Land cover change information is fundamental to support environmental change studies, land management, and many other societal benefits. Here, we assess and quantify the spatial and temporal land cover changes in West Kordofan, Sudan. With (30 m) imagery from Landsat ETM+ for the entire West Kordofan, land cover maps were created to explore the changes in spatially explicit way. The results suggest that land cover changes observed in West Kordofan for 2000 to 2015 reflect emerging environmental risks such as rapidly sand encouragement and land degradation. Sand plain, burnt area and forest increased by approximately 7733.28 km(2), 810.27 km(2) and 258.99 km(2), respectively. The largest relative land cover change over the entire study period was the increase of sand plain. Expansion of sand plain resulted mainly from desert encouragement towards south direction. Accurate information on the patterns of land cover in West Kordofan may contribute to the future establishment of better land use and land cover polices for an effective land management. In addition, land cover information may also help decision-makers to understand and respond appropriately to emerging environmental risks for the inhabited people.