Land-use/land-cover change: a key to understanding land degradation and relating environmental impacts in Northwestern Sinai, Egypt

Land degradation and environmental impacts are major impediments to the utilization of land in many arid and semiarid regions of the world and are a major issue in the Northwestern Sinai (NWS), Egypt. Monitoring and detecting of land-use/land-cover (LU/LC) changes and land degradation are very important for the planners, governments and the scientific communities, particularly where there are increasing pressures from human and natural activities on the adjacent environment. Water-logged, saltaffected soils, coastal erosion and sand dunes encroachment are serious environmental hazards resulting in the wasteland and geoenvironmental risks. Presently, attempts have been made to analyze and determine the changes in LU/LC of NWS. The present work utilizes image processing and GIS techniques to determine most of the causes that result in intensive land degradations and recommends appropriate remedial measures within the NWS. Multi-temporal remote sensing data and ASTER GDEM were used to map the LU/ LC change areas. Many image processing techniques and statistical analysis were applied to draw numerous thematic and geospatial distribution maps for the degraded lands. The results showed that the rapid change in LC was attributed to human activities which led to heavy deteriorations of NWS environment. Also, the prevalence of natural risk corresponding to coastal erosion, water level rising and sand dunes encroachment increase the susceptibility of hazards to the NWS area. The current study provides decision makers and resources managers with appropriate remedial measures that are necessary to avoid severe future environmental difficulties within the NWS.