Journal of Marine Science: Research & Development
Open Access

Abstract

Coastline movement due to erosion and deposition is a major concern for coastal zone management. Very dynamic events in coastlines, such as sections of the Nile Delta coast, pose considerable hazards to human use and development, and rapid, replicable techniques are required to update coastline maps of these areas and monitor rates of movement. Change detection is a central task for land cover monitoring by remote sensing data. It uses (multi temporal image data sets) in order to detect land cover changes from spectral discrepancies. Urbanization is a significant problem in Egypt, Remote sensing and GIS technologies provide a powerful tool for studying this problem, including that related to urban/built up land cover mapping. The socio-economic development of Egypt has been exclusively devoted to the Nile valley and Delta, which lead to high intensity of population in these regions. In Delta Governorates the agricultural land is subjected to strenuous human pressure involving exploitation intensity far beyond its natural carrying capacity. For a better planning of future urban development and infrastructure planning, municipal authorities need to know urban sprawl phenomenon and in what way to be realized in ahead future. Changes in land cover from agricultural to sub-urbanized and urbanized landscapes are called urban sprawl which is a complex process that encounters a number of sophisticated parameters that interact to produce the urban sprawl pattern. These parameters included - but not limited to - land use suitability, city development level and economical phase. The described change detection strategy was successfully applied to simulated imagery and real remotely sensed multi spectral image data. The results indicated that spatiotemporal difference in cultivated areas in the last 30 years seems to be encouraging from the results. About 180 km2 of land for cultivation has increased during this period, while the coastal plain area has decreased by about 40 km2 and the Dunes area has continuously decreased as it is being replaced by cultivated land.

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