Appraisal of Land Cover Changes in the Upper Sindh Through Geo-Informatics Techniques

Abstract

Satellite remote sensing is a useful technique to observe environmental changes which are introduced as a result of manmade activities and physical phenomenon. In this study the land cover patterns of pre-flood period, flood period and post flood period in the year 2015 on upper part of Sindh region have been analysed and difference of vegetation cover, water body and surface temperature before, during and after flood period were observed. Three satellite images of Landsat-8 OLI / TIRS were used in the study acquired on April 11, 2015, August 17, 2015 and October 20, 2015. The land cover classes identify for the study area are healthy vegetation, normal vegetation, wet soil, dry soil and water. Three techniques likelihood supervised classification, Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were used to get more precise results. Supervised classification and NDVI showed the spatial increase of vegetative cover. Increasing vegetation also witnesses from LST record of post flood period. This result indicates that land cover classes and socio-economy of the study area is under the dangerous threat of climate change, especially flood. In flood period, many socio-economic and landuse/landcover changes especially water, vegetation, land, animal and house are damages. The flood comes approximately every year in the study area. The mean LST of pre-flood period was 30.50C , during flood period was 370C and post flood was 320C.