Geo-environmental monitoring and assessment of land degradation and desertification in the semi-arid regions using Landsat 8 OLI / TIRS, LST, and NDVI approach

Abstract

This research aims to find a relation between measured Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for assessing land degradation and desertification in semi-arid regions using LANDSAT 8. In the twenty-first century, soil loss has been a serious environmental problem due to anthropogenic pressure and climate change. Monitoring and assessing land degradation vulnerability is becoming increasingly important for sustainable land resource management, especially in semi-arid ecosystems. The purpose of this research is to retrieve the LST and examine the relationship between LST and NDVI, in addition to LST and Landsat 8 bands. The association between LST and Landsat 8 bands is found to be positive, as well as the regression coefficient from NDVI to LST is also found to be strong Positive. The resultant of the NDVI is further classified into five categories based on the pixel values, and they are reclassified into five categories for land cover assessment, they are namely waterbodies, degraded lands, desertified lands, vegetation, and built-up lands. The results reveal that the desertified lands are occupying an area of 13.62%, degraded lands occupy 48.91%, built-up lands occupy 8.39%, vegetation lands occupy 27.34%, and water bodies occupy 1.71% in the study region. These research findings can be used to optimize the technique for future research in the field of degradation assessment, thermal comfort zone assessment, and sustainable agricultural growth.