Abstract
This study assessed the spatial and temporal variations of land cover in the agricultural areas of the Al-Hassa oasis, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Change detection technique was applied in order to classify variations among different surface cover aspects, during three successive stages between 1985 and 2017 (i.e., 1985 to 1999 (14 years), 1999 to 2013 (14 years), and 2013 to 2017 (4 years)), using two scenarios. During the first stage, significant urban sprawl (i.e., 3,200 ha) occurred on bare lands within the old oasis, while only 590 ha of the oasis’s vegetation area was occupied by urban cover. However, the final stage revealed rapid urban development (1,270 ha by 2017) within the oasis’s vegetation region, while no urban sprawl occurred on bare lands (area of 1,900 ha, same as that in 1999–2013). Vegetation cover of around 1,000 ha changed to the bare soil class, in addition to the areas that were occupied by the urban class (1,700 ha in total). The study provides quantitative information on the influence of urban development on the spatial changes in vegetation cover of the oasis, especially during recent decades.
Highlights
Approximately 1.2 million km2 of forests and woodlands and 5.6 million km2 of grassland and pasture areas have been transformed into other land use types within the last three centuries, as stated by Ramankutty and Foley [1]
This analysis was done for scenario (ii) only because the dynamic nature in surface cover at the old oasis that was observed in the form of urban development made it the focal point of the study
This concurs with the geographic location of the oasis, where it is surrounded by deserts that feature shifting sand dunes [23], presenting a long lasting ingress of sand on cultivated fields [13, 31, 43], despite the efforts devoted by the Saudi government to control the Change detection techniques to depict vegetation degradation caused by urban sprawl movement of these dunes toward the oasis [43]
Summary
Approximately 1.2 million km of forests and woodlands and 5.6 million km of grassland and pasture areas have been transformed into other land use types within the last three centuries, as stated by Ramankutty and Foley [1]. Significant portions of the land surface have been transformed by humans; where 10 to 15% is currently occupied by agricultural schemes or urban-industrial areas, and 6 to 8% have been transferred into pasture lands [2]. Such alterations in land use cause significant impacts on the Earth’s climate. Several methods to evaluate land cover changes have been proposed. These methods generate predictive models for land-use and land-cover (LULC) change
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