Modeling of built-up lands expansion in Gaza Strip, Palestine using Landsat data and CA-Markov model

摘要

In Gaza Strip, Built-up lands expansion have reached critical level due to speed in population growth and high demand for new houses especially since the establishment of the Palestinian national authority (PNA) in 1994. In this context, more agricultural and arable lands have been transformed to built-up areas. Thus, monitoring and modelling this expansion is a fundamental task for sustainable management of available resources and long-term urban planning purposes. Against this background, the primary objective of this research is modelling and predicting the future expansion of built-up lands that would take place in the study area by the year 2036. The research was conducted based on times series satellite images that taken in (1992, 2003, 2014) by Landsat and Cellular Automata Markov (CAMarkov) model integrated with GIS and multi criteria evaluation technique. In this research, land cover maps have been prepared based on the satellite images and the post classification change detection technique has been employed for quantitative analysing of the past land cover changes among the study area. Then, CAMarkov model has been implemented and validated. Later, the land cover map for the year 2036 has been predicted. The results illustrate that if the trend of change in the future period continue as the same the built-up lands would cover 45.3% of the total area in Gaza Strip by 2036. Moreover, the expansion of the built-up lands occurred at the expense of the agricultural and arable lands. In conclusion, this research demonstrated that Gaza Strip face serious crisis if the same pattern followed. Therefore, focus on urban planning is essential to control the expansion of built-up lands and minimize the negative impacts of urbanization in Gaza Strip.