Quantifying land use/land cover change and its potential impact on rice production in the Northern Nile Delta, Egypt

Land use/land cover (LULC) and their changes are critically required for any sustainable development policies. In this research, the changes in LULC in Kafr El-Sheikh Governorate, northern Nile Delta, Egypt, were investigated. The LULC distribution over four different dates; 1972, 1984, 2003, and 2016 were carried out based on supervised procedure using maximum likelihood classifier (MLC). Ten LULC classes were distinguished based on this procedure; agricultural land, fallow, urban or built-up land, lake, Nile, fish farm, natural vegetation, wet sabkha, dry sabkha, and sand sheet. Three post classification tools (majority analysis, clump classes, and sieve classes) were used to enhance the classified image and obtained more accurate thematic maps. For accuracy assessment, the confusion matrix was achieved. Post-classification change detection technique was employed as it is commonly implemented for detecting both nature and rate of changes at the assigned location. The results indicated that the dry sabkha significantly decreased from 16.5% to 2% between 1972 and 2016, respectively. Between 1972 and 2003 the agricultural land increased by around 10% due to the reclamation efforts, simultaneously, the urban area increased from 5% to 9%. In 1972, the fish farms did not exist, between 1983 and 2016 the fish farm increased from 4% to 11%, respectively. The Burullus Lake has significantly altered during the assigned dates since its area decreased from around 480 km(2) in 1972 to 222 km(2) by 2016. The overall accuracy of resulted thematic maps were over 90%. Due to the loss in agriculture land for built-up land, there could be economic risks that affect the rice cultivation and production in this area. The results indicated that as the total loss increase as the time increase, the economic analysis reveals that the total loss in 2016 was 78,750 feddan (feddan=4200m(2)) which is equal to 164,823,750 L.E. if it used in rice production. The findings of this research can help the decision makers for better management plans.