Change of land Use / Cover in Algeria's Steppe Ecosystem: A case Study of Southern Hodna

This study employs a change detection analysis of land use/cover in the Algerian steppe ecosystem of Southern Hodna over the span of 21 years, with the integration of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing. Two Landsat satellite images (1995 and 2016) were classified via supervised classification into four major different classes: agriculture, rangeland, degraded rangeland, and sand dunes. After that, the post-classification change detection technique was used to analyse changes through cross-tabulation. The results show a notable growth in the agriculture class by 8.45% due to agricultural development in this region, with irrigation using groundwater. Sand dunes and degraded rangeland also increased by 6.94% and 23.48% respectively. A huge loss in the rangeland class by 38.87% was noted due to the continuous expansion of agriculture at its expense and non-stop overgrazing. This study mainly demonstrates the importance of spatio-temporal change detection in disclosing change in land use/cover that occurred in Southern Hodna, along with the necessity to develop strategies to further reduce the land degradation that this region faces.