Change detection is the process of identifying differences in the state of an object or phenomenon by observing it at different times. Timely and accurate change detection of Earth’s surface features provides the foundation for better understanding relationships and interactions between human and natural phenomena to better manage and use resources. In the last 10 years, much more attention has been paid to urban land use/land cover change because ecosystems in urban areas are strongly affected by human activities and have close relations with the life of almost half of the world’s population. Research on land use/land cover change has become an important aspect of global change, or global warming studies, since land use/land cover change is a major factor for global change because of its interactions with climate, ecosystem processes, biogeochemical cycles, biodiversity, and, even more important, human activities. Because of the advantages of repetitive data acquisition, its synoptic view, and digital format suitable for computer processing, remotely sensed data have become the major data sources for different change detection applications during the past decades. Recently, remote sensing has been used in combination with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems to assess land cover change more effectively than by remote sensing data only. Furthermore, remote sensing is considered as an appropriate tool for mapping urban change and great source for analyzing and modeling urban growth and land use/land cover change. A variety of change detection techniques have been developed. Some of the remote sensing scientists have categorized these algorithms as Pre- Key words Change detection, Land cover, Pre-
