Iraqi National Journal of Earth Sciences

Abstract

Remote sensing techniques had been used to identify the total areas of the land covered with sand dunes for the region to the east of Lake Al-Thar Thar and towards Biji industrial town, and detecting the direction of its movement based on data obtained from the satellite images Landsat-5 (TM) 1990, and Landsat-7
(ETM +) 2000, also specify the land use of the region through the identification of sites of industrial plants, roads, water, rock, soils, and others. The results showed that the sand dunes presence as a characteristics bands as well as the possibility of determining the total area that covered by sand dunes during the specified interval time.
The results showed the great variety of the areas for the region covered with sand dunes and it ranging between (249.89) km2 in the year 1990 and about (643.92) km2 in 2000.The increases of the area covered by the sand dunes was due to the movement of sand dunes to the east of (Biji) and south-east towards Tikrit city, also many of the industrial establishment in the region was affected and exposed to the problem of sand drifting. This make the determination of the direction and the speed of movement of sand dunes taking into consideration when we planning for expansion of urban and industrial future of the industrial city of Biji.