Spatio-Temporal Dynamics and Evolution of Land Use Land Cover Using Remote Sensing and GIS in Sebou Estuary, Morocco

Land use and land cover (LULC) represent the ongoing challenge of environmental variation. The understanding of the level and process of its change is the basis for any environmental planning and management. In Morocco, as everywhere in the world, human population densities are constantly increasing on the coastal zones. This results in a continuous and rapid acceleration of the use of coastal space and an increase in pressures on ecosystems and the different species they contain. The purpose of this study is the analysis of the changes in LULC from 1985 to 2017 in the coastal area of Sebou estuary, situated in the Northwest of the Moroccan Atlantic coast. The changes were identified and assessed after classifying a series of Landsat images taken during 1985, 2002 and 2017. The algorithm used for the classification is the Support Vector Machine (SVM), which yielded results with accuracy higher than 85%. The results of the land use land cover change describe phenomenal urbanization and deforestation, as well as an evolution of the agricultural sector, indicating the impact of anthropization in this vulnerable environment.