Analyzing Land Use - Land Cover using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques in Southern Sector of Mesopotamia Plain

Abstract

The majority of the study area lies within the Mesopotamia For deep of Outer (Unstable) Platform of Arabian Plate. While the southwestern corner lies within the Inner (Stable) Platform .The remote sensing techniques are used in order to produce Land Use – Land Cover (LU–LC) map for study area scale 1:250000 depending on SPOT satellite image 2010. The classification procedure which was developed by USGS and followed with field checking in 2011. Land Use-land cover map is created depending on maximum likelihood classifications (ML) of SPOT image. This image was classified into six main classes, these are: Urban and Built-up land class, vegetated land class, Agriculture none vegetated land class, Water class; like rivers, canals, lakes and other waterways, Wet lands and Barren lands class which are divided into three sub-classes (Mixed Barren Land, Sand Dunes and Dry Marsh). The accuracy assessment for classification is 89.67% and a kappa coefficient is 0.8448 by using ERDAS Imagine V. 9.2 Program. The LU–LC raster image is converted to vector structure, using Arc GIS 9.3 Program in order to create a digital LU–LC map.

Keywords: Land use - Land cover (LULC), Mesopotamia Plain, Remote Sensing (RS), classification, SPOT.