Urban-Rural Land Use Change Detection and Analysis Using GIS

This paper aims at detecting and analyzing urban-rural land use change, using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). In this context, two multi-temporal studies were conducted in two different sites. The first site includes 3 cities in Morocco (Ksar El Kébir, Khémisset & Béni Mellal), and the second one concerns Al-Ahsa oasis in Saudi Arabia. The main objective was to investigate the effects of urbanization on agricultural lands. The first study was based on 6 images of Spot-HRV (2 for each city) and the second one was based on 2 images of Landsat-TM. The visual interpretation of satellite imagery enabled us to produce three maps of land use categories and the corresponding statistics. The changes occurring respectively during the last 20 years (in Morocco) and 14 years (in Saudi Arabia) were estimated using GIS tools. The over-all changes illustrated in the form of evolution matrix and map proved that urbanization has impacted mainly the agricultural lands due to the speculation practices. In conclusion, RS & GIS technologies together with ancillary data can be used to assist decision makers to prepare future plans, in order to find out appropriate solutions to urbanization encroachment. RÉSUM