Journal of Geographic Information System, 2019, 11, 551-566 https://www.scirp.org/journal/jgis ISSN Online: 2151-1969 ISSN Print: 2151-1950 DOI: 10.4236/jgis.2019.115034 Oct. 18, 2019 551 Journal of Geographic Information System Spatio-Temporal Dynamics and Evolution of Land Use Land Cover Using Remote Sensing and GIS in Sebou Estuary, Morocco Ayoub El Adnani 1* , Adnane Habib 2,3 , Khalid El khalidi 1 , Bendahhou Zourarah 1 1 Laboratoire Géosciences Marines et Sciences des sols—LGMSS—URAC 45, Faculté des sciences El Jadida, El Jadida, Morocco 2 DBAR_ICoE-EOAWARE, (LGMSS-URAC45), Chouaib Doukkali University, BD Jabran Khalil Jabran, EL Jadida, Morocco 3 State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Abstract Land use and land cover (LULC) represent the ongoing challenge of envi- ronmental variation. The understanding of the level and process of its change is the basis for any environmental planning and management. In Morocco, as everywhere in the world, human population densities are constantly increas- ing on the coastal zones. This results in a continuous and rapid acceleration of the use of coastal space and an increase in pressures on ecosystems and the different species they contain. The purpose of this study is the analysis of the changes in LULC from 1985 to 2017 in the coastal area of Sebou estuary, si- tuated in the Northwest of the Moroccan Atlantic coast. The changes were identified and assessed after classifying a series of Landsat images taken dur- ing 1985, 2002 and 2017. The algorithm used for the classification is the Sup- port Vector Machine (SVM), which yielded results with accuracy higher than 85%. The results of the land use land cover change describe phenomenal ur- banization and deforestation, as well as an evolution of the agricultural sector, indicating the impact of anthropization in this vulnerable environment. Keywords LULC, Change Detection, Accuracy Assessment, Landsat, Sebou Estuary, Anthropization 1. Introduction Land use and land cover (LULC) is one of the fundamental topics in the study of environmental changes. During the 20 th century, the world experienced a phe- How to cite this paper: El Adnani, A., Habib, A., El Khalidi, K. and Zourarah, B. (2019) Spatio-Temporal Dynamics and Evolution of Land Use Land Cover Using Remote Sensing and GIS in Sebou Estuary, Morocco. Journal of Geographic Informa- tion System, 11, 551-566. https://doi.org/10.4236/jgis.2019.115034 Received: September 14, 2019 Accepted: October 15, 2019 Published: October 18, 2019 Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access