Developing wetland landscape insecurity and hydrological security models and measuring their spatial linkages

Abstract

The existing literature emphasized on the role of anthropogenic activities toward landscape insecurity of the wetlands, but in urban dominated infrastructurally advanced study area where hydrological transformation is very evident, how hydrological richness factors can control landscape insecurity was not well addressed. Therefore, the present study attempted to identify the spatial linkage between landscape insecurity and hydrological security of the wetland in a deltaic floodplain environment. 15 landscape metrics were employed for landscape insecurity and very basic hydrological phenomena of the wetlands like water presence frequency (WPF), depth of water, and seasonality were involved for hydrological security. Spatial modelling was performed with the machine learning (ML) algorithms and acceptable accuracy was obtained. Results showed on an average, 40% of the wetland area was under the insecure landscape category whereas, lower hydrological security prevailed over 60% of wetland area. A large portion of the hydrologically poor and insecure landscape of wetlands transformed to land. Landscape insecurity was found negatively associated with hydrological security. A slight positive trend was detected in the bheri (embankment of fishing) complex where few newer wetlands emerged due to manual regulation. Negative association exhibited poor hydrological security is a booster of landscape insecurity since it facilitates the spread of infrastructure causing landscape insecurity. The anthropogenic activities promoted the fragmentation and insecurity of wetlands in the outer region and simultaneously prevented the same and maintained greater hydrological security in the bheri complex gaining economic profit which argues for synchronizing conservation planning of the landscape with the local economy.