Reham Riyadh Mahmoud, Abdulkhalik K. Mahmood and Mohamed R. Mahmoud
Abstract
The changes in land cover become an essential component in monitoring environmental changes. Landsat 8 data were used to map the land cover/use and detect the change in Wasit Governorate for the years 2013-2018. Supervised Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) technique have been used to classify the image into four land cover/use categories, which is a bare soil, water bodies,vegetation and built-up area. The results show that, the built-up area was increased by 5%, whereas vegetative area was decreased by 21 %, bare soil has been increased by 14%, and water bodies have been increased by 2%. The study highlights the significance of the change detection techniques for mapping the change that occurred in the land cover of Wasit governorate. This Information about the land cover change considers being very important to the local government/urban planners to enhance the plans for sustainable development.