Detection of environmental changes based on remote sensing techniques

Remotely sensed data acquired by the American Landsat imaging system in the visible and infrared spectral are used to extract the environmental changes taken place in Greater Khartoum during the period 1996 and 2000. The test data is subjected to different digital image processing techniques. This includes geometrical corrections, image enhancement and classification operations. The classified images of the year 1996 and 2000 have been crossed with each other to model and detect the environmental changes in the study area. Further statistical analysis based on histograms of the crossed images is applied to assess the amount of changes taken place in the study area. In general, remarkable environmental changes were detected in Greater Khartoum area where the rate of change was in the range of 36% to 93%. Moreover, the study area is suffering from gentle desertification from 1996 to 2000.