Determination land use and land cover change using GIS and remote sensing case of study in Kalar district

Understanding the complexity of Land Use and Land Cover changes and their drivers at a local or landscape level to better understanding the relationship between human and the environment, and to support local planning process for the sustainable management of ecosystem goods and services. The high frequency of urbanization coupled with population growth has caused changes in land use and land cover in Kalar, Iraq. Therefore, understanding land use and land cover changes and its driving factors is essential to put forward the right policies and monitoring mechanisms on urban growth for decision making. Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyze land use and land cover changes in Kalar area, by applying satellite data of Landsat TM for 2000, ETM for 2007 and 2015 have been obtained and preprocessed using ArcGIS, ENDVI. For the accuracy of classified land use and land cover maps, a confusion matrix was used to derive overall accuracy and results were above the minimum and acceptable threshold level. Also change detection analysis shows where and how land use has changed from 2000 to the 2015. The generated land cover maps have been run for quantifying land use and land cover changes, to examine land use transitions between land cover classes, to identify gain and losses of built up areas in relation to other land cover classes and to asses spatial trend of built up areas. Generally, the results of this study have shown that there was an increased expansion of built up areas in the last 7 years from 1.5% in 2000 to 4.1 % in 2007 and 9.4% in 2015 at the expense of agricultural areas. The spatial trend of built up areas also showed that there was a growing trend in the western part of Kalar relative to other directions. Therefore, the findings of this study could provide as decision making for urban planning.