Integration of Landsat, Climate and Field Data for Land cover Mapping in South Corridor of Sudan

Analyzing land cover change over semi-arid region with complex land surface features is a central challenge facing the earth science society. One such region is West Kordofan State in semi-arid zone of Sudan. Here, we monitor and quantify the spatio-temporal land cover change dynamics of this area over the years 2005 and 2015. A supervised classification of Landsat data, complemented by detailed field survey data for the entire area, land cover maps were created to explore the changes in the major land cover categories in spatially explicit way. Subsequent change analysis between these years found extensive conversions of natural environment as the result of climate variability and anthropogenic related activities. Water body, bare land and shrub land decreased by approximately 45.9 km2, 1979.5 km2 and 3366.9 km2, respectively. The largest relative land cover change over the entire study period was the decreased of shrub land. Woody land and sand area increased by nearly 2319.3 km2 and 3073.3 km2.  Woody land growth resulted mainly from the conversion of water body (9.4%) and shrub land (15.2%), while sand area expanded due to the rapid desert encouragement. Despite limited data availability, this study fills the gap of much needed detailed and updated land cover change information for the semi-arid zone of Sudan. These multi-temporal datasets would be a valuable baseline for local land use managers and decision-makers in the region to understand and respond appropriately to emerging environmental risks like desertification.