الفهرس 
Chapter (1): IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Dakahlia is one of the important agricultural governorates in the Middle of Nile-Delta, Egypt. Fertile agriculture areas in the Nile-Delta of Egypt are constantly deteriorating mainly due to urbanization. The main objectives of this study were to provide an accurate assessment of urban areas in Dakahlia Governorate and to study the impact of urbanization on agricultural lands. This was in addition to identifying and analyzing the urban sprawl of Al-Mansoura city from 1984 to 2014. Accordingly, Landsat TM images in 1984 and ETM+ in 2002 and 2011 and OLI-TIRS in 2014 were used to study spatial and temporal changes in both urban and agricultural lands in Dakahlia Governorate. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), Normalized difference built-up index (NDBI) and soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) were used to extract urban versus agricultural lands from these multitemporal Landsat images. The results indicated that the annual increase in urban lands was about 2.54 km2 per year during the period from 1984 to 2002 and about 4.01 km2 per year during the period from 2002 to 2011. However, the rate was highly increased by about 47.99 km2 per year during the period from 2011and 2014. Accuracy assessment of the studied indices indicated that the NDBI has the highest accuracy. The results revealed that urban areas in Al-Mansoura city were increased over the agricultural areas during the studied period from 1984 to 2014 and it was also evident after 2011. The city maximum spatial expansion was towards the south direction. Urban expansion intensity index (UEII), Pearson’s chi-square test (degree-of-freedom), Shannon’s entropy method (degree-of-sprawl) and degree-of-goodness were used to analyze and assess urban growth of Al-Mansoura city. The obtained results indicated that Al-Mansoura city had a high urban expansion intensity index and a high degree-of-freedom, which reveals high sprawl and negative goodness in urban growth. It could be concluded that remote sensing and GIS technology have proven their great ability to explore the problems of urbanization and their impacts on agricultural lands in Dakahlia Governorate and Mansoura city. They confirmed that urban encroachment over the fertile agricultural lands is the most serious process that result in fertile land degradation in Dakahlia Governorate. Also, they demonstrated the real and increasing situation of urban sprawl in Al-Mansoura city over years.