Applying Digital Image Processing Technology in Discovering Green Patches in the Desert of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In recent years, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has witnessed a noticeable growth of grass and small trees in the desert, forming green patches. Those green patches may have the potential to spread and cover a wider area in the desert in the coming years, thus, making areas of the desert potential agricultural land. This research aims to detect the change of green patches in the desert of Saudi Arabia to solve the challenge that is mainly due to the lack of an organized dataset. Using a series of satellite images of the desert landscape, a change detection algorithm is used to identify the changes in green spaces. This algorithm includes the presentation of multi-temporal datasets to evaluate the chronological special effects. This paper presents an optical flow analysis among images captured at different time sequences. The algorithm shows promising results of change detection in green patches in the desert of Saudi Arabia detected by color segmentation. The algorithm has been validated over a set of satellite images demonstrating an effective performance.