Detecting urban growth using remote sensing and GIS techniques in Al Gharbiya governorate, Egypt

Tanta and Quttour are the important districts in Al Gharbiya governorate, Middle of Nile Delta, Egypt. Urban sprawl is one of the main problems that reduce the limited highly fertile land in the Nile Delta of Egypt. Computational urban growth and computer hardware had made possible unprecedented increase in the availability and provide information inputs to planners. Remote sensing technology has shown its great capabilities to solve many earth resources issues. The aim of this study is to produce land use and cover map for the studied area at varied periods to monitor possible changes that may occurred, particularly in the urban areas and agriculture and subsequently predict likely changes. Two land sat images, Multispectral Scanner (MSS) in the 1972 and Enhanced Thematic Mapped (ETM) in the 2005 were used to assess the changes of agricultural lands, urban encroachment and water areas during this period with integration by GIS. The agricultural areas in Tanta and Quttour decreased by 7.17% and 5.84%, respectively from the year 1972 to 2005, while the urban areas increased by 7.17–5.84%, respectively. This urban expansion causes loss of productive agricultural lands. Finding data is useful for decision maker to investigate and monitoring illegal use of agricultural land in Nile Valley and Delta.