Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The impact of Land use/land cover (LULC) change was assessed through monitoring the distribution of ecological indicators and tracking the aeolian deposits, which provides valuable information on desertification and climate change in Tunisian arid regions. This study was conducted in Oum Zessar area, in southeastern Tunisia. Both visual interpretation and automated classification approach were developed to extract sand features using Landsat images for 2000, 2008 and 2014. The automated classification includes a decision tree classifier (DT) and an unsupervised classification applied to the principal components extracted from Knepper ratios composite. The validation of the classification methods showed that the DT had an overall accuracy over 84%. The results of the change detection have shown an increase in the classes of Agriculture behind tabia by 10.68%, the rangelands and croplands by 24.37% and the mountain rangelands by 14.93%, and a decrease in the classes of Agriculture behind jessour by 33.65%, sand encroachments by 12.93% and halophyte rangelands by 3.4%, respectively. These resulting maps seem to be the suitable decision‐support tools for management of land use in arid regions of Tunisia, in particular, for land degradation assessment and water and soil conservation.</jats:p>