Temporal Trajectory Analysis of Lake Surface Area: Case study on Lake Tana, Ethiopia
Abstract
Lakes are facing challenges due to climatic and anthropogenic activities with slow changes causing
unnoticed damages over a long time. The long term historic data provides concrete evidence of change.
The earth observation satellites which include both geostationary and polar orbiting satellite provide
different types of environmental data. The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the temporal trajectory
change of the lake surface area of LakeTana from 1985 – 2015 using geospatial technologies. The
study uses seven Landsat TM and ETM+ images to detect the lake surface area change. The change
was examined using modified normalized difference of Water index (MNDWI) method. This was attained
by making use of ERDAS Imagine 2014 and ArcGIS10.1 software. The results of this study
indicate that within the past three decades, the lake area has shown a significant decrease–about
362.74 sq.km. The area calculated from bathymetric surveys and the ccorresponding results from other
alternative methods were gathered and computed with the findings of this study. The results portray
that there is strong relationship between the estimates of lake surface area results of MNDWI with NDVI
alongside the bathymetry results. Hence, lake surface area quantification and characterization using
remote sensing and GIS techniques enables resource managers to project realistic change scenarios
helpful for lake surface area management.
Downloads
References
ganized by IGBP/IHDP-LUCC AND IGBP-DIS, Barcelona, Spain, 11-14 November 1997 LUCC report series no.
Covich, A.P., Fritz, S.C., Lamb, P.J.., Marzolf, R.D., Matthews, W.J., Poiani, K.A., Prepas, E.E., Richman, M.B. and Winter, T.C., (1997). Potential effects of
climate change on aquatic ecosystems of the great plains of North America. Hydrological Processes,11(8),993–1021.
Gilbert, A.J. and Janssen, R., (1998). Use of environmental functions to communicate the values of a mangrove ecosystem under different management regimes.
Ecological Economics, 25, 323–346.
Kaba E, Philpot W, Steenhuis T. 2007. Evaluating suitability of MODIS-Terra images
for reproducing historic sediment concentrations in water bodies: Lake Tana,
Ethiopia. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and
Geo-information, 26,286-297.
Kebede S, Travi Y, Alemayehu T, Marc V., (2006). Water balance of Lake Tana and its
sensitivity to fluctuations in rainfall, Blue Nile basin, Ethiopia Journal of
hydrology, 316(1), 233–247
Kindie, Abye, (2001). Wetlands distribution in Amhara Region, their importance and
current threats. In Dixon, A.B., A. Hailu and A.P. Wood (eds.),
Kindie, Abye, (2001). Wetlands distribution in Amhara Region, their importance and
current threats. In Dixon, A.B., A. Hailu and A.P. Wood (eds.),
Lane, C. R., and E. D’Amico., (2010). Calculating the Ecosystem Service of Water
Storage in Isolated Wetlands Using LiDAR in North Central Florida, USA. Wet
lands, 30: 967–977
More inside the PDF