Subject Geology

Paper No and Title Remote Sensing and GIS

Module No and Title Environmental Applications of Remote Sensing

Module Tag RS & GIS XXI

Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator

Prof. Talat Ahmad
Vice-Chancellor
Jamia Millia Islamia
Delhi
Paper Coordinator
Prof. Devesh K Sinha
Department of Geology
University of Delhi
Delhi
Content Writer
Prof. P. P. Chakraborty
Department of Geology
University of Delhi
Delhi
Reviewer

Dr. Atiqur Rahman Dr. Atiqur Rahman Dr. Pervez Ahmed

Department of Geography, Department of Geography, Department of Geography
Faculty of Natural Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Kashmir
Jamia Millia Islamia Jamia Millia Islamia Srinagar
Delhi Delhi

Paper: Hydrogeology and Engineering Geology

GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
Sensing
 Table of Content
1. Introduction
2. Biodiversity and Wetlands Assessment
2.1 Habitat loss and Fragmentation
2.2 Habitat Suitability Mapping
2.3 Wetland Mapping and Monitoring
2.4 Identifying and Monitoring of Threats on Vegetation
2.5 Predicting Biodiversity Richness

3. Monitoring of Forest Resources

3.1 Forest Cover Assessment and Monitoring
3.2 Forest Fire Monitoring

4. Carbon Stocks and Sinks

4.1 Carbon Sequestration Monitoring

5. Marine Applications

5.1 Coastal Ecosystem Management

5.2 Oil Spill Verification

6. Monitoring of Desertification processes

7. Other Application
7.1 Air pollution
7.2 Soil, Water and Drought Monitoring
7.3 Enviromenta1 Impacts Assessment
8. Summary

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 1. Introduction

The word ‘environment’ means surroundings, in which organisms live. In other

words, environment is the sum total of conditions that surrounds us at a given point
of time and space. It is comprised of the interacting systems of physical, biological
and cultural elements, which are interlinked both individually and collectively. It
influences the growth and development of living forms.

With the ever-increasing human population, nature has been over exploited to meet
the basic amenities, like food, fuel and fibre. The senseless exploitation of nature
has not only depleted the finite resources but also degraded their quality.
Therefore, environmental considerations have become a major concern for the
world. The focus now is preserving the overall balance and value of the natural
capital stock. Accurate baseline information and methods to evaluate the quantity
and the quality of each resource is the basic requirement for further planning.
Remote sensing has been recognized now as a valuable tool for viewing,
analyzing, characterizing and making decisions about our environment (Fig. 1).
The remote sensing has great advantage over traditional methods, as it is capable
of providing synoptic view with wall-to-wall coverage of study area. Besides this,
it can also address regions of widely varying scales and does not breach national
sovereignty. However, it is a costly affair, but with the time, its costs are coming
down; both for imagery and software.

Fig. 1 Techniques of remote sensing for various features.

Paper: Hydrogeology and Engineering Geology
GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 With the availability of remotely sensed data from different sensors of various
platforms with a wide range of spatiotemporal, radiometric and spectral resolutions
has made remote sensing as, perhaps, the best source of data for large scale
applications and study (Table 1).

Table 1: Applications related to natural resources management and spectral ranges

required/employed.
Theme Application Spectral Range required
Agriculture, Forestry and Land Crop identification & acreage VIS,NIR,MIR,MW
use/cover estimation
Crop condition assessment and VIS,NIR,TIR
yield estimation
Soil moisture TIR and Microwave (L & C
bands)
Drought monitoring VIS,NIR,MIR
Land use/cover mapping VIS,NIR,
Forest fire detection 3-4 Micrometer, TIR
Water resources Mapping surface water bodies VIS,NIR
Water quality monitoring Narrow spectral bands in
Snow mapping VIS,NIR Thermal
-aerial extent –depth (water VIS, NIR, MIR
equivalent) Microwave
Flood mapping VIS, NIR
Marine resources and coastal Phytoplankton estimation Narrow spectral bands
studies Fluorescence studies for ~10nm in the VIS, NIR
Chlorophyll-A estimation at 685 nm with 5 nm
Sea surface temperature resolution + NIR
TIR, Microwaves
Wetland mapping
TIR, NIR, MIR and
Oil slicks Microwaves (19.1 and 31GHz)
Geology/Mineral Resources Structural geology VIS, NIR and Microwaves
Rock type identification Narrow spectral bands in
VIS NIR MIR & TIR
VIS: - 0.4 to 0.9 micrometer, NIR: 0.7 to 1.1 micrometer, MIR: 1.55 to 1.75 micrometer and
2.08 to 2.3micrometer, TIR: 8-14 micrometer and Microwaves: L, C and X bands (Source:
Joseph and Navalgund, 1999).

Remote sensing is widely used to assess and monitor environment in the following field:

a) Biodiversity and Wetlands Assessment

b) Monitoring of Forest Resources
c) Carbon stocks and sinks

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 d) Marine Applications
e) Desertification
f) Other Application
g) Enviromenta1 Impacts Assessment

2. Biodiversity and Wetlands Assessment

2.1 Habitat Loss and Fragmentation

It is important to quantify forest loss and its fragmentation, as it is habitats
for various organisms. Satellite remote sensing may play key role in
generating information about forest cover, vegetation type and land use
changes (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Multi-temporal satellite data have been used to quantify deforestation and

habitat fragmentation in the spatial context. Changes in shape and size of
forest fragments can be assessed using satellite data in a GIS environment.
The Land use land cover map generated from remotely sensed satellite data
can be used as an input for landscape analysis to derive habitat fragmentation
indices such as Patch cohesion, Contagion index, Proximity of patches,
Aggregation index and Patch size density. For this, FRAGSTATS computer
software is used in remote sensing domain.

2.2 Habitat Suitability Mapping

Habitat evaluation is the first step towards meaningful wildlife conservation.
Geospatial technology including remote sensing, geographic information
system (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS) along with a habitat
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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 suitability index (HSI) model provides, an efficient and low-cost method for
determining habitat quality. A suitability index provides the likelihood of
how much area is suitable for a particular species. The higher the value, there
will be better chance that a particular location is suitable for the occurrence
of that species. While developing the H.S.I. GPS locations of wild animals’
presence/absence is integrated with variables like slope, aspects and distance
from roads, settlements, LULC, forest crown density and aspects to produce
habitat use-environmental variables matrix. Animal sightings are taken as
“Boolean” (presence/absence) and “binomial multiple logistic regression
(BMLR) is run. The coefficients derived from BMLR area used to integrate
all layers to arrive at the probability/suitability maps. The estimated log-odds
image was then log it transformed to produce the intended probability map.
The output map is sliced to “not suitable” at value lower than 0.5 and
“suitable” at values higher than that (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Habitat Suitability Index

Paper: Hydrogeology and Engineering Geology
GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 In India, the use of geospatial technology for analyzing the “habitat
suitability index” started during the late 1980s. Indian researchers used data
from ‘LANDSAT’ for habitat evaluation of Indian one-horned rhinoceros.
This technology was widely used by Kushwaha and his colleagues for
rhinoceros in Kazhiranga National Park, mountain goat in Rajaji National
Park. Recently, Imam et al. (2009) used remote sensing and GIS for the
habitat evaluation of tiger in Chandoli tiger reserve (Maharashtra).

2.3 Wetland Mapping and Monitoring

Wetlands are valuable natural resources, because they are associated with
biological diversity, important ecosystem functions and processes, and useful
economically viable products. Wetlands provide wildlife habitat,
groundwater recharge, flood control, sediment filtration, nutrient retention,
pollutant removal and wetland products. Remote sensing has been a powerful
tool for wetland identification, classification, mapping, biomass
measurement and change detection. Ministry of Environment and Forests has
developed national-level inventory and assessment of wetlands using
RESOURCESAT-1 LISS-III data of 2006–7 at 1:50,000 scale. The extent of
wetlands has been estimated to be 15.26 m ha. Inland wetlands account for
69.22% (10.564 m ha), whereas the coastal wetlands account for 27.13%
(4.14 m ha). The high-altitude wetlands (situated > 3000 m asl) in the
Himalayan states were also mapped, comprising 126,249 ha of areal extent.

Fig. 5 Landsat satellite images of Chilika Lake in 2012 and 2013.

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 2.4 Identifying and monitoring of threats on vegetation
Remote sensing satellite data is capable of identifying and monitoring threats
imposed on vegetation due to various environmental stresses. Multiple plant
stresses affect the health, aesthetic condition, and timber harvest value of
forests. Remote sensing may provide timely, accurate, and cost-effective
information that is needed to monitor spatial and temporal dynamic forest
stress conditions. Imagery of Rapid Eye satellite provides spectral
information in five broad bands, including the red-edge region (690-730 nm)
of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is reported that broadband, red-edge
satellite information improves early detection of stress in a woodland
ecosystem relative to the more commonly used band combinations of red,
green, blue, and near infrared band reflectance spectra. The Normalized
Difference Red-Edge index (NDRE) allowed stress to be detected 13 days
after girdling, which is between 12 to 16 days earlier than traditionally used
broadband spectral indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation
Index (NDVI) and the Green NDVI. Using this technique, a conceptual
framework can also be developed that could be used as a decision support
tool for optimizing approaches to detect early onset of plant stress.

2.5 Predicting biodiversity richness

One of the main goals in nature conservation and land use planning is to
identify areas important for biodiversity. One possible cost-effective
substitute for deriving appropriate estimates of spatial patterns of species
richness is provided by predictive modeling combining with remote sensing
and topographic data. Luoto (2004) used species richness data from a spatial
grid system (105 squares of 0.25 km2 within an area of 26.25 km2), and
tested the usefulness of Landsat TM satellite-based remote sensing and
topographic data in bird species richness modeling in a boreal agricultural-
forest mosaic in southwestern Finland. For this, he built generalized linear
models for the bird species richness and validated the accuracy of the models
with an independent test area of 50 grid squares (12.5 km2). He evaluated

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 separately the Modeling performance of habitat structure, habitat
composition, topographical-moisture variables. In this technique only about
5% of the land in the study area was considered for modelling and finally it
was extrapolated to the whole study area of 600 km2 and produced bird
species richness probability maps. It is considered that spatial grid system
with several environmental variables derived from remote sensing data
produces the most reliable data sets, which can be used in predicting species
richness in other landscapes.

3. Monitoring of Forest Resources

3.1 Forest cover assessment and monitoring

In recent decades, intensive and rapid deforestation has led to increased
worldwide attention for sustainable management of forest resources. Remote
sensing is established as state of the art tool for forest monitoring systems
capable of evaluating deforestation patterns. Map of forest cover change
derived from remote sensing data is helpful in identification of deforestation
hotspots. The temporal evaluation of forest change based on satellite imagery
is becoming a valuable set of technique for assessing the degree of threat to
ecosystems. Digital archive of remotely sensed data provides an excellent
opportunity to study historical forest cover changes and relate to
spatiotemporal pattern of such changes to other environmental and human
factors. In ERDAS software, satellite data is exported in image format and
classified using supervised classification or unsupervised classification to
produce land use land cover map where as NDVI can be used to produce
forest crown density map (Fig. 6). Temporal maps of LULC and forest
crown density may be used to provide change detection to provide
information on forest cover and changes in it in due course of time.

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 Fig. 6 Forest cover mapping

3.2 Forest fire monitoring

Remote sensing plays important role in fire detection, its observation and its
magnitude on ground. NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management
System (FIRMS/GFIMS) was originally developed to get MODIS (MODerate
resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer)-derived active fire/hotspot
information. FIRMS provides fire locations in formats that can easily be
ingested in to a Geographic Information System (GIS) or Google Earth-type
application, web mapping tools to view, query and download fire locations,
and an email alert service, which notifies users of fires in or around their area
of interest.

National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite (NPP's) Visible Infrared Imaging

Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument is capable of capturing fire and smoke
generated by the fire. Suomi NPP is a joint mission of NASA, NOAA and the
Department of Defense. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership
satellite carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect

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 wildfires in the middle of the night as well as during the daytime and captured
day and night images.

For example, Suomi NPP's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite

(VIIRS) instrument captured a look at the fire and the smoke generated by the
fire during the daytime on May 5, 2016 at 3:45 p.m. EDT (19:45 UTC). In the
image, the hotspots indicate the location of the fires. The smoke was blowing
to the south-southeast of the fires in Fort McMurray (Fig. 7). On May 6, 2016
at 5:56 a.m. EDT (0956 UTC), the VIIRS instrument on Suomi NPP acquired
a night time image of the Fort McMurray wildfire by using its "day-night
band" to sense the fire in the visible portion of the spectrum. In the image, the
brightest parts of the fire appear white while smoke appears light gray.

Fig. 7 Forest fire mapping assessment

4. Carbon stocks and sinks

4.1 Carbon sequestration monitoring

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. According to
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the USA,
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has steadily increased from 280 ppm
in 1800 to 385 ppm in 2008. This increase has apparently triggered global
temperature rise, causing a great deal of discomfort to the world population.
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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 Carbon Sequestration (CS) is the process of transfer and secure storage of
atmospheric CO2 into other long-lived carbon pools (Lal, 2007). Terrestrial
carbon sinks include forests, wetlands and the soil biome. Quantification and
management of CS in a regional scale would involve the deployment of
cutting edge geo-spatial technologies. These technologies can be potentially
used in varying levels of integration for monitoring and management of CS.
One such approach that is gaining credence in ecological and environmental
applications is the integration of remote sensing and geographical
information system.

The primary scaling tool in this approach is the Biome-BGC carbon-cycle

process model. The model has a daily time step and is run over multiple
years to simulate primary and secondary succession. Simulated processes
include photosynthesis, plant respiration, heterotrophic respiration, plant
carbon allocation, and plant mortality.

The BIOME-BGC (BioGeochemical Cycles) model is a multi-biome

generalization of FOREST-BGC, a model originally developed to simulate a
forest stand development through a life cycle. The model requires daily climate
data and vegetation, and site conditions to estimate fluxes of carbon, nitrogen,
and water through ecosystems. Allometric relationships are used to initialize
plant and soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) pools based on the leaf pools of
these elements. Components of BIOME-BGC have previously undergone
testing and validation, including the carbon dynamics and the hydrology.

5. Marine Applications

5.1 Coastal Ecosystem Management

Based on remote sensing, a variety of data pertaining to the coastal zone, like
identification of plant community, biomass estimation, shoreline changes,
delineation of coastal landforms and tidal boundary, qualitative estimation of
suspended sediment concentration, chlorophyll mapping, bathymetry of

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 shallow waters, etc. can be collected and all these data will help in effective
coastal ecosystem management.

5.2 Oil Spill Verification

A satellite image of the area where oil spill occurred contains suspended
substances, such as hydrocarbons, sediment, foam or dye. In a remote
sensing domain, these can be identified and measured in advance to curb and
make effective assessment.

Oil spill detection can be done by RADAR and thermal imagine. Miros
offers a radar based OSD solution, which is thoroughly tested in oil-on-water
exercises since 2004. The radar-based system has fully automated detection,
giving oil spill position, tracking and measurement of drift. Miros OSD can
operate in nearly all visibility conditions on a 24-hour basis, and has become
an essential tool for navigating the recovery vessel and boom efficiently
towards the oil slick (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8

Using thermal (IR) imaging, identification of the thickest part of the oil slick
becomes available. This contributes when estimating the magnitude of the
spill and enables targeting the response effort to the part of the slick where
the majority of oil is found.

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 6. Monitoring of desertification processes

India has an arid zone, comprising both hot and cold deserts, covering
approximately 390,000 km2. Indian scientists have been using satellite imagery to
understand desertification processes and evolution of deserts. Earth observation
satellites provide significant contributions to desertification assessment and
monitoring, particularly by providing the spatial information needed for regional-
scale analyses of the relationships between climate change, land degradation and
desertification processes (Fig. 9). In most cases, optical remote sensing data
observing the earth in wavelength regions between 400 and 2500 nm are employed,
i.e. data covering the visible to the shortwave-infrared domain. The studies
conducted by various scientists have shown that MODIS and ASTER imagery has
potential for desertification mapping at small and medium scales.

Fig. 9

For evaluating and monitoring the desertification, use of multispectral and temporal
satellite images are used along with regression model based on the NDVI–a
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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 relationship. The Desertification degree index (DDI) offered a panorama of the
spatio-temporal changes in terms of vegetation cover, soil, climate, and water
availability, by means of calculating the albedo. The NDVI–BSI (Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index-Bare-Soil Index) relationship facilitated the
characterization of desertification and helped to identify zones of degradation or re-
growth over time by qualitatively classifying the state of desertification and its
direction and rate of change.

7. Other Application

7.1 Air Pollution

Remote sensing is capable of detecting accidental release of toxic chemicals
and chemical tank fire through analyzing satellite imageries. Remote sensing
is also helpful in measuring the air dispersion of pollutants and taking
precautions against the impact of the source region.

Fig. 10 An early photo taken in 1973 from the NASA Skylab space station. It
shows a thick layer of smog in the Los Angeles Basin (circled). Photo credit:
NASA.
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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 Remotely sensed MSS data has been used by various investigators for water
quality mapping in inland and estuarine systems. The high-resolution data of
TM, SPOT, and IRS permit more accurate of water quality mapping. Remote
sensed data for mapping chlorophyll and other water quality parameters has
also been reported. Developed regression models to represents best
relationships between salinity, turbidity, total suspended solids and
chlorophyll concentrations. The CIR, TIR data are used for salt-water
intrusion. The UV, TIR, MW sensors are used to detect oil spills. The V, C,
CIR sensors are used for pollution control related to agriculture, forestry,
mining, and land development activities.

7.2 Soil, Water and Drought Monitoring

With the advent of grid based remotely sensed rainfall data, the application
of crop water balance models for crop monitoring and yield forecasting has
gained increased acceptance by various organizations around the world. Soil
water is a key state variable in hydrological modeling and determines the
partitioning of rainfall into runoff and deep percolation, and also controls the
rate of evapotranspiration (ET). For monitoring large areas using remotely
sensed data, the water balance approach provides an operational advantage in
terms of data availability. While the energy balance models are mainly
driven by the thermal data, the water balance models are driven by rainfall.
The most widely used water balance technique for operational use is the
FAO water balance algorithm that produces the crop water requirement
satisfaction index (WRSI), which is also known as the crop specific drought
index (CSDI). All these combine to make Remote Sensing a veritable tool
for obtaining baseline information for establishing baseline conditions of an
area at the pre project analysis stage, as well as monitoring changes in the
environmental conditions of such area after the project has been
commissioned.

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 7.3 Environmental Impacts Assessment
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been defined by Munn (1979)
as an activity designed to identify and predict the impact on the
biogeochemical environment and on man’s health and well-being of
legislative proposals, policies, programs, projects and operational procedures
and to interpret and communicate information about the impact. Hence, EIA
is a planning tool, a formal study used to predict the environmental
consequences of a proposed major development project.

With the use of geo-spatial techniques like remote sensing, Geographical

Information Systems (GIS), and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), EIA has
enhanced substantial viewing, movement, query, and even map-making
capabilities. Ministry of Forest and Climate Change, Government of India
has made EIA compulsory before implementing a project. Without
submission of EIA, project will not be cleared.

For example, India plans a large expansion of nuclear power. The Indian
Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) projects that hundreds of nuclear
reactors will be constructed over the next few decades. There is widespread
concern about the potential environmental impact of these projects. Before
implementing all these projects, Environment Impact Assessment is needed
to predict impacts of these activities on environment and society; hence,
DAE issues a notice for EIA.

8. Summary

The word ‘environment’ means surroundings, in which organisms live. It is

comprised of the interacting systems of physical, biological and cultural elements.
With the increase in human population, nature has been over exploited to meet the
basic amenities, like food, fuel and fibre. The senseless exploitation of nature has
not only depleted the finite resources but also degraded their quality. Therefore,
environmental considerations have become a major concern for the world. The focus
now is preserving the overall balance and value of the natural capital stock. Accurate

Paper: Hydrogeology and Engineering Geology

GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
Sensing
 baseline information and methods to evaluate the quantity and the quality of each
resource is the basic requirement for further planning. Remote sensing has been
recognized now as a valuable tool for viewing, analyzing, characterizing and making
decisions about our environment. The remote sensing has great advantage over
traditional methods, as it is capable of providing synoptic view with wall-to-wall
coverage of study area. With the availability of remotely sensed data from different
sensors of various platforms with a wide range of spatiotemporal, radiometric and
spectral resolutions has made remote sensing best source of data for large-scale
applications and study. Remote Sensing has been widely used in Enviromenta1
Impacts Assessment, Biodiversity & Wetlands Assessment, Monitoring of Forest
Resources, Assessment of Carbon stocks & sinks, Marine Applications and
monitoring of Desertification. Remote sensing provided fast results on these aspects,
which may help in taking timely decision.

Frequently Asked Questions-

Q1. Describe the role of Remote Sensing in forest fire monitoring?

Ans: Remote sensing plays important role in fire detection. NASA’s MODIS sensor,
onboard the Terra and Aqua Earth Observing System satellites have been providing
global fire observations. On another hand National Polar-orbiting Partnership
satellite (NPP's) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument is
capable of capturing fire and smoke generated by the fire. It carries an instrument so
sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night as
well as during the daytime and captured day and night images.

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
Sensing
 Q2. How Habitat suitability Index modelling is developed using Remote
Sensing and GIS?
Ans: Remote Sensing along with geographic information system (GIS) and global
positioning system (GPS) may help in developing habitat suitability index (HSI)
model. A suitability index provides the likelihood of how much area is suitable for a
particular species. The higher the value, there will be better chance that a particular
location is suitable for the occurrence of that species. While developing the H.S.I.
GPS locations of wild animals’ presence/absence is integrated with variables like
slope, aspects and distance from roads, settlements, LULC, forest crown density and
aspects to produce habitat use-environmental variables matrix. Animal sightings are
taken as “Boolean” (presence/absence) and “binomial multiple logistic regression
(BMLR) is run. The coefficients derived from BMLR area used to integrate all layers
to arrive at the probability/suitability maps. The estimated log-odds image was then
logit transformed to produce the intended probability map. The output map is sliced to
“not suitable” at value lower than 0.5 and “suitable” at values higher than that.

Q3. What are the spectral ranges required for application in Agriculture,
Forestry and Land use / cover?
Ans: The spectral ranges required for application in Agriculture, Forestry and Land
use/land cover is given below.

Theme Application Spectral ranges required

Crop identification & acreage VIS,NIR,MIR,MW
estimation

Agriculture, Crop condition assessment VIS,NIR,TIR

Forestry and and yield estimation
Land use / Soil moisture TIR and Microwave (L & C
cover bands)
Drought monitoring VIS,NIR,MIR
Land use/cover mapping VIS,NIR,
Forest fire detection 3-4 Micrometer, TIR

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 Q4. How Remote Sensing helps in monitoring of desertification?
Ans: For evaluating and monitoring the desertification, use of multispectral and
temporal satellite images are used along with regression model based on the NDVI–
a relationship. The Desertification degree index (DDI) offered a panorama of the
spatio-temporal changes in terms of vegetation cover, soil, climate, and water
availability, by means of calculating the albedo. The NDVI–BSI (Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index-Bare-Soil Index) relationship facilitated the
characterization of desertification and helped to identify zones of degradation or re-
growth over time by qualitatively classifying the state of desertification and its
direction and rate of change.

Q5. How oil spill is verified using remote Sensing?

Ans: Oil spill on satellite image of the area where it occurred can be easily identified
as it contains suspended substances, such as hydrocarbons, sediment, foam or dye.
In a remote sensing domain, these can be identified and measured in advance to curb
and make effective assessment. Oil spill detection can be done by RADAR and
thermal imagine. The radar-based system has fully automated detection, giving oil
spill position, tracking and measurement of drift. Miros OSD can operate in nearly
all visibility conditions on a 24-hour basis, and has become an essential tool for
navigating the recovery vessel and boom efficiently towards the oil slick. To
estimate the magnitude of the spill, thermal (IR) imaging can be is used. It may be
useful in identification of the thickest part of the oil slick.

Multiple Choice Questions-

1. FRAGSTATS software is used to analyze

(a) Air Pollution
(b) Water Pollution
(c) Forest fire
(d) Habitat Fragmentation

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 2. Desertification degree index (DDI) offered a panorama of the spatio-temporal
changes in terms of
(a) Vegetation Cover
(b) Soil
(c) Water Availability
(d) All of the above
3. Crop condition assessment and yield estimation can be done by using following
spectral ranges
(a) VIS
(b) NIR
(c) TIR
(d) All of the above

4. MODIS stands for

(a) Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(b) Modern resolution Imaging Spectrophotometer
(c) Moderate resolution Imaging Spatiotemporal
(d) None of the Above

5. For desertification mapping following are potential

(a) MODIS
(b) ASTER
(c) NDVI–BSI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index-Bare-Soil Index)
(d) All of the above

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GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
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 Suggested Readings:

1. Jha, C.S., Dutt, C.B.S. & Bawa, K.S. (2000). Deforestation and land use
changes in Western Ghats, India. Current Science, 79, 231–238.
2. NRSA (2007). Biodiversity Characterisation at Landscape Level in Eastern
Ghats and East Coast using remote sensing and Geographic Information
System. National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad. ISBN-978-81-7525-
878-5.
3. Jeyanny, V., Balasundram, S.K. and Husni, M.H.A. (2011). Geo-Spatial
Technologies for Carbon Sequestration Monitoring and Management.
American Journal of Environmental Sciences, 7 (5): 456-462.
4. Ray, S. S., Dadhwal, V. K. and Navalgund, R. R. (2002) Performance
evaluation of an irrigation command area using remote sensing: A Case
Study of Mahi Command, Gujarat, India, Agrl. Water Management, 56(2):
81-91.
5. Skidmore, A. K., Oindo, B. O., & Said, M. Y. (2003). Biodiversity
assessment by remote sensing. In Proceedings of the 30th International
symposium on remote sensing of the environment: information for risk
management and sustainable development (p. 4).
6. Cao, C., X. Xiong, A. Wu, and X. Wu. (2008). Assessing the consistency of
AVHRR and MODIS L1B reflectance for generating fundamental climate
data records. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 113: DOI:
10.1029/2007jd009363.
7. Anonymous (2016) Remote Sensing Applications.
http://cn.cgwic.com/VRSS1/english/user.html.

Paper: Hydrogeology and Engineering Geology

GEOLOGY Module: Environmental Applications of Remote
Sensing