SERIES OF LAND USE-LAND COVER MAPS OF IRAQ SCALE 1:250 000 OF SAB’A EBYAR AND AL-RUTBA

Abstract

The map area is a part of the Iraqi western desert which is, generally, a flat rocky terrain. It lies within the AL- Anbar Governorate that extends from the Syrian border at the north, to the Jordanian border to the west. The remote sensing techniques are used in order to prepare Land Use Land Cover Map (LULCM) of the Sab'a Ebyar and AL-Rutba Quadrangles using supervised classification technique depending on Landsat 8 OLI image 2015 (scale 1:250 000). The classification procedure that was developed by USGS and modified after Anderson by GEOSURV remote sensing division team is used to prepare LULC classes. ENVI V.5.1 and Arc GIS V.10 software has used in order to produce a digital LULCM. Field work was not carried out in this report due to security circumstances and the map area is currently not safe. Therefore; the determination of the classes mainly depends on the previous works and reports and using high spatial resolution satellite images such as Quickbird and Google earth. The LULCM area is produced depending on supervised classification of each pixel of Landsat 8 image to be assigned to one of the four main classes. Four classes include Urban and Built-up Land class (Code 1), Vegetated Land class (Code 2), Water class (Code 5) is the smallest area which about 0.63 Km2 and Barren Land class (Code 7). Barren Land class is the most common class in the map area and it subdivided into three