干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Since the last decades, desertification has become the major environmental problem in pre-Saharan Tunisia and it is continuously increasing. Climatic aridity and the over exploitation of natural resources in these and regions are the main causes of rapid degradation of the environment: 25% of the and and semi-arid regions is highly affected by this phenomena (Ouled Belgacem and Neffati, 1996).

Within the limitations of the field tools, remote sensing offers nowadays new possibilities for characterization and monitoring of the land use and their vulnerability to desertification within different scales.

The objectives of our study are the following:

1. Development of a specific methodology for monitoring the degradation of agro-ecological systems in pre-Saharan Tunisia through remote sensed data.

2. Elaboration of the agro-ecological zoning for the annual evaluation of the change in land use, the state and the dynamic of vegetation.