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LAND DEGRADATION DETECTION USING GEO-INFORMATIONTECHNOLOGY FOR SOME SITES IN IRAQ | ||
| Journal of Al-Nahrain University - Science | ||
| Article 1, Volume 12, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 94-108 | ||
| Author | ||
| Ayad Mohammed Fadhil | ||
| Abstract | ||
| AbstractThis study aimed at monitoring, mapping, and assessing the land degradation in the upperMesopotamian plain of Iraq. The country suffers severely due to land degradation anddesertification problems, especially in its central and southern parts. Five vegetative, soil, and waterindices related to land degradation were applied to two Landsat TM and ETM+ imageries to assessthe extent of land degradation for the study area during the period from 1990 to 2000. Acomputerized land degradation severity assessment was adopted using ERMapper 7.1, ErdasImagine 9.2, ArcView 3.3, and ArcGIS 9.1 environments to process, manage, and analysis theraster and thematic datasets. The indices used in this research are: The Normalized DifferenceVegetation Index “NDVI”, The Normalized Differential Water Index “NDWI”, Tasseled CapTransformation Wetness “TCW”, and a new index proposed in this study that is the NormalizedDifferential Sand Dune Index "NDSDI". The results showed a clear deterioration in vegetativecover (2620.4 km2), an increase of sand dune accumulations (1018.8 km2), and a decrease insoil/vegetation wetness (1720.4 km2), accounting for 12.9, 5.0, and 8.5 percent, respectively, of thetotal study area. In addition, a decrease in the water bodies area was detected (228.1 km2). Sanddunes accumulations had increased in the total study area, with an annual increasing expansion rateof (10.2 km2year-1) during the ten years covered by the study. The land degradation risk in the studyarea has increased by 111% during the study period. The statistical analysis of the results indicatedthat the soil/vegetation wetness is the biggest influence in the process of land degradation in thestudy area. The high performance of the NDSDI is promising and effective for identifying the sanddunes accumulations in the area of study. This study finds reveals that most of the counties in thestudy area are exposed to a serious risk of land degradation and drought water bodies. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Land degradation; Landsat; Remote sensing; GIS; NDSDI; Iraq | ||
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