Informations et ressources scientifiques
sur le développement des zones arides et semi-arides

Titre : Detection of urbanization and human activities effect in Salalah plain using remote sensing

Auteur : Zabanoot, Sumaya Mohammed Abdullah.

Université de soutenance : Sultan Qaboos University

Grade : Master of Science (MS) in Geomatics Engineering 2020

Résumé partiel
Urbanization is undoubtedly one of the global environmental challenges, shrinking the vast green spaces and turning them into arid areas filled with man-made structures. No wonder, therefore, that urbanization and its human activities are one of the main causes of desertification. The random and unplanned distribution of lands and the spread of urbanization in wadis without previous preparations make urbanization an issue that must be studied. A portion of Salalah was identified as the study area on which the analyses were made, this area of interest for the urbanized area is around 160 km², and it covers some human activities in this region that negatively affect the environment ; therefore, in this research, we shed light on the spread of camps in Salalah plain in khareef season. In this study, remote sensing was used to detect the extent of urbanization in this region through the available satellite images and aerial photos. Multi-temporal historical aerial photos and satellite images starting from the 1960s until 2018 at a similar time of the year were helpful in detecting and mapping the changes in urbanization and camps using several processes. The data also included recorded historical rainfall and population data that will determine the causes behind the shrinking of agricultural lands. After all the processes in this research, one of the main findings of the digitizing process has shown that the built-up area has increased from 0.43 km² in 1968 to 6.93 km² (increased by 1,512 %) in 2018, while the agricultural lands have decreased from 22.39 km² in 1994 to 18.86 km² (decreased by 16 %) in 2018. Moreover, the change detection results based on the unsupervised classification of the satellite images between 1994 and 2018 show that the built-up area has increased by 10.08% ; on the other hand, the agricultural lands decreased by 12.02%. Therefore, the estimated built-up area based on a simple extrapolation could increase to 5.11% by 2030. .

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