home icon user icon
Welcome to International Network for Natural Sciences | INNS Pub.
Home My Account
Submit Manuscript
double_slash
breadcumb_bg

Desertification vulnerability and risk analysis of Southern Punjab Region, Pakistan using geospatial techniques

Paper Details

Research Paper 01/06/2018
Views (251) Download (12)
current_issue_feature_image
publication_file

Desertification vulnerability and risk analysis of Southern Punjab Region, Pakistan using geospatial techniques

Nausheen Mazhar, Safdar Ali Shirazi, Kanwal Javid
J. Bio. Env. Sci.12( 6), 273-282, June 2018.
Certificate: JBES 2018 [Generate Certificate]
Key: Desertification degreeDesertification difference indexDesertification vulnerability assessmentLSTNDVI

Abstract

Pakistan remains a frequent victim of desertification. This study aims to conduct an assessment of desertification vulnerability and desertification degree of district Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan and Rajanpur, South Punjab, Pakistan, for the period 2001-2018. The datasets of three sensors of MODIS, namely MOD13Q1, MOD11A2 and MOD16A2, with a spatial resolution of 25m, were acquired for 2001, 2009 and 2018, for the study area, from USGS. The assessment of desertification vulnerability has been done by calculating Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Transformed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (TNDVI), Moisture Stress Index (MSI), Potential Evapotranspiration (PET), Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Weighted Overlay analysis (WOL). The Desertification Difference Index (DDI) analysis concluded a 7.84% increase in area under vegetation and 7.74% decrease in barren land, from 2001 to 2018. However, a 6.87 rise in Max LST and a 3.06 rise in Min LST, from 2001-2018, left most of the increase in area under vegetation to be unhealthy, or dead. The Desertification Vulnerability Index (DVI) analysis presented an increase of 11.09% in the area covered by High desertification vulnerability category, i.e. from 7.4% in 2001 to 18.49% in 2018, whereas a 39.88% decrease was witnessed in the area covered by the Low desertification vulnerability category. An increase of 28.47% in the Medium desertification vulnerability category, in the study area was witnessed. Empirical support provided by the results, can help the future scientists and policy makers to work on mitigating this disaster to protect this climatically fragile region.

VIEWS 19
Cover PDF

Amin AA. 2004. The extent of desertification on Saudi Arabia. Environmental geology 46(1), 22-31.

Anjum SA, Wang LC, Xue L, Saleem MF, Wang GX, Zou CM. 2010. Desertification in Pakistan: Causes, impacts and management. Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment 8(2), 1203-1208.

Aslam AQ, Ahmad RS, Hussain YI, Hussain SM. 2016. Vulnerability and impact assessment of extreme climatic event: A case study of southern Punjab, Pakistan. Science of The Total Environment 580 (Supplement C), 468-481.

Baba AN, Tifwa YH, Achoba IM. 2017. A Synergy between Urban Planning and the Public towards Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). International Journal of Technical Research and Science.

Bakr N, Weindorf CD, Bahnassy HM, El-Badawi MM. 2012. Multi-temporal Assessment of Land Sensitivity to Desertification in a Fragile Agro-Ecosystem: Environmental Indicators. Ecological Indicators 15, 271-280.

Becerril-Piña R, Díaz-Delgado C, Mastachi-Loza AC, González-Sosa E. 2016. Integration of remote sensing techniques for monitoring desertification in Mexico. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal. 22(6), 1323-1340.

Epiphanio JN, Huete RA. 1995. Dependence of NDVI and SAVI on Sun Sensor Geometry and Its Effect on Fapar Relationships in Alfalfa. Remote Sensing of Environment 51(3), 351-360.

Gilabert M, Piqueras GJ, Garciaa-Haro JF, Melia J. 2002. A Generalized Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index. Remote Sensing of Environment. 82(2-3), 303-310.

Guan Y, He B, Li X, Yin C, Qiu S. 2017. Desertification Assessment and Trend Analysis Using MODIS Data. Paper presented at the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS): IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters IEEE International. (pp. 5739-5742).

Idris MN, Rafee MM, Johar F. 2011. Drought and desertification management in arid and semi-arid zones of Northern Nigeria. Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal 22(5), 595-611.

Iftikhar S, Mahmood ZH. 2017. Spatial distribution of agricultural resources and food security: A case of Punjab Pakistan. Cogent Food & Agriculture 3(1), 1357265.

Khan AN, Ali A. 2016. Desertification Risk Reduction Approaches in Pakistan. SPRINGER Verlag, JAPAN 161-173.

Kiem AS, Austin KE. 2013. Drought and the future of rural communities: opportunities and challenges for climate change adaptation in regional Victoria, Australia. Global Environmental Change 23(5), 1307-1316.

Kim J, Hogue TS. 2008. Evaluation of a MODIS-based potential evapotranspiration product at the point scale. Journal of Hydrometeorology 9(3), 444-460.

Ladisa G, Todorovic M, Liuzzi TG. 2012. A GIS-based approach for desertification risk assessment in Apulia region, SE Italy. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 49, 103-113.

Lam DK, Remmel KT, Drezner DT. 2011. Tracking desertification in California using remote sensing: A sand dune encroachment approach. Remote Sensing- Open Access Journal 3, 1-13.

Orare AC. 2000. Wind erosion of volcanic soils, a reconnaissance study in the southern catchments of Lake Naivasha region, Kenya. MSc diss., ITC.

Salvati L, Bajocco S. 2011. Land sensitivity to desertification across Italy: Past, present, and future. Applied Geography 31, 223-231.

Shahbaz M, Rafiq KM, Khan NT. 2013. Arid Land Development and Combating Desertification in Pakistan. In G. A. H. R. Squires (Ed.), Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East: Proven Practices 231-248.

Soni C, Vaishnav DD, Bairwa D, Mittal H, Vijayvargiya H, Vijavargiya A, Singh V. 2017. Automatic Irrigation System. International Journal of Technical Research and Science (IJTRS).

Van Lynden GWJ, Mantel S. 2001. The role of GIS and remote sensing in land degradation assessment and conservation mapping some user experiences and expectations. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 3, 61-68.

Vicente-Serrano SM, Cabello D, Tomás-Burguera M, Martín-Hernández N, Beguería S, Azorin-Molina C. 2015. Kenawy, A.E. Drought variability and land degradation in semiarid regions: Assessment using remote sensing data and drought indices (1982-2011). Remote Sensing — Open Access Journal. 7, 4391-4423.

Xiao K, Xu H. 2010. RS and GIS Based Analysis of Urban Heat Island Effect in Shanghai. In Geoinformatics, 2010 18th International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

Zeng Y, Feng Z, Xiang N. 2006. Albedo-NDVI space and remote sensing synthesis index models for desertification monitoring. Scientia Geographica Sinica 26(1), 75-80.

Zhang N, Hong Y, Qin Q, Zhu L. 2013. Evaluation of the Visible and Shortwave Infrared Drought Index in China, International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 4(2), 68-76.

Submit Manuscript