Assessing the impacts of Amphan cyclone over West Bengal, India: a multi-sensor approach.

Abstract

Landfall of the Amphan (very severe cyclonic storm) occurred at 1730 hrs Indian Standard Time (IST) on May 20, 2020, near the West Bengal (W.B.) coast of India. High wind speed, storm surge, and torrential rainfall-induced flooding caused devastation in W.B. The present study aims to analyse the impacts of Amphan cyclone on land use/land cover (LULC) such as built-up area, cropland, brick-kiln industries and vegetation cover of nine districts of W.B. namely, Barddhaman, Nadia, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Purba Medinipur, Paschim Medinipur, Haora, and Kolkata. Flood extent has been mapped using Sentinel-1A and B interferometric wide swath (IW) ground range detected (GRD) VV polarisation images dated May 22, 2020. The total actual flooded area covers 488 km2 of the study area. For the pre-cyclone period, LULC classification and normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) have been done using Sentinel-2B multispectral instrument (MSI) images dated May 14, 2020. Post-cyclone NDVI has been computed using Sentinel-2B MSI images dated June 3, 2020. Flood-affected cropland covers a large chunk (88.2%) of the total actual flooded area. Mean NDVI values of non-flooded and flooded cropland and vegetation cover have been reduced between May 14, 2020, and June 3, 2020. District, block and pixel-wise changes in pre- and post-cyclone NDVI values have also been analysed. This study helps planners and policy makers to understand the district-wise flooding behavior, severity of damage to cropland and vegetation cover and to plan restriction on high-value land use in flooded low-lying areas.