Change Detection in Hour-Ibn Nnjam / Middle of IRAQ by Using Water Index (W.I) Algebra

Change detection is one of the most widely used processing techniques in remote sensing. It is a process of identifying differences in the state of a geographic feature or phenomenon by monitoring at different times. In order to detect the changes in a phenomenon, the function Water Index (WI) is used to identify changes in water content of the marsh during different periods of time. Landsat satellite data is used of sensors MSS for the years 1974 1992 and sensors TM 1984 and ETM sensors for the years 2003, 2006, 2009 By using Arc GIS software, the results are converted to thematic maps which represent water index coefficient through multiple years, as well as the use of Erase tool in the toolbox in the Arc GIS software, in order to find out the increase and decrease of the water content of the Marsh during the past years. The results showed that there is an increase in the area of the marsh in 1974 and 1984 and 1992 with an areas 210, 237, 219 km2 , respectively and a decrease in2003, 2006 and 2009 of 52, 58, 74 km2, respectively