Vegetation existence contributes to environmental quality in urban areas. The increase in population and development of cities has led to land conversion with lesser vegetated areas. Information on land cover change is needed, especially for urban regional planning with green open space consideration. The research aims to analyze urban vegetation cover and its changes in two sub-districts of Medan between the years 1999 and 2019. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and change analysis were conducted in the research. The diversity of plants within these areas was observed. The results showed changes in vegetation cover areas in the mentioned years. In 1999, most areas were under a highly dense vegetation class, while in 2019, they were under a low-density vegetation class. This finding indicates a decrease in vegetation cover as a result of increasing built-up areas. Within the vegetation cover, it was found many tree species and agricultural plants. Those vegetations existed in some areas: city parks, house yards, gardens, agricultural fields, etc. A special emphasis should be placed on riverside areas with less vegetation in order to provide a higher level of protection, particularly in the event of a flood. To increase the vegetated areas and maintain the environmental quality, optimizing the land by replanting in the area with no or less vegetation should be done.

Urbanization has accelerated the conversion of vegetated land to built-up regions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of urban park configuration on the Land Surface Temperature of the park and adjacent areas. In urban parks, the study analyzed the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), and the Land Surface Temperature (LST). The NDVI categorization process resulted in the development of a vegetation density distribution. The majority of Medan’s urban areas were categorized as low density, as seen by their low NDVI values. The NDBI values were significantly higher in the majority of the area. This shows that the majority of places are experiencing a decline in vegetation cover. The density of vegetation varies according to the placement of park components such as trees, mixed plants, recreation, and sports areas. According to LST data, the temperature in the urban park was cooler than in the surrounding areas. Although the surrounding areas are densely populated, urban parks are dominated by trees. Additionally, there is a green space adjacent to the park, which is a green lane that runs alongside the main roadways.

Coastal is a dynamic area which is changing rapidly in response to natural processes and human activities. The significant increase in population and development activities around the coast of Langkat Regency have caused changes in land cover and vegetation density. This research was done by overlaying spatial data occurred from 2006 to 2016 to obtain land cover change data, NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) values, and to find out vegetation density in the coastal area of Langkat Regency. The research found that the highest area in the coastal of Langkat in year 2006 was under very dense class with 37.38%. In 2016, the highest area covering coastal of Langkat was Dense class with 38.21%. The decrease area found from very dense class to dense class for 34.06%. This research is expected to provide information as a consideration in the effort of coastal management of Langkat Regency.

As the city grows, more and more vegetated land is converted to non-vegetated land. This also occurred at Binjai, a city in the North Sumatera Province, Indonesia. The aim of this study was to examine the urban vegetation cover and its changes between 2015 and 2019. The research was carried out in Binjai Timur, which is one of Binjai’s sub-districts. The distribution of vegetation density was measured using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) value classification. The decrease in the dense class to 10.08 percent was the most significant change in vegetation density class between 2015 and 2019. This was followed by an 8.87 percent increase in the high-density class. This indicates that there is an area with vegetation density increased from lower density to high density. The district has green open spaces in the form of a neighborhood park, cemetery, sub-district park, greenbelt along the road and river, and house yards, according to the field check. These green open spaces were located in low and medium-density areas. The findings suggest that planting trees in those locations and arrangement of vegetation within parks could improve its quality and function. For good quality of urban environments, it is optimizing the use of house yards as vegetated land and boosting green open space quality is required.

City development with unfriendly development causes the quality and quantity of open green space to decrease. Google Earth is an interactive mapping application released by google, which displays a digital visualization of the geographical shape of the earth. This study aims to determine the type and quality of trees on the urban forest in the Tanjung-Morawa sub-district and to map the quality of trees on the urban forest in the Tanjung-Morawa sub-district. This study uses a modified method of tree quality assessment with two criteria: tree health and technically criteria. From the observation result, there are 18 trees, Glodokan (Polyalthia longifolia) with the highest number, as many as 842 trees, and Dadap Merah (Erythrina crista goly) as the tree with the least amount. The quality of the trees in the urban forest shows a moderate good quality, where the highest health is in the medium category and for the technical in the low category. Trees that are recommended to be cut have a cumulative ≥ 2,5 Angsana trees with a total of 129 trees, and the highest cumulative percentage is the Banyan tree at 66,67%. The Mango tree has the lowest rate at 8,70%. Google Earth can’t be used optimally because of the low-resolution image quality. Image capture data in google earth has not been updated; the unstable internet connection and the time of the retrieval and processing of field data are not the same as the time retrieval and processing.