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Environmental Change Monitoring by Geoinformation Technology for Baghdad and its Neighboring Areas


4.3 NDWI
The NDWI was used to investigate the situation of surface water bodies in the study area. The results (table 3) revealed that there was a significant decrease in the surface water bodies area has happened during the study period. Initially Falluja county (Anbar governorate) has the biggest surface water bodies area among the studied counties; consequently it gained a significant diminution in its water bodies area from 1,105 to 902 km2 in the years 1990 and 2001, respectively. The highest and the lowest change rate were 0.886 and -18.453 km2.Year-1 in A'adhamiya and Falluja, respectively. In the studied Baghdad's counties (Abu Ghraib, A'adhamiya, Kadhumiya, Mada'ain, and Mahmudiya) have got and increase in their surface water bodies area from 0.898 km2 in the year 1990 to 1.173 km2 in the year 2001. That increase coupled with the increase in the vegetation cover area of the five counties of Baghdad governorate.

The decrease in most of the surface water bodies of the study area refer to many reasons; such as to the decrease in the flow of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers from the upstream countries. As well as to the using of rivers and lake's water for the irrigation in the study area due to the agriculture is not possible without irrigation in the middle and southern parts of Iraq. Figures 6 and 7 show the water bodies maps for the study area in the years 1990 and 2001.

Table 3. County-level NDWI results of the study area for the period from 1990 to 2001.



Figure 6. County-level NDVI Map of the Study Area for the Year 1990.



Figure 7. County-level NDWI Map of the Study Area for the Year 2001.


4.4 TCW
A Tasseled Cap transformation "wetness indicator" applied on the TM and ETM images to extract the soil moisture information for the study area. The statistical analysis has shown this indicator has significant high correlations with the other used indicators, such as between wetness positive change "TCW_p" and NDVI (0.903), wetness negative change "TCW_n" and BSI (0.902). The results showed that Dujail County had the highest percentage value (22.455%) of the wetness positive change (soil moisture increase), while Heet has the lowest percentage (0.874) of this index. Kadhumiya County showed the highest value (7.451%) of the wetness negative change (7.451%) while Heet showed the highest value of wetness no change (98.439%). Table 6 and figures 7 and 8 show the results.

Table 4. County-level Tasseled Cap Wetness indicator TCW results of the study area for the period from 1990 to 2001.


According to the obtained results, it was clear that there was an increase of 934.46 km2, and 406.328 km2 in the vegetation cover (NDVI) and the bare soils (BSI), respectively. On the other hand the surface water bodies are seemed to have dramatic decrease of 401.777 km2.

By the statistical analysis, the NDVI's results showed highest significant correlation with TCW_p (0.903), while the NDWI appeared a significant correlation with TCW_n (0.937). The BSI revealed a strong correlation with the TCW_n (0.902), which means the most effective on the vegetation cover status in the study area, was the soil moisture.


Figure 8. County-level Wetness Negative Change Map of the Study Area during the Period from 1990 to 2001



Figure 9. County-level Wetness Positive Change Map of the Study Area during the Period from 1990 to 2001


Design of the Dynamic Monitoring System
Based on the above results, a dynamic monitoring system of environmental changes (fig.10) was developed in Arc/View GIS version 3.3. The county level soil resources data and pattern map, environmental components changes during the study period and their corresponding data are integrated in the monitoring system. It includes the following thematic layers:

  1. Bare soil layer of the year 1990 for the study area, which extracted from the Landsat TM imagery dataset (169/37).
  2. Bare soil layer of the year 2001 for the study area, which extracted from the Landsat ETM imagery dataset (169/37).
  3. Vegetation cover layer of the year 1990 for the study area, which extracted from the Landsat TM imagery dataset (169/37).
  4. Vegetation cover layer of the year 2001 for the study area, which extracted from the Landsat ETM imagery dataset (169/37).
  5. Surface water body layer of the year 1990 for the study area, which extracted from the Landsat TM imagery dataset (169/37).
  6. Surface water body layer of the year 2001 for the study area, which extracted from the Landsat TM imagery dataset (169/37).
  7. TCW negative change layer for the study area, which extracted from the Landsat (169/37) TM1990 and ETM2001 imageries datasets.
  8. TCW positive change layer for the study area, which extracted from the Landsat (169/37) TM1990 and ETM2001 imageries datasets.
  9. Landsat TM1990 (169/37) composite RGB741 (tif format) image for the study area.
  10. Landsat ETM2001 (169/37) composite RGB741 (tif format) image for the study area.

Figure 10. Studied Environmental Changes Map in the study area for the period from 1990 to 2001.


5. Conclusions
The use of satellite imagery and other data sources manipulated and integrated in a GIS environment provides an essential and valuable information base from which the cause and future environmental change can be extracted.

In general view, the results of the study area showed an increase in the NDVI, BSI, and tasseled cap wetness indicator (TCW_p). That results revealed to the increase of the vegetation cover, the increase of the urban and rural built up areas, the increase in the soil moisture resulted by the irrigation and watering for the planting crops and plants depending mainly on the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates in the study area. All that accompanied with the increase in the urban and rural population in the study area.

This study demonstrates the effectiveness of the remote sensing and GIS technologies in detecting, assessing, mapping, and monitoring the environmental changes. The outcome of this type of studies represents a valuable resource for decision makers to guard against the environmental changes, and for future development projects in Iraq.

6. References

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