Land use and cover change assessment using Remote Sensing and GIS: Dohuk City, Kurdistan, Iraq (1998–2011)

Land cover undergoes continuous changes around the world, especially in highly populated areas. This phenomenon can be attributed to human activities including population growth and the need of more housing. Dohuk, like many other cities in Iraq, has undergone a rapid urban growth mainly due to the population growth after 2003. With the absence of efficient urban planning systems and regulations in the past, this city has witnessed uncontrollable urban growth with adverse environmental impact. This growth has encroached upon peripheral agricultural lands, caused considerable lack of open spaces, and resulted in a degraded urban environment, e.g. higher proportion of concrete and asphalt surfaces and increased temperature in summer. This paper follows an integrated approach of using remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) to measure and analyze the urban growth in Dohuk city over three periods of time (1998, 2007, 2011). Its main goals are to demonstrate the effective use of such modern techniques in mapping, identifying, and assessing land use/land cover (LULC) changes and urban growth trend and in addressing the current lack of urban growth information by providing relatively accurate data to help the planners in identifying the driving forces behind current LULC changes and in managing the urban growth in a more systematic manner. Spatial patterns of LULC change were identified through LULC classification and change detection analyses conducted on multi-temporal Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data. Three Landsat satellite images for the study area for 1998, 2007 and 2011 were processed and classified into three LULC categories: Vegetation, Barren Land, and Urban/Built-up Land. The results show a remarkable increase in the urban/built-up area with corresponding decreases in the barren land and vegetation areas during 1998 and 2011. The paper also demonstrates that the city is growing rapidly which could assimilate more agricultural and rural areas.