Land use/ Land cover assessment for Karbala City by using geographic information systems (GIS) technique

Abstract

The Earth's surface is experiencing swift changes in (LUALC) due to diverse socioeconomic activity and natural events. The primary aim of this research is to acquire a quantitative comprehension of the alterations in (LUALC) in Karbala from 2000 to 2023. The study utilized the supervised classification-maximum likelihood approach in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to identify (LUALC) changes in Karbala. Multispectral satellite data from Landsat 5 and 9 were employed for 2000 and 2023, respectively. The maps were categorized into four primary (LUALC) classifications: water, vegetation, building, and soil. The results explained an increase in the area of ​​building and vegetation by 7.67% equivalent to 388.7668km² and 7.81% equivalent to 395.9646km², respectively, and a decrease in the area of ​​water and soil, by -5.81% equivalent to -294.6234km² and -9.67% equivalent to -490.188km², respectively. The accuracy evaluation was conducted, revealing that the photos classified for the years 2000 and 2023 had overall accuracies of 90.90% and 93.33%, respectively. Finally, the Kappa coefficient values for the two photos were 0.8779 and 0.9095, respectively. Therefore, these statistics Demonstrate that the precision of (LUALC) classifications is convenient.