Predicting the impact of climate change on the area of wetlands using remote sensing

Abstract

Climate change has been the main environmental challenge in recent years. In this research, the impact of climate change on the Arjan Wetland, Iran, has been investigated. The global climate models of canESM2 and hadGEM2 were used to predict the air temperature and precipitation for 2025-2066 in scenarios of RCP 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5. Temperature and precipitation data were downscaled using SDSM and LARS-WG software, respectively. Then, the wetland area was measured by processing the Landsat satellite images using the MNDWI algorithm. Forecast data were applied to estimate the wetland area for 2025-2066 and the scPDSI drought index. The results indicate that the estimated areas of the future period will slightly decrease; as a result, 90% of the areas in the years 2045-2066 are less than 800 hectares, and more than1100 hectares have not been dried in these years. The reduction of the area compared to the observation period is due to climate change and it shows the Arjan wetland is going towards drought.