The Change in the Land Cover of Mahmudiyah City in Iraq for the Last Three Decades

The land cover of Mahmudiyah city, located south of the capital, Baghdad - Iraq, was studied for the period from 1986 to 2021 with five years between every two successive scenes, where Landsat scenes were used downloaded from the US Geological Survey (USGS ) website with low cloud cover for sensors TM and OLI. The land cover of the study area was classified. The total accuracy of the classification was calculated, as well as the analysis of the user accuracy and the classifier accuracy (maximum likelihood) and its impact on the overall classification accuracy. The lowest accuracy value in 2009 was (85.101% (and the highest accuracy value in 1995) was 95.654%). The constancy percentage of the class for the adopted years was calculated and compared to 1986 as a reference year to determine the changes in the land cover of the study area. It was found that there were changes in the classes influencing one the other, and the constancy percentage of the class was low due to environmental influences and human factors. The constancy percentage of the urban class was recorded at 50%, while the other classes did not exceed this rate since they suffered from the overlap of their spectral response. The low spatial resolution of the Landsat scenes (30 meters per pixel) led to recording omissions and commission, which decreased the overall classification accuracy.