Impact of North Gas Field development on landuse/landcover changes at Al Khore, North Qatar, using remote sensing and GIS

Four dates of satellite images are utilized to monitor landuse/landcover changes at Al Khore municipality following discovering of the North Gas Field at the Northeast coast of the state of Qatar. Ras Laffan Port has been designed and purpose built primarily as the export facility for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) derived from the processing of gas landed from the North Field Gas Reservoir situated 67 km NNE of the Port. Remote sensing data includes, MSS 1977, Landsat Thematic Mapper 1988 and 2000 and IRSS 2008. The rapid increase in population over the last three decades is attributed to the strong performance of the economy. At Al Khore, number of population increases from 31,547, 4.2% of total population in year 2004 to 50,917, 6.1% of total population in year 2006. Production Capacity of Ras Gas from the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) increases from 6.6 million tons in year 1999 to 35.7 million tons in year 2012. Change detection is processed to assess the impact of Ras Laffan harbour on coastal changes. The most appropriate band combination, band ratios and images classifications were specified to enhance land cover in each image data. ArcGIS.9.3 is used to analyse, map and assess the current urban and regional planning. The results indicate that Al Khore master plan comes in response to rapid development of the state of Qatar, the most suitable regional plan should be suggested for sustainable development. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.