Study of Desertification using Remote Sensing Imagery in South Iraq

Abstract

Recently The problem of desertification and vegetation cover degradation become an  environmental  global  challenge. This problem could be summarized as  as the land cover changes. In this paper, the area of Al- Muthana in the south of Iraq will be consider as one of Semi-arid lands. For this purpose, the Ladsat-8 images can be used with 15 m in spatial resolution. In order to over Achieve the work, many important ground truth data must be collected such as, rain precipitation, temperature distribution over the seasons, the DEM of the region, and the soil texture characteristics. The extracted  data  from this project are  tables, 2-D figures, and GIS maps represent the distributions of vegetation areas, evaporation / precipitation, river levels and discharge, temperature, dust storms and any factors that influencing in the desertification.