Land cover changes in Tunisia using MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) MCD12Q1 yearly products
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Badabate Diwediga. (4/11/2017). Land cover changes in Tunisia using MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) MCD12Q1 yearly products.
Abstract
Land cover is one of the important components of the global geosphere-biosphere-atmosphere
continuum and equilibrium. Regular information on land cover is necessary for a continuous
monitoring of the Earth’s ecological balance. This study used the MODIS MCD12Q1 yearly
data at 500 m resolution to evaluate the spatio-temporal changes in the national land cover of
Tunisia. Land cover maps were generated for two years (2001 and 2013) and evaluated by
other existing Global Land Cover data (Globcover, Google Earth) and field collected data sets.
The overall evaluation accuracies were 63 % and 78 % for the maps of 2013 and 2001,
respectively. Areal distribution analysis showed that barren/sparse vegetation areas were the
most important LUC types in Tunisia for both years (68.07 % and 62.43 % in 2001 and 2013,
respectively), indicating an area loss. Agricultural areas were of 2279722.04 ha (14.70 %) in
2001 and 2938599.54 ha (18.95 %) in 2013. The proportion of forests increased (more than
double) from 0.27 % in 2001 to 0.57 % in 2013. Most important changes showed that the
highest gain proportions occurred in the mosaic forest-savanna-grassland (7.22 %) and
agricultural areas (5.15 %). Globally, there is a net increase of agricultural lands of about
659250 ha (4.25 % of the national lands) over the period 2001-2013. With the spatial resolution
of the MODIS data, and the time window considered, caution should be given to the
conclusions derived in this study. Further detailed studies using finer resolution satellite images
could give more insights to the real changes occurred in specific land use/cover type at the
country level.
