Deforestation and forest degradation are rapid in the lowland forests of Indonesian Borneo. Time series analysis of satellite imagery provides an ideal means of quantifying landscape change and identifying the pathways which lead to the changes. In this study we investigate forest and land cover change by classifying Landsat MSS, TM and ETM images over three time periods (1983–1990–1998–2000), creating land cover maps for each year and change trajectories for each year-pair. The place chosen for this study covers an area of 2,160 km² of undulating topography and alluvial plains in the Kutai District of East Kalimantan Province.  In the 1980s much of this area was covered in lowland Dipterocarp forest but today the landscape is a patchwork dominated by oil palm and timber plantations, and degraded forest. We relate land cover change data to land use allocation, and fire impacts based on fire hot spot distribution and fire damage information. The multi-date land cover change trajectories provide an insight into the forest loss and degradation pathways over this 17 year period as logging concessions become established initially, followed by a transmigration scheme and timber and oil palm plantations, and finally to the devastating fires of 1998. The results show a mean deforestation rate between 1983 and 2000 of 42 km² or 6 % per year, rising to 10% per year between 1990 and 1998. We show that 70 % of forest first damaged by fire and drought during the 1982-83 El Nino was classified as non-forest by 2000. Although our study area is perhaps a worst-case scenario in terms of land use planning outcomes, the lessons from this research are directly applicable to scenario prediction for informed forest and land use planning and monitoring