The sustainable management of land faces serious issues from degradation which hamper agricultural productivity so effective reclamation methods must be implemented to overcome these problems. Remote sensing techniques and GIS-based methods serve to evaluate land reclamation success extents in Al-Dibbis District of Iraq. The main analytical goal is to assess time-based changes in reclaimed land distributions throughout various periods. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification method with change detection analysis on land cover to identify changes across the short-term periods (2017–2021 and 2021–2025) together with the long-term period (2017–2025). Satellite images from Sentinel-2A together with geographic information systems data enabled the classification of land into five categories which included no-change areas and zones with low and medium and high and very high reclamation potential. Decision-making through Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) served to evaluate various land reclamation criteria enabling a comprehensive evaluation of reclamation practices. The results for (2017–2025) indicate that 60% of the district’s land remained unchanged, with 15% showing low reclamation, 12% medium reclamation, 8% high reclamation, and 5% very high reclamation. The majority of reclamation projects took place in the central and southeastern parts of the region although the northern and western sections had fewer reclamation actions. The observed data creates important knowledge for better land management methods together with sustainable land utilization practices and forthcoming land rehabilitation strategies. These findings enable policy makers to identify essential areas that need intervention which will strengthen land restoration activities.