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Monitoring urban greenness evolution using
multitemporal Landsat imagery in the city of
Erbil (Iraq)
Shwan O. Hussein*
Faculty of Science and Informatics, Department of Physical Geography and Geoinformatics, University of
Szeged, Szeged, Hungary
Received: July 31, 2017; accepted: May 7, 2018
Most cities in the world have experienced major developments in the past 20–25 years. However,
research has showed that the development aspect of these cities has led to a decrease in green areas. This
paper aims to assess the spatiotemporal variations of urban green areas during the period 1990–2015 with
special regard to city of Erbil. The study uses a mix of fuzzy functions, linear spectral mixture analysis, and
maximum likelihood classification for the classification of Landsat imagery from 1990 to 2015 to extract the
four main classes of land use, namely agricultural land, vacant land, built-up land, and green vegetation.
Both the classification approaches used in this research produced excellent and reliable results, as an overall
accuracy of more than 80% was able to be obtained. The spatiotemporal analysis of land use within the city
of Erbil shows a series of major changes between 1990 and 2015. Therefore, the results of the spatiotemporal
evolution of urban greenness assessment in the Erbil region can be used both for spatial planning purposes
and as an urban greenness assessment method in dry climate areas.
Keywords: Erbil, linear spectral mixture analysis, maximum likelihood classification, multitemporal
Landsat, subpixel classification, urban greenness assessment
*Corresponding address: Faculty of Science and Informatics, Department of Physical Geography and
Geoinformatics, University of Szeged, Egyetem u. 2–6, H-6722 Szeged, Hungary
E-mail: shwan.huseen1@su.edu.krd
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-
commercial purposes, provided the original author and source are credited, a link to the CC License is provided,
and changes –if any –are indicated.
Central European Geology
DOI: 10.1556/24.61.2018.10
© 2018 The Author(s)
Introduction
In the past 20–25 years, many cities around the globe have experienced major
trends in development. The knowledge of the spatial distribution of green areas within
urban areas is vital for decision makers, since the latter have significant influence on
urban environmental setups. Having detailed information about the spatial distribution
and size of green areas would benefit Erbil’s local authorities, since according to Erbil
Tourism (2014), green areas cover 12% of the city’s built-up area, and the authorities
would like to increase it to 15%, which is the minimum ratio provided by the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Statistical reports from the United Nations show that the global urban population
had increased from 746 million in 1950 to 3.9 billion in 2014. This means that the
urbanization process has experienced an acceleration process like never before, with
interest in the study of greenness within cities undergoing a directly proportional
increase.
The process of urbanization is significantly influenced by a number of socioeco-
nomic factors, the main ones are population growth, built space, and the underlying
levels of economic development. The concept of urban greenness ratio and distribu-
tion are some of the most important changes that urban centers experience due to the
basic process of urbanization. Tang et al. (2012) argued that decision makers and
urban planners should have the ability to manage these changes and use remote
sensing as a basic tool in this endeavor.
The distribution and ratio of urban greenness is some of the most important factors
of urban life equality-assessment processes. As such, having different functions such
as recreational facilities or carbon sinks are essential factors to foster inclusivity and
pride toward the city. Furthermore, the green areas offer the required base for higher
standards by enhancing the quality of life of the people in the city. In cities with dense
populations, green spaces are now considered to be more valuable than in the past due
to the high pressure caused by the construction of new buildings and structures (Rafiee
et al. 2009).
Vegetation in urban setups greatly determines the rate of evapotranspiration and
the speed at which solar radiation is absorbed. If this is the case, then vegetation
monitoring in urban ecosystems is an important endeavor and simultaneously, is a
valuable tool in the reduction of atmospheric pollution and in the mitigation of heat
island effect.
One of the first studies using remote sensing on Landsat imagery to assess the urban
greenness areas was conducted in 1987; it focused on defining the spatial patterns of
urban vegetation and separate woody and herbaceous vegetation (Sadowski et al.
1987). It was during the period 1990–2000, two other studies focused on the use of
remotely sensed data for the evaluation of urban greenness. As a matter of fact, these
studies were carried out in the year 1997. They used Landsat data to derive vegetation
indices as one of the multiple variables used for the assessment of quality of life in
urban areas. However, since the year 2000, the number of studies that involved in
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urban greenness has increased exponentially, with a record of 124 studies in 2016.
Many of these studies have tried to correlate the impact of urban greenness with other
urban variables, such as crime, health, life expectancy, and household income, among
others. However, the most relevant studies regarding the use of remotely acquired data
are those of Chang and Ji (2006), Dawelbait and Morari (2011), Gupta et al. (2012), Lu
et al. (2002), Mozaffar et al. (2008), Rhew et al. (2011), Sakti and Tsuyuki (2015), Song
(2005), Tang et al. (2012), and Wang et al. (2013). A large number of the aforemen-
tioned studies were focused on the basic concepts of subpixel classification techniques
and endmember extraction. However, other studies have used vegetation indices in land-
use change analysis, such as Buyantuyev et al. (2007) and Farooq (2009), who derived
indices like Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index,
and also used spectral mixture analysis (SMA), whereas Tooke et al. (2009)usedthe
SMA and decision tree classification methods. There are also numerous other studies
that focused on the subject matter and consequently provided distinctive results. These
include research carried out by Abd El-Kawya et al. (2011), Dewan and Yamaguchi
(2009), Rawat and Kumar (2015), and Suribabu et al. (2012).
The main aim of this study is to assess the spatiotemporal urban greenness evolution
within an arid region by combining the linear SMA (LSMA) and fuzzy functions for
the evaluation of Landsat imagery, in order to extract four main classes of land use:
agricultural land, vacant land, built-up land, and green vegetation. These land-use
classes were extracted using maximum likelihood classification (MLC) as well. Small
(2001) argued that spatiotemporal analysis is a pillar for urban environment studies.
The decision to carry out this analysis was motivated by the need to bring new data into
the analysis of evolution of urban greenness in Erbil during the past 25 years.
Materials and methods
The study area is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan Region (Erbil city) (Fig. 1), which
has experienced huge population growth in the past 11 years (2004–2015), due the
economic prosperity after the liberation of Iraq in 2003. The Iraq City Population
(Central Statistical Organization, Iraq 2014) shows that the number of people in Erbil
had increased by 210%, from 485,968 in 1987 to 1,025,000 in 2011.
Being one of the fastest growing cities in Iraq, the city of Erbil is perfect for a
spatiotemporal evolution assessment of urban greenness within an arid region, due to
the fact that it is located in a region characterized by a hot-summer Mediterranean
Climate where urban greenness plays an important role.
For the spatiotemporal assessment of urban greenness, a set of three cloud-free
Landsat images were used. In order to avoid seasonally derived errors, it was decided
to use scenes from the same season. The images were acquired in the summer months,
which represent the same vegetation condition of green areas in the city (Table 1). In
addition, the selection of specific periods reflects spatial distributions and temporal
changes due to significant economic and urban development.
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A number of corrections such as orthorectification and the conversion of the digital
numbers to normalized at sensor reflectance were made, based on the methodology
described by Markham and Barker (1987), using ENVI’s preprocessing tools.
The methodology involves a three-step framework as presented in Fig. 2.
Fig. 1
Study area, Erbil City, covered by one Landsat scene in patch/row 169/36
Table 1
Description of the satellite imagery used in this study
Characteristics/sensor LANDSAT TM4 LANDSAT TM5 LANDSAT OLI_TIRS8
Date of acquisition July 10, 1990 August 14, 2000 August 8, 2015
Pixel size (m) 30 30 30
Number of bands 6 6 6
Time 7:08:31 7:16:37 7:38:38
Path and raw P: 169; R: 35 P: 169; R: 35 P: 169; R: 35
Projection UTM Zone 38 UTM Zone 38 UTM Zone 38
Ellipsoid WGS 84 WGS 84 WGS 84
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Step I: This entailed the use of LSMA and MLC to classify the three Landsat
scenes; Step II: Here, the results from the LSMA are fuzzified to extract the land-use
classes (Appendices 1and 2), after which both LSMA and MLC results undergo a
classification accuracy assessment, which must be greater than 80% for the classifi-
cation to be used; Step III: The green vegetation change magnitude was to be
determined.
The accuracy levels for both methods were assessed using a series of 50 random
trust points for each class; historical maps, current Google Earth images, Quickbird
images from 2005, spot images from 2013, field surveys, interviews, and local
knowledge and experience of the study area were used as reference data for the
assessment, providing a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval of ±10%
for both classification methods, resulting in an overall accuracy of over 85%.
Based on the results from the LSMA, the large type of membership was chosen for
the fuzzification process, resulting in a raster file with values ranging from 0 to 1
(Appendix 1), where the pixels with values close to 1 have the highest probability of
representing that specific land-use class.
The trial and error method was used to identify the smallest value representing that
specific land-use class. After multiple trials, the value of 0.92 was identified as the
lower limit for each type.
The urban greenness change magnitude was determined by considering 1990 as T0,
2000 as T1, and 2015 as T2. Furthermore, both T1 and T2 would be compared with T0
to assess the magnitude change for each period.
Fig. 2
Work methodology flowchart
Monitoring urban greenness evolution using multitemporal Landsat imagery 5
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Results and discussions
The two classification approaches used in this research produced reliable results, as
they obtained an accuracy of over 80%. However, the LSMA classification gave more
accurate results, since all the three classifications had an accuracy of more than 92%
(92.08% in 1990, 95.12% in 2000, and 92.28% for the 2015 image). On the other
hand, the MLC approach was inconsistent, as its accuracy value dropped from 95.81%
to 80.78% in 1990 and 2000, respectively.
In most cases, the percentages obtained using both MLC and LSMA were similar
for the same year with a slight difference of between 2% and 3%, which represents a
difference of 200 ha for built-in land in 2000, 523 ha for the same land use in 2015, or
313 ha for vacant land in 2000 (Table 2).
Land use within the city of Erbil had undergone a series of major changes,
especially between 2000 and 2015, when the city’s built-up land area increased by
about 3,800 ha (229%) as per the LSMA classification. However, the MLC classifi-
cation put the value at 3,572 ha (225%; Fig. 3).
The expansion of the built-up area prompted the diminishing of agricultural land
within the city. Unlike in other cases where green vegetation areas have been
significantly reduced due to urbanization, the case of Erbil was different, since there
is a direct link between the process of urbanization and an increase in green vegetation
from 590 ha in 1990 to 1,002 ha in 2015.
Other studies also show an increase in vegetation areas. For example, the study
conducted by Suribabu et al. (2012) showed an oscillating increase in the greenness
Table 2
The area (hectares) and the percentage covered by different categories of land use according to MLC and
LSMA classification methods in 1990, 2000, and 2015
Land use MLC 1990 LSMA 1990 MLC 2000 LSMA 2000 MLC 2015 LSMA 2015
Area
(ha) %
Area
(ha) %
Area
(ha) %
Area
(ha) %
Area
(ha) %
Area
(ha) %
Green
vegetation
889 6 590 4 550 4 325 2 815 6 1,002 7
Built-up
land
3,394 24 3,589 26 3,575 25 3,752 27 8,077 57 8,590 61
Agricultural
land
1,182 9 1,299 9 992 7 548 4 0 0 0 0
Vacant land 8,564 61 8,558 61 8,913 64 9,413 67 5,136 37 4,449 32
Grand total 14,029 100 14,036 100 14,029 100 14,038 100 14,029 100 14,041 100
MLC: maximum likelihood classification; LSMA: linear spectral mixture analysis
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within Tiruchirappalli City in India. In the case of Erbil, there was a decrease in the
volume of green vegetation between 1990 and 2000. This could have been caused by
the subsequent increase in built-up land, which has reached almost the same surface
area as the one lost by the green vegetation land use. However, the spatial comparison
between the maps as shown in Fig. 4demonstrates that the area covered by green
vegetation had been converted into vacant land, with the concept of seasonal drought
used as the overall explanation. The 2% decrease in area covered by green vegetation
between 1990 and 2000 was offset by a 5% increase in area covered by green
vegetation between 2000 and 2015, covering 7% of the city’s total area.
This is despite the fact that the LSMA classification found that the green vegetation
surface had increased up to 1,002 ha (308%) during the same period. In Fig. 3, it can be
observed that the area of green vegetation is considerably smaller than the area of
built-up land.
However, it is important to note that both the built-up land and the green vegetation
areas had significantly increased to the detriment of vacant land, which has seen the
reduction in area from more than 9,000 ha in 2000 to about 4,500 ha in 2015, and of
agricultural land, which has completely disappeared from Erbil in 2015, according to
the results of the study (Fig. 3).
The increase in area covered by green vegetation can be explained by the
construction of green areas, such as the Sami Abdulrahman Park, which was built
in 1998, covering about 200 ha (Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq 2007).
Therefore, the construction of this park alone accounted for about half of the increase
in green vegetation area within the city. The Sami Abdulrahman Park was accurately
identified by both classification methods, representing the largest and the most
compact area covered by green vegetation, as can be seen in the northwest part of
the maps presented in Fig. 4c and f.
Fig. 3
1990–2015 land use evolution in the city of Erbil
Monitoring urban greenness evolution using multitemporal Landsat imagery 7
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The spatiotemporal analysis of the green vegetation distribution reveals a continu-
ous migration of the green vegetation clusters from northwest in 1990 to southeast in
2000 and then back to northwest again.
The fact that the area covered by green vegetation had tripled in the past few years
depicts some unimaginable benefits for the city. However, the ratio of built-up area to
green vegetation is still small, considering the fact that the area covered by green
vegetation only accounts for 7% of the city’s surface. This is contrary to the
international standards set up by the United Nations, which specify a minimum of
15% of area covered by green vegetation within cities.
After the evaluation of the results from a spatial perspective, it can be noted
that by 2015, the agricultural land has totally disappeared in both the MLC and
LSMA classifications. This is despite the fact that the built-up land had consider-
ably increased in a concentric aspect, with further developments in the suburban
areas. Green vegetation has also increased in size, but it can be observed that most
oftheareasaresmall“islands”in the middle of built-up areas, with the exception
of the Sami Abdulrahman Park, which is a large green area in the northwest of
the city.
Fig. 4
Landsat imagery classification results (a: MLC 1990, b: MLC 2000, c: MLC 2015, d: LSMA 1990, e: LSMA
2000, f: LSMA 2015)
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Conclusions
This research project provides critical information regarding the spatiotemporal
evolution of the urban greenness in the city of Erbil over the past two and half decades
(1990–2015), highlighting the increase in urban greenness by approximately 308%.
The accuracy of the results proves the usefulness of LSMA in extracting endmembers
from satellite imagery to provide an accurate quantitative analysis of land-use change
within arid regions.
From the results obtained in this research, it can be argued that although the built-up
areas have considerably increased in the past 25 years, the green areas have also
increased as the process of urbanization unfolds. The overall consequence of this
increase in built-up areas is represented by the changes in the location of these green
areas.
The analysis of the greenness dynamics in the city of Erbil is helpful for urban
planning and environmental management, since it provides an overall image regarding
the changes in urban setups in the past 25 years, with special regard to the basic issue
of vegetation dynamics. Small and Lu (2006) argued that urban vegetation studies can
be used in urban planning, parks and natural areas management, and the spatial
distribution of green areas within the city.
A deeper understanding of greenness within the urban setup in arid regions could
help in the sustainability of the city and raise the living standards of the citizens (Tooke
et al. 2009), considering the fact that different arid regions have different wet seasons,
and that some cities use irrigation for the green areas and some do not. Therefore, this
is the main limitation of the current approach. Liu and Yang (2015)affirmed that
greenness studies can help to mitigate concerns over environmental degradation and
consequently spur the economic sustainability.
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APPENDIX 1
Example of fuzzification of the LSMA results
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APPENDIX 2
Example of land-use extraction from fuzzified LSMA
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