Monitoring cropland changes along the Nile River in Egypt over past three decades (1984-2015) using remote sensing

The Nile River basin is the main agricultural area in Egypt. In recent decades, human activities and climate change have remarkably influenced the ecological environment there. Those changes have caused land degradation, sea level rise, and conflicts between land and population, threatening the agri...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of remote sensing 2017-08, Vol.38 (15), p.4459-4480
Main Authors: Xu, Yidi, Yu, Le, Zhao, Yuanyuan, Feng, Duoleng, Cheng, Yuqi, Cai, Xueliang, Gong, Peng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Classification
Climate change
Conflicts
Dynamics
Ecological effects
Environmental monitoring
Farming systems
Food security
Geographical distribution
Growing season
Image classification
Land degradation
Landsat
Landsat satellites
Population (statistical)
Remote sensing
River basins
Rivers
Satellite imagery
Sea level
Sea level rise
Statistical analysis
Statistical methods
Terrain
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The Nile River basin is the main agricultural area in Egypt. In recent decades, human activities and climate change have remarkably influenced the ecological environment there. Those changes have caused land degradation, sea level rise, and conflicts between land and population, threatening the agricultural system and food security of Egypt. In this study, cropland mapping along the Nile in Egypt over the past three decades (1984-2015) was conducted at annual frequency, using 961 Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI images. Spectral features of selected growing season images and band ratio-based indices were used in supervised classification. Thereafter, terrain and time series information were used to filter possible classification errors on the basis of logical judgment and statistical analysis. The average overall classification accuracy of cropland was greater than 90%. Furthermore, temporal and spatial characteristics of cropland expansion were analysed. The results highlight the annual geographical distribution of cropland dynamics from the Nile Valley to desert. In total, cropland areas had increased by 33.7% from 2848.1 kha in 1984 to 3807.8 kha in 2015, with an annual average increase of 31.0 kha in these 32 years.
ISSN:0143-1161
1366-5901
DOI:10.1080/01431161.2017.1323285