Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Arid Region: The Case New Urbanized Zone, Northeast Cairo, Egypt
Rafat Zaki, Abotalib Zaki, Saad Ahmed
.
DOI: 10.4236/jgis.2011.33015   PDF    HTML     6,483 Downloads   12,729 Views   Citations

Abstract

The spatial characteristics of land cover are useful for understanding the various impacts of human activity on the overall ecological conditions of the urban environment. The multi-temporal Landsat images (TM) between the years of 1990 and 2003 were used together with the Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques to evaluate the environmental changes in the area around Gabal El Hamza and the surrounding urban expansion in the new urban cities at the northeast side of the Greater Cairo by using the post classification change detection technique and field investigation. Five major units were determined including: urban, cultivated land, Holocene sand dunes, Oligocene basalt and Miocene–Pleistocene sediments. The cultivated cover changed from 89.6 to 150.4 km2 for the years of 1990 and 2003 respectively. The urban area increased from 49.5 to 120.9 km2 with a great value of change reached 71.3 km2 . The basaltic exposures changed from 3 to 3.75 km2 . The sandy cover decreased from 68.9 to 60.1 km2 and the exposures of the rock units changed from 904.8 to 780.8 km2 with removing 124 km2 in 13 years. The total accuracy of the Landsat-derived land cover data was 95 and 92% for the years 1990 and 2003 respectively. Landsat TM thermal infrared data indicated that the surface temperature was strongly affected by the land cover changes.

Share and Cite:

R. Zaki, A. Zaki and S. Ahmed, "Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Arid Region: The Case New Urbanized Zone, Northeast Cairo, Egypt," Journal of Geographic Information System, Vol. 3 No. 3, 2011, pp. 173-194. doi: 10.4236/jgis.2011.33015.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1] United Nation, “Report of the Meeting-Urbanization: A Global Perspective,” Proceedings of the Expert Group Meeting on Population Distribution, Urbanization, Inter- nal Migration and Development, New York, 21-23 January, 2008.
[2] A. Yeh and X. Li, “Economic Development and Agri- Cultural Land Loss in the Pearl River Delta, China,” Habitat International, Vol. 23, No. 3, 1999, pp. 373-390. doi:10.1016/S0197-3975(99)00013-2
[3] World Bank, “World Development Indicators,” Washing- ton, D.C., 2007.
[4] M. W. Holdgate, “The Sustainable Use of Tourism: A Key Conservation Issue,” Ambio, Vol. 22, 1993, pp. 481-484.
[5] S., Hathout, “The Use of GIS for Monitoring and Predicting Urban Growth in East and West St. Paul, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada,” Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 66, No. 3, 2002, pp. 229-238.
[6] M. Herold, N. C. Goldstein and K. C. Clarke, “The Spatiotemporal form of Urban Growth: Measurement, Analysis and Modeling,” Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 86, No. 3, 2003, pp. 286-302. doi:10.1016/S0034-4257(03)00075-0
[7] P. Serra, X. Pons and D. Sauri, “Land-Cover and Land-Use Change in a Mediterranean Landscape: A Spatial Analysis of Driving Forces Integrating Biophysical And Human Factors,” Applied Geography, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2008, pp. 189-209. doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2008.02.001
[8] B. P. Zhang, Y. H. Yao, W. M. Cheng, C. H. Zhou, Z. Lu, and X. D. Chen, “Human-induced changes to biodiversity and alpine pastureland in the Bayanbulak Region of the East Tianshan Mountains,” Mountain Research and Development, Vol. 22, No. 4, 2002, pp. 1-7. doi:10.1659/0276-4741(2002)022[0383:HICTBA]2.0.CO;2
[9] H. H., Kim, “Urban Heat Island,” International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol.13, No. 12, 1992, pp. 319-336.
[10] J. E. Nichol, “Visualization of Urban Surface Tempera- tures Derived from Satellite Images,” International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 19, No. 9, 1998, pp. 1639-1649. doi:10.1080/014311698215153
[11] P. Kevin and W. Timothy, “Satellite-Based Adjustments for the Urban Heat Island Temperature Bias,” Journal of Applied Meteorology, Vol. 38, No. 6, 1999, pp. 806-813. doi:10.1175/1520-0450(1999)038<0806:SBAFTU>2.0.CO;2
[12] Y. Chen, J. Wang and X. Li, “A Study on Urban Thermal Field in Summer Based on Satellite Remote Sensing,” Remote Sensing for Land and Resources, Vol. 4, 2002, pp. 55-59.
[13] Q. Weng, D. Lu and J. Schubring, “Estimation of Land Surface Temperature-Vegetation Abundance Relationship for Urban Heat Island Studies,” Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 89, No. 4, 2004, pp. 467-483. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2003.11.005
[14] Y. Q. Wang, “Estimation of Land Surface Temperature using Landsat-7 ETM+ Thermal Infrared and Weather Data,” Department of Natural Resources Science, Uni- versity of Rhode Island Kingston, RI 02881, USA, 2005.
[15] Q. Weng and D. Lu, “A Sub-Pixel Analysis of Urbanization Effect on Land Surface Temperature and Its Interplay with Impervious Surface and Vegetation Coverage in Indianapolis, United States,” International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, Vol. 10 No. 1, 2008, pp. 68-83. doi:10.1016/j.jag.2007.05.002
[16] E. Tawfik and A. Swedan, “Geology of Cairo-Suez district, Western Part of the N. Eastern Desert,” Geological Survey, Egypt, 1992, report No. 34/92.
[17] F. F. Sabins, “Remote Sensing, Principles and Inter-pretation,” Freeman, New York, 1997.
[18] P. M. Harris and S. J. Ventura, “The Integration of Geogra- Phic Data with Remotely Sensed Imagery to Improve Classification in an Urban Area,” Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, Vol. 61, No. 8, 1995, pp. 993-998.
[19] R. J. Jensen, “Remote Sensing of the Environment: An earth Resource Perspective,” 2nd Edition, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, 2007.
[20] T. M. Lillesand and R. W. Kiefer, “Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation,” John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NewYork, 1994.
[21] R. G. Congalton, “A Review of Assessing the Accuracy of Classifications of Remotely Sensed Data,” Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 37, No. 1, 1991, pp. 35-46.
[22] R. Anderson, E. Hardy, J. Roach and R. Witmer, “A Land Use and Land Cover Classification System for Use with Remote Sensor Data,” USGS Professional Paper, Washington, D.C., 1976.
[23] D. Lu, P. Mausel, E. Brondízio and E. Moran, “Change Detection Techniques,” International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 25, No. 12, 2004, pp. 2365-2407. doi:10.1080/0143116031000139863
[24] A. S. Goudie, “Land Transformation. In The Challenge for Geography: A Changing World, A Changing Dis-cipline, In: R. J. Johnston Ed., Blackwell, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 117-137.
[25] R. M. Turner, “Long-Term Vegetation Change at a Fully Protected Sonoran Desert Site,” Ecology, Vol. 71, No. 2, 1990, pp. 464-477. doi:10.2307/1940301
[26] G. Gutman, “Land Change Science. In: Monitoring and Understanding Trajectories of Change on the Earth’s Surface,” Dordrecht Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, 2004, pp. 329-350.
[27] S. I. Rasool, “Potential of Remote Sensing for the Study of Global Change,” COSPAR Report to the International Council of Scientific Unions, Advances in Space Research, Pergamon Press, Oxford, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1987.
[28] S. Ustin, “Manual of Remote Sensing: Remote Sensing for Natural Resource Management and Environmental Monitoring,” John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2004.
[29] R. J. Jensen, “Introductory Digital Image Processing,” Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, 1995, pp. 467-475.

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.