Use of Remote Sensing Techniques to Assess Water Storage Variations and Flood-Related Inflows for the Hawizeh Wetland

Abstract

Abstract High spatial and temporal resolution remote sensing data are becoming readily available. This has made use of remote sensing to monitor and quantify spatiotemporal changes in surface waters feasible and efficient. In this paper, the remote sensing techniques which based on the spectral indices has been used to assess the changes in the submerged areas and water storages in the Hawizeh marsh (south of Iraq) during the 2019 f1ood. Two spectral indices; normalized difference water index (NDWI) and normalized difference moisture index (NDMI) were used for this purposes. Non-measured flood-related flows into the marsh has also been estimated through applying the water balance approach. The accuracy assessment made to the water areas extracted by the remote sensing indices showed an acceptable level of accuracy which reflected positively on the water inflows calculations. As the Hawizeh is transboundary marsh shared by Iraq and Iran, the remote sensing techniques allowed for the estimation of difficult-to-measure inflows from the Iranian side. The results of the water balancing revealed that the inflows from Iranian side to the marsh during the 5 months of the flood made up about 41.2% from the total water volume entering into the marsh.