|
|
|
Environmental Change Monitoring by Geoinformation Technology for Baghdad and its Neighboring Areas
Dr. Ayad Mohammed Fadhil
Assistant Professor,
Surveying Engineering Dept.,
Technical College / Baghdad,
Foundation of Technical Education,
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research,
Baghdad - Iraq
a.fadhil@yahoo.com
Abstract
This research focuses on the environmental change monitoring in the middle region of Iraq, which comprises five governorates includes twelve counties in Baghdad governorate and parts of the neighboring governorates such as; Al-Anbar, Salah-Alddin, Dialah, and Babil. Multi temporal remotely sensed data (Landsat TM 1990 and ETM+ 2001), and county-level necessary data for the corresponding study period were utilized. The study aimed to monitoring, assessing, and mapping the environmental changes, and to developing a dynamic monitoring system for the study area in order to provide a useful reference to the researches, the academic establishments, and to the decision makers for their sustainable land recourses exploitation and environment management. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Bare Soil Index (BSI), The Normalized Differential Water Index (NDWI), Tasseled Cap transformation Wetness indicator (TCW) algorithms, and Change detection techniques were adopted in this research. The results showed an increase in the vegetation cover, farm lands, soil moisture, and the built up areas, while the water bodies has gained a significant decrease in some studied counties during the study period.
1. Introduction
Nowadays the environmental changes are becoming the hot issues to human beings in the world. Land degradation and vast deforestation due to the industrialization and urbanization, wars, natural disasters such as flooding, drought caused by global warming are in common.
Remote sensing "RS" provides an efficient tool to monitor land-cover and environmental changes. Geographic Information System "GIS" is a powerful set of tools for collecting; storing, retrieving at will, transforming and displaying spatial data from the real world for a particular set of purpose (Burrough and McDonnel, 1998). Since 1972, Landsat satellites (series 1 to 7) have been providing repetitive, synoptic, global coverage of high-resolution multispectral imagery. Landsat data have potential applications for monitoring the conditions of the Earth's land surface and the environment components.
An increasingly common application of remotely sensed data is for change detection. Change detection is the process of identifying differences in the state of an object or phenomenon by observing it at different times. Change detection is an important process in monitoring and managing natural resources and urban development. (Singh, 1989).
Geoinformation technology (Remote Sensing ‘RS’, Geographic Information Systems ‘GIS’, and Global Positioning System ‘GPS’) and their integration form the basal and essential technical core of the system of geospace information science. The collection of remotely sensed data facilitates the synoptic analyses of earth-system function, patterning, and change at local, regional, and global scales over time; such data also provide a vital link between intensive, localized ecological research and the regional, national, and international conservation and management of biological diversity (Wilkie and Finn, 1996).
Iraq is situated in the south-west part of Asia. It lies between latitude 29 o 5' and 37 o 22' North, and between longitudes 38o 45' and 48 o 45' East. The area of Iraq covers 435,052 km2, it includes four main physical divisions;
- The Alluvial plain which forms quarter of Iraq's area (132,000 km2).
- The desert plateau, which situated in the west of Iraq and forms about 1/2 of the country's area (198,000 km2).
- The mountain region which situated in the northern and northeastern parts of Iraq. This region forms one quarter of Iraq's area.
- The terrain region, which is a transitional region between the lowlands in the south and the high mountains region. It forms half of the mountain region.
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq and is situated in the middle part of the country. Iraq is mostly composed of broad, arid plains, but two easily flooded river valleys, the Tigris and the Euphrates, bisect the country diagonally from northwest to southeast. These river valleys are narrow and steep-walled for the first third of their path in Iraq but open into broad flood plain valleys (just north of Baghdad) that are the lowest and best watered terrain in the country. There are three fresh water lakes in central Iraq near Baghdad. Ath Tharthar Lake is the largest of the three. It is 55 km northwest of Baghdad. Al Habbaniyah Lake, the middle lake, is the smallest of the three, and Al-Razzaza Lake.
Satellite can repeatedly observe the wide area at once and continuously acquire the information about the ground features and environmental changes. Satellite sensors can detect the electro-magnetic radiation energy reflected from the earth over a wide range of spectrum with a visible and infrared wavelength, and record it in digital image. Moreover, as most of satellite images are analyzed through computer systems, it has many advantages to acquire the various information simultaneously rather than visual interpretation.
It is thus of importance to undertake an interdisciplinary research on the evaluation of the environmental changes and provide a monitoring prototype and useful references to the local governments for their sustainable development planning and environmental management.
The objectives of this study were assessing, monitoring, and mapping the environmental changes in Baghdad and its neighboring areas by using Geoinformation technology and change detection techniques, and developing a dynamic monitoring system of environmental changes at a county level GIS environment.
|
|
|