Land Cover Changes Study of the Shwan and Altun Kopre areas in Kirkuk governorate

The study was conducted to monitor the changes in Shwan-Altun kopre from Kirkuk governorate –Iraq.The study area is located between Longtitude (44̊ 38ʹ 22ʺ-44̊ 22ʹ 29ʺ)E, Latitude (35̊ 43ʹ 53ʺ-35̊ 42ʹ 16ʺ) N with an area of 117683.96 ha.Sattelite image was collected for years ,1997,2014,2020 and 2023 from land sat 5, MSS and land sat 8 OLI.Maximum likelihood supervised classification was applied to classify these image.Obvious changes in land cover areas was occurred during study time from 1997 to 2023 especially fir bult up land wich was increased from 3.33% to 13.77%, followed by Abondoned agriculture land from 12.5% to 17.39%, but transformation zones was decreased from 61.14% to 40.37%.In order to reveal the final changes occurring during the study period it was found that the26 areas of the Drainage and Channels and bult-up land classes increased by 4% and 313%, with a difference of 27.45 hectares and 12287.51 hectares, respectively .As for the grain crops, they decreased by 28% with a difference of 1183.63 hectares.The Plowed agricultural land and Abandoned agricultural land classes have increased the areas of these two class by 34% and 39%, respectively .As for the sixth category Transformation zones, the area of this class decreased by 66% with a difference of 47,506.66 hectares. This is evidence of changes to all types of land covers in the study area during twenty-six years, as the areas of built-up land, factories and villages increased and were exploited at the expense of agricultural land, as their areas declined during that period