MONITORING THE LAND-USE/LAND-COVER CHANGES IN SYRIA FROM 2013 TO 2020 USING GOOGLE EARTH ENGINE

Abstract

Wars and armed conflicts are one of the most catastrophic factors that affect nations due to their negative impacts on the community, environment, and land-use/land-cover. There are several methods to detect the land-use/land-cover changes, such as the traditional method represented by traditional land surveying, but considering the negativity of the traditional techniques, we find out that they are inappropriate in term of cost and effort; thus, it has to be an alternative way to reduce the cost and effort. This is where the importance of technology development comes from, especially in the field of remote sensing, in which remote sensing enables us to observe the land-use/land-cover changes remotely through satellite imagery. Landsat series is sufficient open-source to detect such changes, especially when it comes to large scale areas like a whole country. The aim of this investigation is to detect and estimate the land-use/land-cover changes in Syria during the crisis which have swept the country since 2011, concentrating on the armed conflict phase, which has commenced in 2013 onwards. Landsat 8 OLI satellite images have been used in 2013, 2015, 2018, and 2020 to detect the land-use/land-cover changes. The findings of the study indicate that there were enormous changes in cultivated areas, in which they have shrunk significantly during the armed conflict period, whereas they extended after the relaxation had prevailed in 2019. In term of bare land area, it increased significantly because of the transformation of the cultivated areas to bare lands due to the population displacement and military activities, especially in the northeast part of Syria, where there are vast cultivated areas. This study has been done using Google Earth Engine platform for the reason that it saves time during the analysis of satellite images compared to traditional software. Google Earth Engine platform depends on the archived satellite imageries, but at the same time, sufficient internet connection should be available because this platform is built on cloud-based.