Assessing Anthropogenic Impacts on Sicilian Landscapes: A Decadal Analysis of LULC Dynamics via Remote Sensing and GIS

Changes in anthropogenic activities and natural resources can be detected using land use and land cover (LULC) assessments. Monitoring, assessing, and managing land surface dynamics sustainably requires the use of remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) tools. This research uses new radar and optical remote sensing data to identify and quantify the spatiotemporal changes in LULC. The changes in vegetation were measured by using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and GIS-difference techniques using Sentinel-2 images and Landsat series (TM&OLI) data. The findings showed that there were significant changes in residential and agricultural activity in the area's eastern and northern sections. Vegetation decreased by around 153 km2 between 2005 and 2025, according to multi-temporal vegetation change detection across Landsat images. In 2005, vegetation covered approximately 861 km2, but in 2025, it covered about 708 km2. According to the NDVI method, it is essential for exposing variations in LULC in various settings. When combined with other optical RS techniques, the Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) Coherence Change Detection (CCD) technology provides useful information on tracking and observing spatiotemporal changes in the ground surface under various climatic circumstances. Since values around 0 indicated significant changes, the sophisticated InSAR CCD technique made it possible to see the slight variations in the land surface between the two SAR image dates. In general, the Earth's land surface may be observed and tracked on a spatiotemporal scale through the use of optical and radar remote sensing techniques.