The environmental planning vision for development of human settlements in marshes by using GIS techniques

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Marshlands environment in southern Iraq is unique and is considered a habitat of thousands of migratory birds as shelter and a source of livelihood for thousands of people living there. Its environment is characterized by a fragile ecosystem that requires great care and effort to achieve the greatest possible balance and parallelism of development, which necessarily require careful environmental planning that accurately regulates the resources of the environment and therefore, planned the best way to use them. The idea of research for creating the spatial organization of the development of the human settlements and taking into account the environmental aspect by thinking for the planning of development, creating environmental vision for the present and a future that will contribute to organization of human settlements and sustainable spatial development. For achieving that, the research uses Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as techniques for analyzing and choosing the appropriate zones for development and environmental planning. The research concluded to suggest the environmental sensitivity zones, and the appropriate projects that can be established in these zones as well as evaluated with EIA approaches, and the most important recommendation is the need to commitment by the environmental sensitivity zones map for appropriate development.