Generally, classification accuracy refers to the extent of correspondence between the remotely sensed data and reference
information (Congalton, 1991). In order to assess the accuracy of land cover maps extracted from Landsat data, a total of 125 stratified random pixels were generated for the 1975 and 1992 data and 100 pixels for the 2003 land cover map. Accuracy assessment of the LULC maps was then performed using field data and the geographical features on land use maps, highresolution images, and SOB topographic maps, and the results were recorded in a confusion matrix. A non-parametric Kappa test was also used to measure the classification accuracy as it accounts for all the elements in the confusion matrix rather than just the diagonal elements (Rosenfield & Fitzpatirck-Lins, 1986).