Land Cover/ Land-Use Change In The Rural-Urban Continuum: A Case Study In The Shuf Region, Lebanon

Abstract

A significant change is being observed in the world’s land cover layer. Rural areas are undergoing a rapid transformation as they are developing. The following research paper will be discussing the different spatial rural-urban (Rurban) forms and models indicating the rural-urban linkages. This work describes the land cover change in the rural-urban continuum in the Shuf district and 3 Shuf villages (Baakline, Gharifeh and Batloun). Gonçalves et. al, 2017 and the Finnish classification methodologies were adopted to derive and typify the typologies and define the regional classes of the 3 Shuf villages. Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to map and analyze the land cover transformations occurring in the 3 Shuf villages (Baakline, Gharifeh and Batloun) between 1998, 2010 and 2017. Based on the GIS analysis, we observed a decrease in the agricultural and natural element covers and an increase in the urban cover. Thus, the predominant types of spatial formation in the rural urban continuum (RUC) of the selected areas of Shuf are Urban Implosion and Rural Urbanization. The 3 villages fall within the Intermediate Zone class and the rural heartlands areas.