DETECTION LAND COVER CHANGES OF THE BAQUBA CITY FOR THE PERIOD 2014-2019 USING SPECTRAL INDICES

Abstract

This study was conducted on the Land coverings of the city of Baquba and its outskirts in Diyala province, central Iraq, between latitudes 44º 42ʹ 31.78ʺ ــ  44º33ʹ 14.99ʺ  and 33º41ʹ 46.66ʺ ــ  33º 48ʹ 23.18ʺ an area of 180,835 km². In order to classify the earth covers, it was relied on the field survey to determine the grounding points. Also used two satellite data from Landsat 8, the first one on 23/3/2014, the second on 21/3/2019, and the production of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Normalized Differences Built- up the Index (NDBI) maps. The results of the survey was showed five varieties are vegetation cover, agricultural land, water, buildings and barren land. They were identified and compared with the 75 land control points, The accuracy of the classification was calculated using Kappa It was 89% , and purely concluded that the use of manuals NDVI, NDWI and NDBI was useful for classifying Land coverings and detecting changes as they are considered an easy and fast method.