Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS to Detect the Spatial and Temporal Changes of Land Use and Land Cover in Jerash Governorate, North-West Jordan

Geographic information systems and remote sensing data were used to monitor the natural resources in Jerash Governorate. Land use and land cover (LULC), and Spatio-temporal changes between 1990 and 2019 were analyzed. The postclassification analysis technique was used for processing the data of digital satellite images to detect the temporal changes in the target area during the specified period. Remote sensing techniques were adopted to classify the satellite images and illustrated land cover maps revealed the expansion and contraction of the land cover from 1990 to 2019. Supervised classification was used to categorize the Landsat images into five classes using the maximum-likelihood classification tool of ArcMap 10.4 software. The results indicated an increase in urbanization and cultivated lands at the cost of bare lands and forests. The results also depicted a significant increase in agricultural (101.4 sq. km), urban (45.5 sq. km), and water covered lands (1.3 sq. km) in 2019 as compared to 1990, which symbolizes an expansion of 28.8 %, 101.3%, and 225 %, respectively. Contrarily, a decline in both bare lands (16.2%) and forests (8%) was noted. The total accuracy of classified images was quite significant and remained