TITLE:
Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS to Assess Vulnerability of Environmental Degradation in North-Western Bangladesh
AUTHORS:
Md. Shareful Hassan, Syed Mahmud-Ul-Islam, Muhammad Tauhidur Rahman
KEYWORDS:
GIS, Remote Sensing, Landsat, DEM, Soil Degradation, Bangladesh
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geographic Information System,
Vol.7 No.5,
October
13,
2015
ABSTRACT: Environmental degradation is a burning
issue in Bangladesh. The degradation process is extremely acute in the
north-western part of Bangladesh due to many environmental and anthropogenic
reasons. However, initiative of research work on this issue is very crucial and
urgent for regional and local planning and management. In this paper, Nachole
and Niamotpur Upazilas were considered as the study area to identify and
quantify environmental degradation using an integrated Geographic Information
System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) technique. The results of the study reveal
that the area is one of the most vulnerable areas in terms of land degradation
that already affected local agriculture, biodiversity, water supply and overall
socio-economic livelihoods. From the modelling results, about 66,301 hectares
(90%) of land are vulnerable to land degradation, of which 24,736, 40,309 and
256 hectares of land were classified as severely, highly, and moderately
vulnerable areas respectively. The overall image classification accuracy for
all the resultant images was 95.40% while kappa coefficient was 0.94.