In recent years, dust storms in Iraq and their movement towards Iran have caused severe to community health and potential environmental concerns. In this study the effect of vegetation cover and Land Surface Temperature (LST) variation in western desert of Iraq which is one of the creation zones of these storms has been investigate using remote sensing. Normalized Differences Vegetation Index (NDVI) was utilized to determine the vegetation cover variation and LST variation was showed using thermal band of Landsat TM5 images of the 18/06/1991 and 20/06/2007. The result of NDVI index indicated that the areas with the very weak and week vegetation covers did not change but the area with moderate vegetation cover increased up to1565 hectares. The LST changes in the areas with ranges of temperature, included 40.5°C – 43°C, 43.5°C – 46°C, 46.5°C – 49°C, and 49.5°C–50°C respectively increased, 111215, 1730310, 508028 and 5338 hectares. Results of this study concluded that remote sensing is a useful tool to study disaster phenomena in international areas especially in the areas that ground measurements are not available.
