Spatio-temporal monitoring of land cover degradation in Eastern Hammar Marsh.

Shortages of water resources and climate change have direct effects on the marshes area in Iraq, which is the most abundant ecological diverse communities. In this paper, a satellite-based indices model and, the digital elevation model (DEM) of the east part of Al-Hammar Marsh were used to investigate the degradation of the land cover of this marsh for the spring, as a wet period, and summer, as a dry period for the period 2013-2021. The NDVI and MNDWI spectral indices and their predefining threshold criteria were adopted to develop the land cover classification model. To perform the search, the Landsat 8 (OLI) satellite images, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and Digital Elevation Models (DEM)) and weather data were used to perform this investigation. The results showed that the marsh is facing degradation in the vegetation cover with a general decreasing trend of 6% and, 3% in the spring and summer seasons respectively. Also, there is no presence of high density vegetation cover for all study period. The maximum and minimum surface water area was 91% and 22% in 2019 and 2015 respectively. In addition, there is no increase in average rainfall while the average temperature with a general increase of 3% during the study period. Fuerthermore, the water that supplied to the marsh is not sufficient for the immersion process or restoration of vegetation cover, as the water settles in the low areas of the marsh, while the high areas remain dry most of the study periods and, the areas with medium elevation in which the vegetation cover fluctuates between the two types, medium and low density vegetation cover, depending on the increase or decrease in water that supplied to the marsh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]