Monitoring Degradation of Agricultural Areas for Delta Region in Egypt using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Changes that have occurred in both urban and vegetation areas were monitored in study area (about 20,000 km2 ) in the Delta region of Egypt throughout the years: 2003, 2009, and 2014 . Four Landsat images were adopted for every year in this study . Landsat 8 (2014) ,ETM (2009), and TM 5(2003) were preprocessed. Different approaches: DeltaCue ,Objective, different Classifications, Change Detection , were investigated and tested to follow these changes. The change in vegetation and urban areas was calculated at the level of the entire study area and then at the provincial level . The results showed that there was an increase in urban areas in conjunction with decrease in the agricultural areas. Urban areas increased from 2003 to 2009 by 124.8 thousand feddans and from 2009 to 2014 by 61.6 thousand feddans, hence the areas of urban blocks increased by 186.34 thousand feddans in 11 years on the other hand, agricultural areas decreased from 2003 to 2009 by 95 .73 thousand feddans and continued to decreased from 2009 to 2014 by 90.63 thousand feddans ,reaching a total decreased values of 186.35 thousand feddanes over a period of 11 years. Accuracy assessments were done for the three years based on ground truth points deduced from Google Earth. Overall accuracy for 2003 classification was 93% with kappa= 80.9%, for 2009 classification was 95% with kappa= 88.7%, and for 2014 classification was 92% with kappa= 82.7% . Finally it can be concluded that there was a real degradation and decline in agricultural areas in Delta, thus representing a real danger to food security and Egyptian agricultural wealth.