Temporal Interpretation for Land Use/Land Cover Changes Using Multispectral Images: Irbid as a Case Study

Abstract

Understanding changes patterns for the land use/land cover (LULC)are important aspects of manage planning in order to give interpretations for the relationship between natural recourses and human activities. Therefore, the temporal interpretation for LULC changes through the use of multi-spectral images performs an essential procedure to assess the driving forces of the changes as well as changes detection in LULC. The multi-techniques are widely used to study the impact of the urbanization on LULC. On the other hand ,Landsat satellite images for the two years 1990 and 2015 have been used for in this study. Computerized systems have also been incorporated to prepare data and get results of such studies. The classification of LULC was validated through the use of an accurate assessment method. This study concluded built up areas that are increased by approximately 391 Km² (18.00 %).Most of vegetation have changed to arable land due to urbanization, where the vegetation area decreased to 15.16 % of the total area, and the overall accuracy of classificationswas80% and 82% for 1990 and 2015 respectively.

Keywords: Land use, Land cover, Satellite image, Landsat, Classification, Accuracy assessment,