Land cover/use change analysis and mapping of Borg El-Arab City, Egypt

Abstract

One of the essential steps for agricultural development planning is the recognition of land cover and land use LCLU classes and the associated changes with time, in which LCLU avails as one of the major input criteria. The North coastal region of Egypt is exposed to significant spatial and temporal changes in LCLU classes (urban, agriculture, and water bodies) that basically affect any kind of development programs. Borg El-Arab City represents a potential community and new industrial site for future development in the region. The supervised classification of Landsat satellite images and computation of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) are applied as effective tools in the study area to observe the LCLU changes. Landsat 5, 7, and 8 satellite images were used and four images dated in 1986, 1999, 2006, and 2017 were selected. The area under consideration was classified into seven main classes ,e.g., Mediterranean Sea, salt marshes, agriculture, urban, bare land, swamps and wet land, and shoreline strip. The area was subjected to significant changes in the last three decades as a result of the reclamation projects growing and industrial effectiveness as well. Taking the whole period (1986–2017) into consideration, results show that the study area is exposed to a wide range of gain or loss in the area of different land cover classes, particularly in regard to the agriculture area, urban land, and bare land. The surface area of urban land, agriculture land, and water bodies increased on the expense of decreasing the bare land, where it lost 31.3%. The urban area expanded into much of the agricultural and the agricultural land expanded into bare land. In light of the recognized change causes, approach policy suggestions for better management of LCLU can be established.