SERIES OF LAND USE LAND COVER MAPS OF IRAQ SCALE 1:250000 ALSALMAN QUADRANGLE SHEET NH-38-6

Abstract

The map area is located nearly in the south part of Iraq; only small cities lies within the map area such as Al-Salman, Shbicha, AL-Athameen which belong to AL-Muthana governorate. The remote sensing techniques have used in order to investigate possible Land Use Land Cover (LULC) map of Al-Salman Quadrangle, scale 1:250 000 depending on Landsat8 LDCM (Landsat Data Continuity Mission) satellite image at acquisition date in September 2013, and classification procedure that is developed by USGS. LULC map has produced depending on maximum Likelihood supervised classifications (ML) of LDCM image. This image has classified into four main classes and the result of accuracy assessment for supervised classification is 91.3% and Kappa coefficient is 0.91 by using ERDAS Imagine v 2014 program. The LULC raster image is converted to vector structure, using Arc GIS v.10 program in order to create a digital LULC map

Four main classes of LULC have recognized in the map area, these are Urban and Built-up Land class (Code 1), Vegetated Land class (Code 2) include shrubland subclass (subcode 24), Agricultural Land Non-Vegetated class (Code 3) include Harvested Land subclass (subcode 32), and finally Barren Land class (Code 7), The Barren Land Class has divided into subclasses, Bare Exposed Rock subclass(subcode 74), which include Mixed exposed rocks (subcode 743), Desert Varnish (subcode 744) , Desert Pavement (subcode 745) , Mixed Barren land subclass (subcode 77) , Bare soil (subcode 78).