Producing of land cover map for marshes areas in the south of Iraq using GIS and remote sensing techniques

Abstract

Because of the importance of the Marshlands and their vital role in economic and environmental aspects in the south of Iraq, it is necessary to know the changes in their land cover, especially water and natural vegetation for current period depending on image processing techniques for Landsat images. Hence, this research aimed to produce a land cover map for the marshes area using GIS and remotely sensed data. In this research, Landsat satellite images and set of maps were used to analyze and extract the information using GIS and remote sensing techniques. Two essential indices were extracted from satellite images: Transformed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (TNDVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). A supervised classification was also used to produce a land cover map for the study area. After conducting all the necessary analyses, the results showed that there is an increase in the surface area of waters and natural vegetation of the marshes in the current period.