Modeling land use/land cover change using remote sensing and geographic information systems: A case study of Gaza strip, Palestine

Land use/cover changes is a widespread and accelerating process, mainly driven by natural phenomena and anthropogenic activities, which in turn drive changes that would impact natural ecosystem. Understanding landscape patterns, changes and interactions between human activities and natural phenomenon are essential for proper land management and decision improvement. An attempt is made in this study to map out the status of land use/cover of Gaza strip, in Palestine in view to detect the land consumption rate and the changes that has taken place during the last two decades using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS). Landsat satellite imageries of For different periods between 2000 to 2020. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) were acquired by United States Geological Survey (USGS) Site. Supervised classification methodology has been employed using maximum likelihood technique in ArcGIS 10.7 Software. The images of the study area were categorized into four different classes namely vegetation, barren, built-up and water body. The results indicate that during the last two decades, vegetation, built-up land and water body have been increased by 0.18% (0.65 km2),36.59% (60.90 km2) and 0.31% (1.45 km2). while barren land have decreased by 37.17% (135.08 km2) respectively. The thesis highlights the importance of digital change detection techniques for nature and location of change of the Gaza strip. Keywords: Landuse, Landcover, Classification, Remote sensing, GIS, Gaza strip