Environmental monitoring of water area in the Najaf sea, Iraq during 1990-2020 using remote sensing data

• Main Authors: Azzawi, Jannah H., Abdulameer, Inbethaq M-Ali
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aquaculture; Change detection; Climate change; Environmental monitoring; Floodplains; Geographic information systems; Human influences; Land cover; Maximum likelihood method; Normalized difference vegetative index; Precipitation; Remote sensing; Satellite imagery; Seawater; Surface water; Water area
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/5.0093818

Al-Najaf sea depression is one of the regions that witnessed many climate changes during the past thirty years. In this study, remote sensing techniques (RS) and geographic information systems (GIS) applications were used to detect changes that occurred in the water area and land cover of Al-Najaf sea. The landsat5 Thematic Mapper (TM), landsat8 Operational Land Image (OLI) satellite data (30images) were used form 1990 to 2020. The supervised classification process was performed with Maximum likelihood method, the area and percentage of each class was calculated. Water and vegetation cover changes were observed using Modification of Normalized Difference Water Index (mNDWI) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), technology. In this study, will be analyzed Najaf sea depression area, precipitation and temperature, revealing the impact of climate change and human activities on long-term water changes. Through the results, the variation of the surface water area in Najaf sea depression is mainly affected by the precipitation and flow of water towards the flood plains, maximum water body area in 2013 and the minimum water bodies is in 2002. Human impacts appeared on the Najaf Sea depression, where fish farms were established on the western side of it and wells were dug for the purpose of filling them, which caused a clear increase in sea water from 2014 and reached its highest value in 2020.