Hossein Etemadfard - Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
Ahmed Hussein Shilb Algawwam - M.Sc. Student, Civil Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran.
Rouzbeh Shad - Associate Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
Marjan Ghaemi - Visiting Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran.

This research aimed to study mapping of agricultural lands, assess their changes, and predict their future scenario in Al-Hillah, Babylon province, Iraq during ۲۰۰۰-۲۰۲۱. The main objectives of the research include developing classification models based on machine learning, analyzing changes of agricultural lands using statistical methods, and predicting future change scenario using a hybrid Cellular Automata (CA) and machine learning model. To improve the accuracy of prediction, this research integrated several driving forces with the historical agricultural land maps to perform the prediction task. The main datasets used for this research were Landsat TM, ETM, and OLI images, as well as several Geographic Information System (GIS) layers including digital elevation model, waterways, population density and vegetation indices. The results indicated that KNN is the best classification as it performed better than the three models. KNN achieved an OA of ۰.۹۵۴, ۰.۹۵۶, and ۰.۹۶۶ for the image data ۲۰۰۰, ۲۰۰۸, and ۲۰۲۱, respectively. Optimizing models’ hyperparameters yielded better classification accuracies in many occasions except SVM for the image data ۲۰۰۰ and KNN for the image data ۲۰۲۱. The assessment of spatial distribution of urban and agricultural lands showed that urban area growth was centric outwards from the city center and the latter expanded to encompass the surrounding areas from ۲۰۰۰ to ۲۰۲۱. The projection of agricultural change demonstrated that agricultural lands in ۲۰۳۴ is expected to be ۳۵۷.۶ km۲.

GIS, LcLu, Remote Sensing, CA, Iraq