Abstract
In recent years, the problem of rising salinity levels in the Shatt al-Arab river in southern Iraq has been repeated, which has directly affected the living and health situation and the agricultural activity of these areas. Six sampling stations were selected along Shatt al-Arab to estimate the concentration of total dissolved solids (TDS) in the river; these stations included the following: Qurna, Labani, City Centre, Kateban, Corniche, and Sihan. In addition, three Landsat-8 satellite images which were taken at the same time as collected samples also used for detecting the salinity in the river. After processing of atmospheric correction and inserted remote sensing indices, the reflectance of water extracted from satellite images was used to express the spectral characteristics of different TDS concentrations. Correlation and regression were used to obtain accurate models for detecting the salinity depending on the spectral reflectance of Landsat 8 operational land image OLI. The results presented Pearson correlation (r) value of 0.70, 0.97, and 0.71, and correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.56, 0.94, and 0.85 between field data with spectral data of salinity index 2 (SI-2) derived from the green and blue bands of Landsat obtained in 2015, 2017, and 2018 respectively. In conclusion, remote sensing and GIS technologies coupled with spectral modeling are useful tools for providing a solution of future water resources planning and management, and also offer great undertaking as a means to improve knowledge of water quality and support water decision making.
Highlights
Salinity usually refers to a significant concentration of mineral salts in soil or water because of the hydrological processes (Schofield et al 2001)
total dissolved solids (TDS) and salinity levels are much-related concepts as the most dissolved solids typically consist of inorganic ions, which are the components of salts; the reason for increasing salinity is similar to increasing TDS of surface water body (Ferdous et al 2019)
These values appear to be encouraging for predicting salinity through the spectral index, while a second good result was found between TDS and Salinity index (SI)-1 with r value of 0.61, 0.86, and 0.65 for the years 2015, 2017, and 2018 respectively
Summary
Salinity usually refers to a significant concentration of mineral salts in soil or water because of the hydrological processes (Schofield et al 2001). Shatt al-Arab river is regarded as one of the most important rivers in Iraq and the main source of freshwater in the Al Basra province, southern Iraq, its water used for various purposes: drinking, irrigation, fisheries, navigation, and industry. Al Basra province has experienced severe degradation in its drinking water quality both in terms of salinity and TDS level. The water of Shatt al-Arab is suffering from water sources shortage or drying up; it is being heavily impacted by sea-level rise and climate change effects. This has made the decline in quantity and quality of freshwater, drought, and salinity more severe. TDS differed from 1985 to 7131 mg/L from December 2011 to November 2012 in some part of the
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