DETECTION OF SOIL MOISTURE CONTENT AS A TOOL FOR ANTHROPOGENIC IMPACT

Abstract

Recently, spatial analysis has taken place as a tool to detect the environmental changes and understanding the anthropogenic impacts in different scales and times. One of the effective remote sensing techniques is spectral indices algorithm which is used to differentiate preciously between different land cover elements. In this paper the moisture an index is applied on the multispectral Landsat satellite images Thematic Mapper (TM) to detect the soil moisture changes during different time series. Four launched years (1990, 2001, 2009, and 2016) of satellite image are used for the north coast of the Kuwait Bay which is occupied by the desalination Al-Subiya plant. The impact of the anthropogenic desalination plant on the coastal area was recognized and the increase of saturated area is classified into four ranks from low to high. The created maps show that the outlet channel had changed from water to high moisture assigned class that indicates the accumulation of a considerable amount of deposits as a result of neglecting channel maintenance.