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Detection of Hydromorphologic Characteristics of Indus River Estuary, Pakistan, Using Satellite and Field Data

  • Research Article - Earth Sciences
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Abstract

Natural and anthropogenic factors directly determine the hydromorphologic and ecologic equilibrium of riverine environment. The present study was designed to detect the hydromorphologic characteristics of Indus River Estuary (IRE) using medium and high spatial resolution multispectral satellite imagery along with field data. Qualitative (visual) and quantitative (analytical) analysis was undertaken, and accuracy of each method as well as remotely sensed data was assessed. Single-band density slicing method was used for water bodies, while multiband supervised and unsupervised classification methods were adopted for the identification of hydromorphologic habitat along with key ecologic features of the IRE. The analysis of satellite imagery showed that the shortwave infrared-2 (band 7) of Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensor performed better than its visible bands for delineating water bodies. The overall classification accuracy was 89%. Supervised classification with the maximum likelihood algorithm performed better for OLI imagery (30 m) than high spatial resolution RapidEye (5 m) imagery. However, unsupervised classification method was not suitable due to the significant overlapping of inter- and intra-class pixels. Overall, due to its adequate spectral range Landsat OLI imagery was utilized for monitoring of terrestrial water bodies and their morphologic features. Thus, we recommend that selecting the spatial resolution of the imagery should be based on the size of the objects to be recognized.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to exclusively acknowledge Dr. Jan Dempewolf, Assistant Research Professor, Department of Geography, University of Maryland, USA, for technical and grammatical review. Moreover, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Google Earth are also acknowledged who have voluntarily offered satellite data online for research facilitation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. U.S.-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, Sindh, 76062, Pakistan

    Muhammad Wajid Ijaz, Altaf Ali Siyal, Rasool Bux Mahar & Waqas Ahmed

  2. Environmental Protection Agency, Lahore, Punjab, 54000, Pakistan

    Muhammad Wajid Ijaz

  3. Department of Land and Water Management, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam, Sindh, 70060, Pakistan

    Altaf Ali Siyal

  4. Division of Hydrology Water-Land Resources in Cold and Arid Regions, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, People’s Republic of China

    Muhammad Naveed Anjum

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  1. Muhammad Wajid Ijaz
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Correspondence to Muhammad Wajid Ijaz.

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Ijaz, M.W., Siyal, A.A., Mahar, R.B. et al. Detection of Hydromorphologic Characteristics of Indus River Estuary, Pakistan, Using Satellite and Field Data. Arab J Sci Eng 42, 2539–2558 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-017-2528-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-017-2528-9

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