Abstract
The northeastern region of Bangladesh often experiences flash flooding during the pre-harvesting period of the boro rice crop, which is the major cereal crop in the country. In this study, our objective was to delineate the impact of the 2017 flash flood (that initiated on 27 March 2017) on boro rice using multi-temporal Landsat-8 OLI and MODIS data. Initially, we opted to use Landsat-8 OLI data for mapping the damages; however, during and after the flooding event the acquisition of cloud free images were challenging. Thus, we used this data to map the cultivated boro rice acreage considering the planting to mature stages of the crop. Also, in order to map the extent of the damaged boro area, we utilized MODIS data as their 16-day composites provided cloud free information. Our results indicated that both the cultivated and damaged boro area estimates based on satellite data had strong relationships while compared to the ground-based estimates (i.e., r2 values approximately 0.92 for both cases, and RMSE of 18,374 and 9380 ha for cultivated and damaged areas, respectively). Finally, we believe that our study would be critical for planning and ensuring food security for the country.
Highlights
Flash flooding is a recurring natural disturbance over the northeastern part of Bangladesh.This region exhibits a unique landscape that consists of hundreds of “haors”, characterized as bowl or saucer-shaped large tectonic depression [1]
We evaluated the freely available Landsat-8 Operational Land Image (OLI) images in the form of both surface reflectance and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) at 30 m spatial resolution freely available from United States Geological Survey (USGS) websites over the study area between December 2016 and April 2017
We proposed a simple but comprehensive remote sensing-based mechanism for delineating the spatial extent of both cultivated and damaged boro areas due to a flash flooding over the haor basin in northeastern Bangladesh
Summary
Flash flooding is a recurring natural disturbance over the northeastern part of Bangladesh This region exhibits a unique landscape that consists of hundreds of “haors”, characterized as bowl or saucer-shaped large tectonic depression [1]. These haors, collectively known as haor basin, is completely flooded between the monsoon and post-monsoon seasons that usually spans between June and November every year [2]. Excessive local/regional rainfall occurrences during late March to April often trigger flash floods that cause widespread destruction to the boro rice, and imposes a severe threat to the food supply ( known as food security) nationally. Roy et al [3] reported that flash flooding hit the region six times in the months between March and April during the period 2000–2017 upon consulting
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