The influence of population growth and refugees settlements on land use change in Jordan has been assessed by using Geographic Information System and ENVI-supervised classification technique. Eleven Landsat 8 OLI Images (cloud free) were used to classify the whole Jordanian area. Maximum likelihood classification was applied to estimate rangeland, vegetation, urban, water and forest percentages for the period (2013-2015). After that, Landsat images were used also to classify the two major Municipalities lands in Jordan (Amman and Irbid) into urban, agricultural and undeveloped lands to investigate the spatial and temporal urban expansion on the agricultural lands for the period 2003-2015. During the first study, change detection technique was performed on both 2013 and 2015 images. Change detection analysis using remotely-sensed data revealed a marked expansion of urban area and a reduction in rangeland percentage especially, in north-western Jordan. Across the study period (2013-2015), Jordanian rangelands percentage decreased by 10.4%, forests by 0.4% and water by 0.5%. Meanwhile, urban area increased by 10.8% and agricultural lands by 0.5%. During the second study; across the study period (2003-2015), agricultural lands decreased by 13% and 10% and urban area increased by 16% and 12% in Amman and Irbid respectively. We attributed this change mainly to refugees settlement rather than to normal population growth rate. This settlement process increased the demand for food and water and accelerated the desertification process in Jordanian rangelands, especially those in the north-western part. Overall, we suggest initiating rigorous urban settlement and land conservation control programs to mitigate land degradation in Jordanian rangelands and agricultural lands.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.