Several decades of intensive dryland-farming in the Gadarif Region, located in the Eastern part of Sudan, has led to rapid landuse/landcover (LULC) changes mainly due to agricultural expansion, government policies and environmental calamities such as drought. The study area represents part of the African Sahel. The fundamental goal of the thesis was to assess land degradation and the impact of agriculture expansion on land cover, soil and crops production. \n\nTo analyse and to monitor the LULC changes, multi-temporal Landsat data of the years 1979, 1989 and 1999 and ASTER data of the year 2009 covering an area of approximately 1200 km² were used. For this a post-classification comparison technique was applied to detect LULC changes from satellite images. Six LULC classes were identified during the classification scheme, namely cultivated land, fallow land, woodland, bare land, settlement and water. For the four dates of satellite images the overall classification accuracy ranged from 86 % to 92 %. During the three decades of the study period an extensive change of LULC patterns occurred. The cultivated areas increased significantly, covering 81 % of the previous woodland in the period 1979 – 2009. Fallow land only increased during the period 1989 – 1999. Over the three decades, urban expansion continuously increased covering an area of 23, 21 and 27 km² for the periods 1979 – 1989, 1989 – 1999 and 1999 – 2009 respectively. \n\nThe detailed LULC map of the study area was obtained by using a dual polarisation (HH and HV) TerraSAR-X data of the year 2009. The different LULCs of the study area were analysed by employing an object-oriented classification approach. For that purpose, multi-resolution segmentation of the Definiens Software was used for creating the image objects. Using the feature-space optimisation tool the attributes of the TerraSAR-X images were optimised in order to obtain the best separability among classes for the LULC mapping. In addition to the classes that have been obtained by the optical data, the following LULCs resulted from SAR data: harvested land, rock, settlement 1 (local-roof buildings) and settlement 2 (concrete roof buildings). The backscattering coefficients for some classes were different along HH and HV polarisation. The best separation distance of the tested spectral, shape and textural features showed different variations among the discriminated LULC classes. An overall accuracy of 84 % with a kappa value of 0.82 was resulted from the classification scheme. Accuracy differences among the classes were kept minimal. \n\nFor more than six decades in the Gadarif Region mechanised dryland farming is practised. As a result, due to continuous conventional tillage, extensive woodcutting and over-grazing, serious soil degradation occurred. To discuss the impact of LULC changes on the selected soil properties, three main LULC types were chosen to be investigated, namely: cultivated land, fallow land and woodland. In addition to the reference soil profiles, soil samples were also collected at two depths from ten sample plots for each of the LULC type. For these soil samples, various soil properties such as texture, bulk density (BD), organic matter (OM), soil pH, electrical conductivity (EC), sodium adsorption ratio (SoAR), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) were analysed. Laboratory tests proved that soil properties were significantly affected by LULC changes. Within the different LULC types, clay content in the surface layers (0 – 5 and 5 – 15 cm) varied from 59 % to 65 %, whereas silt fractions ranged from 27 % to 37 %. Soil BD, OM and P were significantly different (p < 0·05) across the three LULC types. Soil pH was significantly different between cultivated land and woodland on one side and between fallow land and woodland on the other side. EC and SoAR values of fallow land were found to be significantly different (p < 0·05) from woodland. \n\nThe dryland vertisol of the Gadarif Region in Sudan produced more than one-third of the national production of sorghum – the main food stuff in the country. Soil compaction has been recognised as one of the major problems in crop production worldwide. Soil strength and infiltration rate are important variables for understanding and predicting the soil processes. The effects of three different landuse systems (cultivated land, fallow land and woodland) on soil compaction and infiltration rate were investigated at two sites of the study area. Site 1 represents the older one of the two. The soil penetration resistance (SPR) was measured in three depths using a manually operated cone penetrometer. Infiltration rate was measured in the field using a double-ring infiltrometer. Following the cone-penetrometer sampling, soil samples were collected to determine the variables that affect SPR and infiltration rate vs. particle size, dry BD, volumetric moisture content (VMC) and organic carbon (OC) content. Field measurements and soil samples were collected for each landuse type. The measured infiltration rate data were inserted into the Kostiakov Model in order to \npredict the cumulative soil water infiltration. Soil compaction for the cultivated land was 65 % larger in comparison to woodland. Woodland areas showed an increase in the infiltration rate by 87 % and 74 % compared to cultivated and fallow land respectively. Both study sites showed an increase in the dry BD when SPR is increasing, while VMC decreases with increasing SPR. Also, low OC contents were observed to be associated with high SPR values. For Site 1 the average coefficient of determination (R²) for the infiltration data fit to the Kostiakov Model were 0.65, 0.73 and 0.84 for cultivated land, fallow land and woodland respectively. However, for Site 2 they were 0.63, 0.76 and 0.78. \n\nIn the Gadarif Region agriculture is the main activity and practised in many forms with a variety of environmental effects and consequences. Continuous ploughing of the cultivated land coupled with inproper soil management has contributed to soil deterioration when the landuse changed from woodland to cultivated and fallow land. Therefore, the development of sustainable landuse practises in the dryland-farming of the study area need to be improved in order to reduce the amount of soil degradation in the future.