Land use/land cover analysis are becoming increasingly important as every decision making process requires complete description of the land surface. The main objective of this research is to qualitatively identify the land use/land cover of Atbara area, Sudan, based on Landsat ETM⁺ data. The band ratio technique was applied in order to present unique information that is not available in single bands. The resultant image was supposed to highlight differences between various land use/land cover classes in the study area. Several band ratios were created and two band ratio sets were assigned to the RGB of the color composite where the combined result of band ratios has allowed a better discrimination of land use/Land cover features. Twenty five ground truthing points were collected from the study area to confirm the identification of these features. Clearly, the processed images were able to highlight water bodies, vegetations, urban area and land where the highest concentration of vegetation was observed mainly along the banks of the river Nile and river Atbara. 95% of the ground truthing points were found to coincide with the previously identified land surface features. This indeed, represents the first step towards performing a successful supervised classification and generating Land use/Land cover maps.

Vegetation, Cropland, Forest, Color Composite, Ground Truthing, River Nile, River Atbara