Monitoring land cover change in Erbil city using remote sensing and geographic information system

The objective of this study is to investigate of the monitoring of changes in land use and land cover (LULC) in Erbil between the years 2010, 2016, and 2022 using remote sensing (R.S.) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The research area lies between latitudes (36°419' to 35° 748' N) and longitudes (43° 854' to 44° 291' E) that covers an area of 194411.86 Hectares. Three satellite images were used; the first one was acquired by the Landsat 7 with sensor TM on May 22, 2010, the second image was captured by the Landsat-8 by Sensor OLI/TIRS + on June 07, 2016, and the last image was captured by the Landsat 8 by Sensor OLI/TIRS + on June 08 /2022, from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) website. Twelve Soil samples were also taken from the soil surface layer in October 2022, in order to estimate some of the chemical and physical properties of soil. GPS was used to identify the geographical positions of all soil sample locations. Supervised classification was applied to generate thematic maps, identifying and mapping four main categories of land uses: urban, vegetation, soil, and water. The classification accuracy was evaluated using Kappa statistics, and the overall accuracy was found to be 0.887, indicating that the interpretation of remote sensing data was reliable. The researchers then compared the cross tabulation matrices between different time periods, including between the years 2010 and 2016, 2016 and 2022, and 2010 and 2022. An analysis was conducted to identify and study the changes in land use patterns in Erbil city. The results showed that soil, vegetation, and urban areas underwent significant changes, while water changed slightly over the 12-year period. The vegetation and soil areas decreased in size continuously from 2010 to 2022, with most of these areas being converted to urban land. The researchers reported that the loss of vegetation was related to urban growth, which was evident in the study area. As a result, Erbil's rapid urbanization contributed to the expansion of urban areas, resulting in the loss of green spaces and environmental issues. In summary, this study used remote sensing and GIS techniques to provide a novel perspective on the evolution of land use patterns.