The Use of Remote Sensing Data and Geographic Information System in The Study of Petroleum Mulch On Soil Surface and Sand Dune Fixaton Seyed Kazem Alavi Panah Prof. University of Tehran, Iran Email: salavipa@ut.ac.ir Matinfar Ph.D. student University of Tehran, Iran K. Khodaei High expert in Geology, Shahid Beheshti University Abstract Mulch means soft and they are covering materials to expand on sand dune /soil surface or around the roots of the plants for erosion control weed, control, evaporation decrease and improvement of water penetration. The kind of mulch depends on the aim and local and situation sand dune. The use of mulch in combating desertification is an efficient practice in hard climatic condition of Iranian deserts. The main purpose of most of such management practice is to establish condition for fixation of sand dune, and plant growth. Active and mobile sand dune usually located in hard climatic condition of Iran and therefore it is too difficult to study the effect of petroleum mulch on sand fixation, temperature change and plant growth. Remotely sensed data might be a useful tool to overcome some of these problems. Because remote sensing data, firstly can overcome the ability to differentiate mulch/non-mulch and other land cover types, thirdly, remotely sensed data can provide a synoptic view of area. In this study thermal and reflective bands of Landsat thematic Mapper (TM), ETM+, MSS and ASTER data and other sources of information including topographic maps, aerial photos and field work were used. The methodology was comprised of: 1) images processing, 2) feature space analysis, 3) detection of surface temperature changes, 4) comparison of surface reflectance and thermal data in the mulched and non- mulched area, and 5) relationship between thermal and reflective data. The results from image processing show that the behavior of the Landsat thermal data is completely different from reflective data. The results from color composite images including thermal bands have shown the capability of thermal bands in separability of mulched and non-mulched areas .We generally conclude that selection of TM, ETM+ thermal band is important step to evaluate the area covered with petroleum mulch.