Agro-ecological Data Aspects in Arid Zone and Role of Remote Sensing

• Main Author: Hanna, S.H.S.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Crops; Data acquisition; Degradation; Ecosystems; Humans; Productivity; Remote monitoring; Remote sensing; Satellites; Soil
• ISSN: 2153-6996; 2153-7003
• DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS.2006.111

Remote sensing data acquisition from the satellite images is very important for the scientific evaluation of land-use, monitoring changes, and to allow best management of use of the resources. Agro-ecosystems in arid lands are very important to provide the agricultural crops that can provide food for the living population on these lands. The arid lands are covering more than 30% of the total world areas (i.e. the classification of the dry-lands, are: Hyper-arid 7.5%, Arid 12.1% and semiarid 17.7% of the total world areas lands [13,049 million hectares] in consequence)[1]. The present paper will assess the agro-ecosystems in the arid zone and the effectiveness use of the remotely sensed data from satellite images. The remote sensing data showed that the agro-ecosystems in the arid zone are very susceptible to water shortages and reduction of rainfall. Further, the arid lands are characterized with the following phenomena: (1) agriculture in most arid zone countries is the main consumer of water; (2) most arid zone countries have high population growth, and rural population densities are generally much higher than overall population densities; (3) the arid zones have a surprising diversity of agro-ecological systems, with edaphically conditions that can deviate substantially from those of surrounding areas and this is due to the mosaic of changes in the water resources; (4) the surrounding of agro-ecosystems in these areas are very highly productive due to the intensive agricultural practice and the systems of comprehensive monoculture crops which in turn to establish the high productivity; (5) because of the vulnerability of the surrounding environment in the arid regions such as winds, sand storms, heat and these environmental issues can cause damages to these ecosystems and destruction and to accelerate the degradation; and (6) The human stresses in these ecosystems further encourage the further destruction of the soil, increasing salinity in the soil and further degradation and the reduction of productivity of these agricultural ecosystems. Using of spatial analysis of the GIS systems provided the important picture of the degraded ecosystems and the impact of human pressures on these ecosystems. I believe that the research which are targeted towards data spatialization and integration of remotely sensing information, in addition to meteorological data, terrestrial ecosystems data of land cover that were measured by using the Advanced Very High Resolution