Appropriate Methods for Monitoring and Mapping Land Cover Changes in Semi-arid Areas in North Kordofan (Sudan) by Using Satellite Imagery and Spectral Mixture Analysis

Remote sensing has long been suggested as a time-and cost-efficient method for monitoring changes in arid and semi-arid environments. In this frame, many efforts have been made in the development of different methods of monitoring and assessing dry land degradation. Spectral mixture analysis (SMA) is recently much recommended as a most suitable method for monitoring and mapping land use land cover changes in arid and semi-arid regions. Therefore the main objective of the presented paper is to characterise and map the land use/ land cover changes in semi-arid areas in Northern Kordofan State (Sudan) by using SMA and multi-temporal imagery of the Landsat satellites TM (1988) and ETM (2003). The paper discusses and evaluates the efficiency of SMA in monitoring the land cover changes in semi-arid regions.