Journal of Remote Sensing & GIS

Abstract

GIS and RS Based Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Soil Moisture/Water Content Variation in Southern Irrigated Part of Sindh, Pakistan

Madiha Zakir

Throughout history, earth's climate has changed like the rise in average temperature of the Earth's climate and global sea level rise leading to storms, flooding, drought and other extreme and disastrous events. Remote sensing and GIS has this potential to determine the soil moisture status over large areas and a longer span of time using satellite images and different indices like moisture stress index, soil moisture index or normalized difference water index with respect to the changing climatic conditions like temperature and precipitation. All of which, convey different information but when interpreted and analyzed appropriately can be used to determine the soil moisture status of the specified area. The study investigates the moisture stress along with moisture variability from the year 1991 to 2002 on the southern part of Pakistan, Sindh to determine the spatial and temporal changes. Resulting products basically show the spatial distribution of moisture content over the study area and also it could be really efficient to predict the moisture percentage for the areas where in-situ measurements are not available.