Assessing habitat fragmentation and its effect on plant biodiversity using multi date satellite imagery: Case study: Omayed biosphere reserve (obr), western coastal desert of Egypt [electronic resource].

Includes references.

The impact of man on biological communities, greater extent of land used, have resulted in rapid increase throughout the world of habitat modification, loss and fragmentation. This paper represents an attempt to monitor these phenomena in the Western Mediterranean coast of Egypt in a Biosphere Reserve "El Omayed" as a pilot site. It is divided into three zones that cover a total area of about 700 km2 and constitutes 5 major habitats' There are many development projects in the OBR that have affected these habitats and consequently the associated biodiversity. Therefore, habitat loss and fragmentation have been observed in the last decade in these sites. The objectives of this paper are: to assess habitat fragmentation / loss and their effects on Biodiversity in OBR and to offer some highlights into tools that can be used in such a study. Multidate SPOT satellite imagery for the years 1987, 1993 and 1999 were used in this study for monitoring and assessing the changes in two of the five main habitats that are mostly affected by human impacts. The temporal changes measured in the selected habitats are habitat fragmentation, in terms of area, number of patches and transformation due to land use changes and loss (in terms of differences between areas of land cover). The results indicated that throughout the 12 years of study, about 83% of the total area of coastal sand dune habitat has been lost due to land transformation. While the non-saline depression habitat has been intensively fragmented and its total area has been reduced by about 35%. It is therefore concluded that rates of habitat fragmentation, transformation and loss as measured by satellite imagery are highly increasing in OBR with an associatedplantbiodiversitylossandconsequently environmental degradation.

Summary in Arabic.

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