Monitoring Land Use and Land Cover Change Using Remote Sensing Techniques and the Precipitation-Vegetation Indexes in Morocco
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L3GIE Laboratory, Mohammadia Engineering School, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco
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Fatiha Ait El Haj
L3GIE Laboratory, Mohammadia Engineering School, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco
Ecol. Eng. Environ. Technol. 2023; 1:272-286
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ABSTRACT
The study of land use and land cover change (LULC) is essential for the development of strategies, monitoring and control of the ecosystem. The present study aims to describe the dynamics of land cover and land use, and specially the impact of certain climatic parameters on the distribution of vegetation and land cover.
For this study, multi-temporal remote sensing data are used to monitor land cover changes in Morocco, using a set of Landsat images, including Landsat 7 (ETM+), Landsat 5 (TM), and Landsat 8 (OLI), captured during the period 2000-2020, those changes were determined by adopting the maximum likelihood (ML) classification method. The classification results show good accuracy values in the range of 90% (2000), 80% (2007), 82% (2010), 93% (2020). The LU/LC change detection showed a decrease of agricultural and forest areas in the order of 5% between the year 2000 and 2020, and an increase of bare soil of 5% to 6%, and a notable change in urban area from 97.31 ha (0.03%) in 2000 to 2988.2637ha (0.82%) in 2020. The overall results obtained from LULC show that the vegetation cover of the study area has undergone major changes during the study period. In order to monitor the vegetation status, an analysis of the precipitation-vegetation interaction is essential. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was determined from 2000 to 2020, to identify vegetation categories and quantify the vegetation density in the Lakhdar sub-basin. The obtained NDVI was analyzed using climatic index SPI (Normalized Precipitation Index) based on rainfall data from five stations. The correlation study between NDVI and SPI indices shows a strong linear relation between these two indicators especially while using an annual index SPI12 however, the use of NDVI index based on remote sensing provides a significant result while assessing vegetation. The results of our study can be used for vegetation monitoring and sustainable management of the area, since it is one of the largest basins in the country.