Spatial-Temporal Change Assessment of Manchar and Keenjhar Lake Using RS and GIS

Abstract

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To maintain sustainability of life on earth, water is an indispensable nutrient and truly a vital resource for aquatic ecosystem. It also plays an important role in the socio-economic development and is one of the key factors for driving the economy of any region. Rapid increase in population and change in climatic patterns has vigorously affected the water resources. The remote sensing is an efficient tool for monitoring of natural resources. This research is focused on spatio-temporal change analysis of Manchar Lake and Keenjhar Lake, Sindh, Pakistan using Landsat multi-sensor data MSS, TM, ETM+ & OLI to analyze land cover from 1972 to 2017 and calculating water indices using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and supervised parallelepiped classification achieving an overall accuracy 98.86% and 0.1 of standard deviation value. The results revealed that the significant changes in land cover due to unusual climatic patterns, significant fall in precipitation rate and multiple anthropogenic activities. These changes had adverse impact on ecosystem of lakes and as well as on public health.