Published in Scientific Papers. Series E. Land Reclamation, Earth Observation & Surveying, Environmental Engineering, Vol. V
Written by Catalina BORDUN (FLOREA-GABRIAN), Sorin Mihai CIMPEANU
Desertification of agricultural areas has been growing as a key subject in continental land management, as large parts of traditional farming zones degraded over the years, as a consequence of climate changes and antropic vicious actions. Soil degradation up to desertification of large agricultural areas in Braila county plains, results as an interaction between local salinised soil and climate variation, leading to long periods of draoughts. Remote sensing for the determination of the intensity and extension of desertified areas is a solution to better understand the impact of this phenomena in Braila county. The objective of this paper is to determine whether climatic variations continue the present trend, through a comparation based on the Normalized Difference Drought Index – NDDI from MODIS producs processed with spatial analyst of ArcGis, for 2000-2005-2010-2016. The time interval was chosen due to agroclimatheric classifications, considering 2000 is classified as draght year, 20005 a normal climateric year and 2010 a rainy year. A multi-temporal series of MODIS data were gathered, 8 days synthesis, in order to determine NDDI, with empirical formulas based on the spatial images computed values, for the normalised differenced vegetation index – NDVI and normalised difference water index – NDWI. Measuring the NDVI variation based on the clorofile absorbed radiation in the red spectral band and closed infrared reflectancy, allowed us to identify the impact on vegetation cover, while computing NDWI from green and closed infrared spectral band, delivered information on the vegetation water content. The resulted values of NDDI, computed for the vegetation period, April to October, confirm 2016 as a rather normal year for agricultural purpose.
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