to urban area is accompanied by an increase in soil sealing, affecting the hydrological cycle and the urban climate. Despite a growing interest in monitoring the process of soil sealing in urban areas, to date no detailed information on the presence and evolution of sealed surfaces is available for Flanders. In this paper a linear regression unmixing approach is proposed to map and monitor changes of sealed surface cover at the regional scale, using medium as well as high resolution remote sensing data. Applied to Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, a total sealed area of 2687 km² for 2013 is found, corresponding to an increase of 82% since 1976. Residential areas account for nearly half of the sealed area and show the largest increase in sealed surface cover over the past 37 years.