Monitoring land cover of the desert fringes of the eastern Nile Delta, Egypt

Remote sensing provides a possibility to significantly speed-up mapping of natural resources and to establish an efficient system for monitoring of their changes. Resource manages are now able to monitor changes in vegetation cover and land use patterns over large areas. The objective of the current investigation is to asses capability of multitemporal analysis of LANDSAT data through comparisons with ground based observation, to identify land cover changes and monitoring vegetation of the new reclaimed areas in the extension of the eastern part of the Nile Delta of Egypt. LANDSAT MSS and TM data of the summer seasons 1976 and 1994, respectively were available for the land cover studies. On the basis of the spectral reflectance characteristics, simple ratio, normalized difference vegetation index and ground truth data are possible to determine the main parameters to monitor the changing in the vegetation covers under the Egyptian condition. Seven different approaches land cover/land use classes are distinguished; three classes of which are for agricultural use, one class represent desert and sandy soils areas, one class is for water, while two classes are occupied by built-up areas. Multitemporal comparison have been undertaken, the changes of the land cover and land use patterns are distinguished. The result indicate that the variation in land cover reflectance is a function of soil characteristics.