IRAQI JOURNAL OF DESERT STUDIES

Abstract

In the current research the variation in the exploitation of water have been studding by using the difference in the areas of green vegetation of the eastern part of the territory( inside Iraq) and western part ( inside Syrian) of the Euphrates river valley. In this study the visual satellite, which was taken for the study area in May 2005, by American satellite US Landsat-quality T.M. have been analyzed by using ERDAS Imagine V. 8.3,and Arc View ver. 3.2. Where the spectral analysis of the studied areas has been identify and locate the green vegetation by using the oriented Supervised Classification and the geographic information systems techniques have been used to identify the real reasons of the variations in the water exploitation for this area. These techniques include preparation of the land cover, slop, contour, and three-dimensional maps of the studied area. The results showed great variability in the exploitation of the waters of the Euphrates, on both sides of the border Iraq and Syria, and this was detect from the great variability in the area of green vegetation on the Syrian side of the basin of the Euphrates River, and is about (29.3) seq.mile of the Syrian side, and (6.6) seq.mile on the Iraqi side. and the mean reason of this verity is due the nature and the distribution of the valley of the Euphrates River (widening and narrowing).