Subject Area
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Article Type
Original Study
Abstract
Sustainability of agricultural lands has the highest priority worldwide and developing countries in particular. Fertile agricultural lands in Iraq are constantly deteriorating due to urbanization and importing agricultural products from other countries. The main objective of this work was to provide an accurate assessment of agricultural lands in Diwaniyah Governorate, Iraq during the studied period from 1985 to 2014.This was in addition to evaluating the availability of surface water resources for agricultural sustainability. For these purposes both Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic information system (GIS) data and technology were integrated in this work. Landsat images in 1985, 1992, 2002 and 2014 were used to study spatial and temporal changes in agricultural lands in Diwaniyah Governorate. Three vegetation indices were used to map agricultural versus non- agricultural areas. These indices are the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Transformed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (TNDVI) and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI).The obtained results were used in calculating water consumption for agriculture crops in the studied area. It was found that agricultural areas represented about 764, 978, 919 and 1,198 km2from the studied area in 1985, 1992, 2002 and 2014, respectively. It was found that the TNDVI had the highest accuracy and accordingly the annual increase in agricultural lands was about 14.65km2 per year during the whole studied period from 1985 to 2014, which doesn’t comply with the annual increase in population (4%). Surface water resources were sufficient for the different human activities in 2014. There was a surplus of water resources by about 3.5 billion m3. However, shortage in water resources by about 2.6 billion m3 is expected if the targeted arable lands are cultivated by 2033.Two large areas can be proposed for land reclamation in Diwaniyah Governorate; however the annual increase in agricultural land has to reach 126 km2 per year to cultivate these proposed areas by 2033.
Keywords
Agricultural lands; water resources; NDVI; SAVI; TNDVI; Change Detection; Remote Sensing; GIS
Recommended Citation
ELMewafi, M.; Kedy, S.; and Elnaggar, A.
(2020)
"Changes of Land Cover in Diwaniyah Governorate and their Impact on Agricultural Sustainability by Using Geomatics Techniques.,"
Mansoura Engineering Journal: Vol. 40
:
Iss.
3
, Article 17.
Available at:
https://doi.org/10.21608/bfemu.2020.101860
