Analysis of LULC changes and urban expansion of the resort city of Al Ain using remote sensing and GIS

Abstract

Remote sensing data integrated with GIS techniques were used together with socio-economic data in a post-classification analysis to map the spatial dynamics of land use/cover changes and identify the urbanization process in Al Ain resort city, United Arab Emirates. Land use/cover statistics, extracted from Landsat Multi-spectral Scanner (MSS). Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM +) images for 1972. 1990 and 2000 respectively, revealed that the built-up area has expanded by about 170.53km2. The city was found to have a tendency for major expansion in four different directions: North, North-east, southeast, and south-west. GIS overlay analysis of multi-temporal satellite data helped us tracking the different classes' trajectories by adopting a GIS coding system unique to each class.