Diachronic analysis to Detect and Monitor Barchan Dune Migration in Ain Salah (Algeria)

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyse barchan dunes migration patterns and their effect on urban and agricultural areas in Ain Salah region in southern Algeria. A supervised classification of Landsat images over a 13 years period (2005, 2009, 2013 and 2017) was applied to create land cover maps which were used for a spatiotemporal monitoring of barchan migration by dune feature changes. The results show that sand dunes covered area has increased between 2005 and 2017 with direction movements from northeast to southwest and represents the potential of using time series imagery for a better understanding of dune migration and sand encroachment.