MONITORING OF AGRICULTURAL AREA TREND IN EASTERN NILE DELTA IN EGYPT USING LANDSAT ETM+ DATA

摘要

Agricultural production in Egypt is limited by urban encroachement and soil salinity. On thernother hand, continuous reclamation efforts in the desert and coastal regions succeeded in establishingrnnew agricultural communities and increased the area of cultivated land and the amount of final product inrnthe last two decades. In this study, a 2001 Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper image was classifiedrninto four main landcover classes namely agricultural, water, urban and desert areas. These, together withrnprevious studies in 1988 and 1994, were used to map the landcover changes. Generally, the resultsrnshow a noticeable increase in area on both agriculture and urban areas with decrease in desert lands.rnThe rate of changes from 1988 to 1994 is higher than the rate from 1994 to 2001 for agriculture andrnlower for both urban and desert. Agricultural land increased by 36% from 1988 to 1994 and by 23% fromrn1994 to 2001. The urban settlements increased by 45% from 1988 to 1994 and by 363% from 1994 torn2001. The desert area decreased by 24 % from 1988 to 1994 and by 29 % from 1994 to 2001. This workrncould be used to model present and future landscape changes in one of the most important agriculturalrnareas in Egypt.