Salem Issa
Keywords: Geo-database, sustaining management, Abu Dhabi city, arid island, GIS overlay analysis.
Abstract: The objective of this study is to build a spatial GIS database for land management on the AL Sammalyah Island. Twenty GIS layers were created and inserted into a spatial database. GIS overlay analysis was applied to five major land cover types between 1999 and 2005 to estimate vigor of land cover change. The study drew the attention on the fact that real increase took place in most important land cover types namely mangrove, palm trees, and buildings registering more than 336%, 130%, and 300% increase respectively in six years. Hence, highlighting the success of planting salt tolerant vegetation to protect the environment and enhance the landscape in arid lands. Finally, building the GIS database was a real success; managers of the island started to use it as a source of information and generate statistics for land management, consequently reliability and flexibility of the remote sensing and GIS products were demonstrated.
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