Modeling the urban sprawl effect on vegetation-cover in Annaba

Abstract

The environment is related to urban sprawl; it’s considered as the main threat to the natural city and the destruction of rural area. The aim of this study is to analyse changes on land-cover (urban task and forest-cover) in Annaba, using digital image processing techniques and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In order to analyse land-use change and natural resource degradation and subsequently understand the relationship between the two processes, we mapped the urban stain and the vegetation-cover using multi-temporal satellite images on the years of 2000 and 2017.In that case, after observing and characterising the areas altering by the urban expansion, the modeling of the urban sprawl effect on vegetation-cover is realised by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The results displayed that; on 17 years; the urban growth of Annaba decreases the vegetation-cover by 28.50 %.