Publications

Markogianni, V; Dimitriou, E (2016). Landuse and NDVI change analysis of Sperchios river basin (Greece) with different spatial resolution sensor data by Landsat/MSS/TM and OLI. DESALINATION AND WATER TREATMENT, 57(60), 29092-29103.

Abstract
The assessment of land use-land cover (LULC) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) changes on hydrology is essential for the development of sustainable water resource strategies. This study focuses on Sperchios river catchment, a complex and very heterogeneous area made up of numerous land covers that are difficult to map due to spectral similarities. Difficulties such as multi-seasonal spectral variables corresponding to different stages of land cover phenological development were addressed by choosing an unsupervised classification algorithm called k-means in combination with the Corine land cover database and past scientific studies. Available remote sensing data included three Landsat images (MSS, TM, OLI) all of which were resampled to a common 30-m resolution. Final LULC classifications in the period 1972-2013 separated forest, agricultural land and heath land and detected unified bare with urban land and pastures with areas of low vegetation. The recorded results include a significant reduction (-80%) of vegetation (NDVI values), 28 and 26% reduction rates in forests and pastures-low vegetation, respectively, a strong increase (114%) in heath land and an 47% increase, as concerns the agricultural land. Using of random points estimated the classification accuracy to be 75.4 and 85.2% for LULC of 1972-2013, respectively. This particular study constitutes a preliminary stage of an attempted integrated basin management of Sperchios river intending to contribute to overall ecological quality assessment of Sperchios river.

DOI:
10.1080/19443994.2016.1188734

ISSN:
1944-3994