Monitoring Urban and Land Use Changes in Al-Kharj Saudi Arabia using Remote Sensing Techniques

An integrated study of the contributions of urbanisation in the depletion of the green (agriculture and recreational) areas in Al-Kharj City in southern Riyadh, the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) using remote sensing is presented. The study explores the temporal and spatial characteristics of urban expansion and land use/cover changes from 2000 to 2013. Temporally, the results suggest that over the period under review there has been a growth in terms of physical structures mostly located in areas around the middle of the city. These changes are evidence of the expansion the city has witnessed over the past decade-and-a-half. Prior to this, the city was largely agrarian in nature but urbanisation has led to a steep decline in crop production and other agricultural activities. Similarly, the results from the study confirm that, spatially, as with the rest of the Kingdom, desertification has continued to expand unabated. This has led to shortage of water for irrigation activities as evinced by the depletion in land cover that was hitherto taken up by crops, palm trees, vegetation and trees. Lastly, the study infers that the trends of expansion and land use/cover change in the city can be traced to population growth; traffic conditions; industrialisation; and government's planning policies.