## 6 Conclusions  
In this paper, the land cover of Al Baha region (south-western Saudi Arabia) was assessed, classified, and analyzed using remote sensing databases and time series analysis combined with spatial analysis in a geographic information system (GIS) based on high-resolution Landsat 8 OLI, Sentinel-2 satellite imagery between the period of study 2017/2018 and 2021/2022. The obtained results are summarized as follows:  
* Esri Sentinel-2 imagery gives the highest performance compared to Landsat 8 OLI with accuracy and kappa test equal to 87% and 84%, respectively.
* The land cover classification revealed that the large area of water bodies is localized on Alaqiq (1.45 km\({}^{2}\)), Baljurish (0.94 km\({}^{2}\)), and Elmelkhwah (1.57 km\({}^{2}\)).
* The analysis indicates a great increase in built area between 2017 and 2021 estimated approximately 144 km\({}^{2}\) or 28% (from 516.5 to 661.07 km\({}^{2}\)), especially for Qelwah district by 160% (from 16.97 to 44.16 km\({}^{2}\)) and Elmelkhwah by 93.06% (from 24.25 to 46.97 km\({}^{2}\)).  
* Overall, the bare ground/rocky mountain area has decreased by approximately 40% at the scale of Al Baha region in the 2017-2021 period most observed in Qelwah (\(-\)85%), Elmelkhwah (\(-\)68%) and Baljurish (\(-\)36%).
* By an area of 9812.3 km\({}^{2}\), the desert rangeland area was increased by 160 km\({}^{2}\) between 2017/2018 and 2021/2022. For example, Elmelkhwah has been augmented by 3.38% (from 1256 to 1299 km\({}^{2}\)) and Qelwah by 5.90% (from 1686 to 1785 km\({}^{2}\)). Conversely, ElBahah has experienced decline in desert rangeland by 4.26% (from 558 to 534 km\({}^{2}\)), which can be explained by urban growth.  
Finally, the results obtained by this research can help decision-makers and managers of the Al Baha region better understand the cover land of the study area for better natural resources management, especially with the insufficiency and limited number of elaborated papers in this context. This represents the main strength of this paper. However, it is worth noting that the main weakness of this paper was the use of short period of study with the advantage of Esri high-resolution imagery, where the long-term period of databases can improve the analyses of the cover land.  
[PERSON] and [PERSON] conceived the framework of this research, processed data, designed the experiments, plots, and map preparation, validated the processing results, and wrote the manuscript. [PERSON] and [PERSON] gave feedback on the written manuscript and helped to analyze and edit the manuscript for proper English language, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and technical improvements. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
There is a fund of 200,000 Saudi Riyal. This research is funded by Ministry of High education and Al-Baha University (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). The contract number is MOE-BU-11-2020.  
Not applicable.  
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [[PERSON]], upon reasonable request.  
We would like to thank the Ministry of High education and Al-Baha University (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) for sponsoring this research which is a part of the research agreement of the Institutional Funding Program for Research and Development conducted in 2022 under the project title of Developing Digital Mapping for Al-Baha Region Using information systems (GIS). The contract number is MOE-BU-11-2020.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.