Assessment of land-use/land- cover change in Muharraq Island using multi-temporal and multi-source geospatial data

Employing geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) techniques is found very important these days to aid city planners and decision-makers to make effective decisions and designs. The updated remotely sensed imagery and their integration into GIS allow the planners to continuously monitor changes and make effective decisions for future city plans. In this multi-temporal study, RS and GIS data were integrated to map out, assess and quantify the land-use/land-cover changes (LULCC) in Muharraq Governorate (Island), in the Kingdom of Bahrain, from 1951 to 2008. The data sets used are analogue topographic maps for the years of 1951, 1970, 1977, 1985 and 1994, aerial photographs taken in the years of 1961, 2001, 2007, and finally IKONOS Satellite imagery, taken in 2008 with ground spatial resolution of 1 m. The adopted methodology was based on the collection of data sets mentioned above: map scanning; geo-referencing and/or ortho-rectification. Visual interpretation was performed, and seven land-use/land-cover maps (classifications) were produced. The results showed that the total area of Muharraq has increased from 13 km(2) in 1951 to 56 km(2) in 2008. Accordingly, built-up area from 2.3 to 9.7 km(2), the industrial area was inexistent in the past and now increased by 14.0 km(2), coastal line from 35.0 to 166.0 km(2), the airport area increased from 2.3 to 5.9 km(2), the vegetation area dropped from 9.5% to 5.1%, and finally, the length of road network increased from 11.5 to 450.5 km. Based on the above findings, this study recommends to develop a database for the city of Muharraq by the integration of RS and GIS data sets, thereby the results will be very useful for decision-makers and planners. Furthermore, it is recommended to allocate at least one beach for public uses.