Land Degradation Detection Using Geo-Informationtechnology for Some Sites in Iraq

Abstract

This study aimed at monitoring, mapping, and assessing the land degradation in the upper Mesopotamian plain of Iraq. The country suffers severely due to land degradation and desertification problems, especially in its central and southern parts. Five vegetative, soil, and water indices related to land degradation were applied to two Landsat TM and ETM+ imageries to assess the extent of land degradation for the study area during the period from 1990 to 2000. A computerized land degradation severity assessment was adopted using ERMapper 7.1, Erdas Imagine 9.2, ArcView 3.3, and ArcGIS 9.1 environments to process, manage, and analysis the raster and thematic datasets. The indices used in this research are: The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index "NDVI", The Normalized Differential Water Index "NDWI", Tasseled Cap Transformation Wetness "TCW", and a new index proposed in this study that is the Normalized Differential Sand Dune Index "NDSDI". The results showed a clear deterioration in vegetative cover (2620.4 km 2 ), an increase of sand dune accumulations (1018.8 km 2 ), and a decrease in soil/vegetation wetness (1720.4 km 2 ), accounting for 12.9, 5.0, and 8.5 percent, respectively, of the total study area. In addition, a decrease in the water bodies area was detected (228.1 km 2 ). Sand dunes accumulations had increased in the total study area, with an annual increasing expansion rate of (10.2 km 2 year -1 ) during the ten years covered by the study. The land degradation risk in the study area has increased by 111% during the study period. The statistical analysis of the results indicated that the soil/vegetation wetness is the biggest influence in the process of land degradation in the study area. The high performance of the NDSDI is promising and effective for identifying the sand dunes accumulations in the area of study. This study finds reveals that most of the counties in the study area are exposed to a serious risk of land degradation and drought water bodies.

Identifying Drought Status in Duhok Governorate (Iraqi Kurdistan Region) from 1998 through 2012 using Landsat Time Series Dataset

“…The IKR is located in the north part of Iraq. In literature, Iraq is known as the fertile crescent, or the northern territories of Mesopotamia, and has been under investigation by different researchers [3][4][5]. Severe drought has affected the IKR as well as the other parts of Iraq throughout the last decades, which characterized by a dramatic drop in precipitation rates [6][7][8].…”

War Impacts Studies Using Remote Sensing

“…Previous studies have used remote sensing data in many applications, notably in agricultural crop rotation [9], deforestation assessment [10], yield assessment [11], coastal zone changes [12][13], land degradation detection [14], vegetation mapping [15], urban change detection [16] snow cover changes [17], vegetation changes [18][19], burned area mapping [20] and other applications. Recent advances in remote sensing and spatial analysis techniques have availed researchers of powerful tools for studying war impacts.…”

A Comparative Study for Performance of Five Landsat-based Vegetation Indices: Their Relations to Some Ecological and Terrain Variables

“…The advancement of information records from satellites is a crucial prerequisite to improve our comprehension of characteristic and human-instigated changes on the Earth and their suggestions (NRC, 2007;Fadhil, 2009). Spectral vegetation indices have been utilized to check Earth's vegetative cover utilizing the reflection proportions of green vegetation.…”