Assessment of the Impact of the Civil War on Land Use Change in Salah al-Din Province, Iraq, Using Satellite Imagery and a Post-War Planning Approach

Document Type : Article extracted from thesis

Authors

1 Department of RS & GIS, Faculty of Planning and Environmental Sciences, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

2 Remote Sensing Department, University of Tabriz. Tabriz, Iran

Abstract
Due to its strategic location, rich resources and ethnic diversity, Salah al-Din Province in northern Iraq has been a hotbed of conflict over the past decades, with the current land system having an impact in this context. Our study therefore aims to investigate and assess the impact of civil war on the land system in the province of Salah al-Din, by using the RS and GIS techniques. In this study, the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) map of the region was extracted for pre-war, war and post-war years by means of the support vector machine (SVM) technique, and using three years of Landsat 8 satellite images: 2013, 2015 and 2017. Furthermore, land change modeler (LCM) was used to analyze the changes over time and the patterns of the LULCC. According to the research findings, we observed a decrease in the extent of built-up, forest, and water bodies, along with an increase in barren land, vegetation and orchards, and agricultural land, during the war. On the other hand, ending the war has led to a reduction in the extent of barren lands, forest, and water bodies in the region, while increasing the area of built-up lands, vegetation, and agricultural lands. In this regard, our results showed that insurgents have utilized agricultural lands as one of their tools in the war against government, while the destruction of buildings has been observed following the escalation of the war. Our results indicate the infrastructural and demographic vulnerability to war, and the post-war landscape necessitates recovery and reconstruction policies resulting from the conflict that must be taken into account.

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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 22 November 2025

  • Receive Date 31 March 2025
  • Revise Date 16 June 2025
  • Accept Date 22 July 2025
  • First Publish Date 22 July 2025
  • Publish Date 22 November 2025