Highlights What are the main findings? Dense woodland declined substantially between 1995 and 2021, while semi-bare land expanded and became the dominant land cover class. Future projections (2034-2060) indicate persistent dominance of semi-bare land with moderate recovery of dense woodland. What are the implications of the main findings? The results reveal concurrent processes of degradation and localized regeneration in a semi-arid woodland ecosystem. The combined use of Random Forest classification and CA-ANN modeling enables effective analysis of long-term land cover dynamics and future scenarios.Highlights What are the main findings? Dense woodland declined substantially between 1995 and 2021, while semi-bare land expanded and became the dominant land cover class. Future projections (2034-2060) indicate persistent dominance of semi-bare land with moderate recovery of dense woodland. What are the implications of the main findings? The results reveal concurrent processes of degradation and localized regeneration in a semi-arid woodland ecosystem. The combined use of Random Forest classification and CA-ANN modeling enables effective analysis of long-term land cover dynamics and future scenarios.Abstract Spatio-temporal analysis of land cover (LC) dynamics is essential for understanding landscape transformation in semi-arid woodland ecosystems. This study assessed historical and projected land cover changes in the Elnour Natural Forest Reserve (ENFR), Sudan, from 1995 to 2060. Historical maps for 1995, 2008, and 2021 were generated using a Random Forest classifier, while future scenarios for 2034, 2047, and 2060 were simulated using a Cellular Automata-Artificial Neural Network (CA-ANN) model. The results show that semi-bare land expanded from 23.1% in 1995 to 40.0% in 2021, while dense woodland declined from 26.7% to 15.7%, indicating substantial structural transformation of the landscape. Open woodland exhibited partial recovery, increasing to 39.9% in 2021. Future projections indicate a moderate increase in dense woodland to 23.8% by 2060; however, semi-bare land remains the dominant class, reflecting persistent landscape instability. These findings demonstrate the coexistence of degradation and localized regeneration processes in ENFR and highlight the importance of long-term monitoring of land cover dynamics in dryland environments. The study further shows that integrating machine learning classification with spatially explicit CA-ANN modeling provides an effective framework for analyzing historical trends and exploring potential future trajectories of land cover change in data-limited semi-arid regions.