Results, Analysis and Discussion - Historical Land Use/Land Cover Classification Using Remote Sensing - page 185

Pre-classification change detection statistics

88,62%

7,19%

4,74%

4461115 ha 238646 ha 362321 ha

No Change

Natural Vegetation to Bare Areas Bare Areas to Cultivated Areas

Fig. 6.10 Statistics of occurred changes in percentage and hectare, that resulted from applying
the pre-classification approach using the data of LANDSAT-MSS from June-1975 and the data of
LANDSAT-TM from August-2007

1987-2007 the total change in the whole study area was about 5,027,722 ha,
99.32 % in which 170,454 ha, 3.36 % changed from natural vegetated areas to
bare areas; 263,863 ha, 5.21 % changed from bare areas to cultivated areas; and
areas recording no change were about 34,360 ha (0.68 %).
Nature of changes/quality. This explained the quantity of the occurred change
and whether it was positive/gain or negative/loss. In addition, the nature of change
determined what LULC-feature/s was/were changing and to what (Braimoh 2004 ).
Based on the visual interpretation of the change map for the period 1975-2007,
in addition to information obtained during field-work, secondary data and related
previous literature, it can be shown that the land use which changed the most was
agriculture, which increased largely because of the construction of irrigation
projects among the Euphrates River and on account of a reduction in areas clas-
sified as bare. The most new agricultural lands were seen in the region near the
Euphrates. This was obvious especially in the area of land which extends from the
city of Arraqqa and the Euphrates Dam in the south toward the Turkish border
(including the Al-Balikh tributary) in the north. In addition, the area located along
the south bank of Lake Al-Asad and the lands located along the southern side of
the major irrigation canal, which runs from Lake Al-Asad towards the city of
Aleppo, also experienced significant agricultural growth.
There were also changes in vegetation cover within the lands of the five agri-
cultural stabilization zone (the pastures). Figure 6.10 describes the nature of
changes in LULC from 1975 to 2007. The result can be determined through three
categories: LULC-no change, which remained unchanged, i.e., no loss and no gain
(neutral/zero); LULC-Natural Vegetation to Bare Area change, where the natural
vegetation class area decreased to bare area in 2007, i.e., loss and no gain; and the
LULC-Bare Areas to Cultivated Areas category, where the cultivated class area
increased in 2007 on account of changes to the bare area, i.e., gain and no loss.
Spatial distribution of changes/mapping. This provided the clear location and
extension of occurred change by mapping and visualizing the area/s of change/s to
produce the thematic map/s, i.e., where was/were the change/s?
By differencing the raw data mosaic-image/LANDSAT-MSS-June-1975 (pixel
gray values) of the initial comparison date from those of mosaic-image/LAND-
SAT-TM-August-2007, the distribution of the three general levels of LULC-
changes of interest could be detected, calculated and mapped. ArcGIS 9.3 and
ENVI 4.6 packages were used for this purpose. Figure 6.11 visualizes the result of
the changes.