Scenario of land use and land cover change in the Gaza Strip using remote sensing and GIS models

Land use and land cover change is a major global environmental change issue, and projecting changes are essential for the assessment of the environment. The Gaza Strip will have grown over 2.4 million inhabitants by 2023, and the land demands will exceed the sustainable capacity of land use by far. Land use planning is one of the most difficult issues in the Gaza Strip given that this area is too small. Continuous urban and industrial growth will place additional stress on land cover, unless appropriate integrated planning and management actions are instituted immediately. Planners need further statistics and estimation tools to achieve their vision for the future based on sound information. Therefore, this study combines the use of satellite remote sensing with geographic information systems (GISs). The spatial database is developed by using five Landsat images gathered in 1972, 1982, 1990, 2002 and 2013. Three GIS models are selected for simulation by the year 2023: Geomod, CA_Markov and Land Change Modeler using Idrisi Selva. The projected urban area will have undergone an increase of 212.3 km(2) by the year 2023 in the used models, and the percentage of urban area will account for 58.83 % of the Gaza strip by 2023.