EGU22-11902, updated on 28 Mar 2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-11902
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Monitoring and integrating the expansion of vegetated areas with the rate of groundwater use in arid regions

Mona Morsy1, Silas Michaelides2, Thomas Scholten3, and Peter Dietrich4
Mona Morsy et al.
  • 1Department of Geosciences, Soil Science and Geomorphology, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 19-23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany
  • 2Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol 3036, Cyprus
  • 3Department of Geosciences, Soil Science and Geomorphology, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 19-23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany
  • 4Environmental and Engineering Geophysics Department, Monitoring and Exploration Technologies Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research—UFZ, Permoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany

Frequent water table measurements are crucial for sustainable groundwater management in arid regions. These locations have developed a problem with excessive withdrawal throughout time. However, continuous readings are not available for the majority of these locations. Therefore, an approximate estimate of the rate of increase/decrease in water consumption over time may serve as a temporary substitute for the missing database. The goal is achieved by tracking the increase/decrease in vegetated areas that will generally correlate with changes in the rate of water use. The technique is based on two remote sensing data sets: Landsat7&8 from 2001 to 2021 and Sentinel2A from 2015 to 2021, as well as five vegetation indices: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Renormalized Difference Vegetation Index (RDVI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), and Transformed Vegetation Index (TVI). The datasets chosen provided the best performance for small-scale land farms at the research location. (Landsat7) data with a resolution of 30m revealed a substantial increase in land farms from 2.9km2 in 2001 to 23.3km2 in 2021. The use of the five indices with (Sentinel2A) allowed the classification of vegetated regions as heavy, moderate, or light, as well as the tracking of each class's increase from 2015 through 2021. Additionally, preliminary scenarios were built to measure the pace of growth in water use at the research site by evaluating the rise in vegetated areas and obtaining general information about crop types from farmers. Finally, the NDVI index was modified to better suit the arid areas. The new index is named Arid Vegetation Index or (AVI).

How to cite: Morsy, M., Michaelides, S., Scholten, T., and Dietrich, P.: Monitoring and integrating the expansion of vegetated areas with the rate of groundwater use in arid regions, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-11902, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-11902, 2022.

Displays

Display file