USING MULTI TEMPORAL REMOTE SENSING DATA FOR MONITORING LAND USE LAND COVER CHANGES IN EL ALAMEIN AREA, THE NORTH WESTERN COAST OF EGYPT

Abstract

The change detection of land use land cover provides decision makers with essential information to environmental management. This study aims to assess the changes of different land use land cover classes for the Northwest coast of Egypt during the period from 2003 to 2022 using remote sensing and GIS techniques. For this purpose, two ASTER images (2003 and 2010) and two sentinal-2 images (2016 and 2022) were downloaded and used. The visual interpretation classification method was used in ArcGIS software for images classification. Ground check of image classification was elaborated by Google earth and field observations. The results indicated that the elevation ranges from zero to 151 m Above Sea Level, most of the studied area lied in the flat sloping class. The area had no dominant aspect class. The changes of land cover use, 2003 to 2022, reflected by a steady increase of agricultural and urban areas vs a continuous decrease in bare soil and carbonate rocks. The agricultural soil increased from 2.32% (1494.87 ha) to 47.47% (30616.72 ha), whereas urban areas increased from 3.45% (2223.07 ha) to 6.12% (3946.07 ha), also salt marshes increased from 0.44% (238.11 ha) to 0.74% (477.41 ha). This increase was on the count of bare soil decreasing by 51.50% and carbonate rocks by 0.76. As for, greenhouses class was not found in the study area until 2016, but it appeared in 2022 as a new project