Summary, Concluding Remarks and Recommendations - Historical Land Use/Land Cover Classification Using Remote Sensing - page 195

Chapter 7
Summary, Concluding Remarks
and Recommendations
7.1 Summary
The overall and general objective of this thesis is as a contribution to the use of
remotely sensed data of LANDSAT: MSS, TM, and ETM+; and ASTER for
agricultural purposes in the arid and semi-arid areas of the Euphrates River Basin
(ERB) in Syria. The study area is located in the northeast of Syria. The geo-
graphical coordinates of the ERB are 3649 0 N, 3802 0 E at the Turkish border, and
3429 0 N, 4056 0 E at the Iraqi border. Its total area is about 50,335 km 2 . Starting in
the 1970s, Syria began to utilize the water of Euphrates River in agriculture,
reclaiming a large amount of uncultivated areas from the river. The main objective
of this program was to increase the amount of cultivated areas in the basin, as Syria
basically is an agricultural country. These irrigation projects during the past four
decades produced a great deal of change in land use/land cover (LULC).
This thesis deals with four major emphases LULC-classification, LULC-change
detection, irrigation mapping and irrigated agriculture classification of the
Euphrates River Basin area in Syria. Four general LULC-classification products
(see Chap. 6.1.1 ) have been generated for the years 1975, 1987, 2005 and 2007;
also, two LULC-change detection maps (see Chap. 6.3 ) have been produced for
the periods between 1975-2007 and 1987-2007. In addition, four thematic maps
representing the development of the irrigation areas (see Chap. 5.1.2 ) in the last
37 years with the intervals 1975, 1987, 2005 and 2007 have also been produced.
Finally, six detailed agricultural classes classification products (see Chap. 5.1.3 )
have been generated for the two major agricultural seasons in Syria, i.e., the
winters (May data) and summers (August data) of 1987, 2005 and 2007.
To realize the objective of this study, eight scenes of LANDSAT-MSS obtained
in June 1975 were chosen; 32 scenes of LANDSAT-TM obtained in May and
August of the years 1987 and 2007; and 16 scenes of corrected LANDSAT-ETM+/
SLC-OFF/obtained in May and August 2005 which were fused with scenes of
TERRA-ASTER obtained in May and August of 2005 in a bid to increase spectral
resolution from three to six spectral bands.