Detection of land use/cover change in Ber El-Abd area, North Sinai, Egypt using remote sensing

Abstract

Land use and land‐cover (LULC) data provide essential information for environmental management and planning. Monitoring and detecting of land-use/land-cover changes and land degradation are very important for the planners, governments and the scientific communities, particularly where there are increasing pressures from human and natural activities on the adjacent environment. The present study aims to assess the changes of different land use/land cover classes for Ber El-Abd area in North Sinai, Egypt during the period from 1985 to 2018, to evaluate the impact of land cover change using remote sensing and GIS techniques.. The results indicated that there was a regular trend characterized in most classes and that the change in different land use/land cover classes ranged between increase and decrease areas. A continuous increase in agricultural and urban areas and a continuous decrease in water bodies and sand dunes areas were detected in the studied area. The agricultural area recorded the highest increase during the period from 1985 to 2018 (29206 Fed.) while it increased by (25748 Fed.), during the period from 2002 to 2018. However, in urban area, the highest increase was recorded during the period from 1985 to 2018 followed by the period 2002–2018 with mean values of (621 Fed.) and (436 Fed.), respectively. The results showed that most of area have been significantly affected by the different classes of land use/land cover change due to agriculture activities, urban growth as a result of human activities dynamic impact.