International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—Desertification is a serious threat to environment, agriculture, and public health all over the world. Iraq is concerned about desertification, particularly in the southern regions. As a result, this project will use geospatial methodologies to measure desertification susceptibility in Al-Khidhir, Al-Muthanna. The assessment was based on Landsat 5 TM data from 1998, Landsat 7 ETM+ data from 2008, and Landsat 8 OLI data from 2018. A Multicriteria Decision-Making (MCDM) technique based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was developed to assess the spatial distribution of desertification in the research area and the likelihood that it will occur soon. An examination of the geographical distribution of desertification in Al-Khidhir in 1998 indicated that desertification was most prevalent in the southern region, accounting for 25.9% of the total. Desertification spread to neighboring areas and increased (50.8%) in the research region’s north in 2008. The findings suggested that using satellite photos, such as Landsat, can be extremely effective for assessing desertification.

Index Terms—Desertification susceptibility, convolutional neural network, analytic hierarchy process, Al-Khidhir district

Yasir Abdulameer Nayyef Aldabbagh and Shattri Mansor are with the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang, Malaysia. Yasir Abdulameer Nayyef Aldabbagh and Shattri Mansor are also with Geospatial Information Science Research Centre (GISRC), Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang, Malaysia.
Helmi Zulhaidi Mohd Shafri is with the Department of Civil Engineering and Geospatial Information Science Research Centre (GISRC), Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang, Malaysia.
Mohd Hasmadi Ismail is with the Department of Forestry Science and Biodiversity, Faculty of Forestry Universiti Putra Malaysia, Puchong Selangor, Malaysia.
*Correspondence: helmi@upm.edu.my, hzms2312@gmail.com (H.Z.M.S.)

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Cite: Yasir Abdulameer Nayyef Aldabbagh, Helmi Zulhaidi Mohd Shafri*, Shattri Mansor, and Mohd Hasmadi Ismail, "Desertification Susceptibility Assessment Using Expert-Based Approach in Al-Khidhir District, Southern Iraq," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 364-372, 2023.

Copyright © 2023 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).