Spatial Distribution of Sediment Around Salvadora Persica L. and Alhaji Camelorum L. and Modeling Their Future Changes

One of the ecological crises is the degradation of Nebka's ecosystems that threatens environmental stability and causes many regional and trans-regional impacts, such as increasing the risk of wind erosion. The aim of this study was to investigate the trend of spatial and temporal changes in future land cover with Nebka and accumulated erosive sediments around the phanerophyte species Salvadora persica L. and Alhaji camelorum L. in the Persian Gulf and Oman sea. Thus, Markov chain and satellite images were used to simulate the existing land uses, and trend of temporal and spatial changes. Land cover maps were prepared for the years 2001, 2011, and 2021, using Landsat satellite data and applying maximum likelihood supervised classification method.  After model evaluation procedures, the land cover maps for 2030 and 2040 were predicted using both Markov chain and automatic cell model. Results of land cover changes in 2001, 2011 and 2021 showed that the areas of Nebka have decreased by 1047.9 ha. Predictive maps for 2031 and 2041 with an overall accuracy of 91.4% and kappa coefficient of 0.88%, have high accuracy. The sediment levels of nebka will decrease from 8.67% in 2021 to 4.26% in 2031 and 2.09% in 2041, respectively. The decrease in the area of nebka in the past and predicting the downward trend of changes in nebka land in the future showed that the natural barriers to the movement of suspended sediment were destroyed and reduced.