Assessments of the impacts of environmental factors on vegetation cover at gas flaring sites in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

Abstract

This study aims at the assessment of the effects of environmental factors on vegetation cover at the flaring sites in Rivers State, Nigeria. Twenty one Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM) data, and four Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager and Thermal Infrared Sensor (OLI-TIRS) data dated from 21/04/2000 to 05/02/2022 with 3 cloud cover were employed to study eleven gas flaring sites. Matrix Laboratory MATLAB code was developed for data processing and analysis. Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) was computed from the atmospherically corrected multispectral bands (1-4) for Landsat 7, and bands (2-5) for Landsat 8. Change in NDVI was computed as NDVI450-60)m in the N, E, S and W directions which is the difference between NDVI at 450 m and 60 m distance from the flare stack. The available environmental factors (Facility size, flare stack height and time i.e. year, month and day) were applied to the (NDVI450-60m) in the 4 cardinal directions. Pairwise linear and multiple regression statistical analyses were adopted to investigate the relationships between each of the (NDVI450-60)mN, (NDVI450-60)mE, (NDVI450-60)mS and (NDVI450-60)mW and facility size, stack height and time. The results show that only 12 of the variance in (NDVI450-60)mN is explained by the available data. Therefore, it can be concluded that the combination of the facility size, flare stack height and time accounted for only 12 of the results. Further researches using the rate and volume of flared gas data, and the vegetation species is required to achieve better results.