Abstract: Land-use change is the main component of regional environmental change, while protected areas represent a direct land use policy to prevent its potentially negative effects on biodiversity and environmental services. In this study, it gave a detailed introduction about the classification process of land use in Siby in Mali using remote sensing and GIS’s oftwares such as Envi 4.3 and ArcGIS 9.3 two Landsat TM images (1986 and 1999) of Siby were used for the study. After being geometric corrected subset and enhanced, the images were classified into 5 classes: urban area, farmland, water, forest and grassland, using the supervised maximum likelihood classifier. The results show that urban land expanded by 77.01 ha (0.0769%), whilst there were reductions in the other classes such grassland -46.21 ha (-0.0461%), forest -96.27 ha (-0.0961%). The implication of this unprecedented growth in urban land is the resulting environmental and ecological problems associated with unplanned urban growth and development such as loose of grassland, deforestation and increased of farmland. There are great opportunities for land-use planners to help the development of rural areas towards a more sustainable system. In this study attention will be given, firstly to what is meant by land-use planning. Secondly, a new phenomenon in land-use planning that is or can be of great meaning for the creation of a more sustainable countryside is reviewed: the use of spatial concepts as a starting point of new land-use plans. Thirdly, how these concepts can be applied in land-use planning in order to achieve the ultimate goal of sustainable rural systems is discussed. To better understand the impact of land use change on terrestrial ecosystems, the factors affecting land use must be more fully examined. Growing human populations exert increasing pressure on the landscape as demands multiply for resources such as food, water, wood, soil.